Dressed in his clothes, I strolled into the living room to wait while he

was changing for dinner. The place was large, and one might have spent

hours examining the things it contained--the fruit of twenty years in

the South Seas. There were wreaths of bright-colored shell--the

favorite parting gift of the islands--from the Paumotus, from Raiatea,

from Aitutaki, and Mangaias. There were fans from Manihiki, woven in

patterns of dyed pandanus, and Savage Island fans, decorated with human

hair. Ranged on a series of shelves, I found a notable collection of

_penus_--the taro-mashers of eastern Polynesia, implements in which the

culture of each group expresses itself. I was able to recognize the

pestle of Mangaia, eight-sided and carved with almost geometrical

perfection from a stalactite of pink lime; the Marquesan _penu_ of dark

volcanic stone with its curious phallic handle; the implement of old

Tahiti, gracefully designed and smoothly finished by a people far

removed from savagery; the rare and beautiful _penu_ of

Maupiti--unobtainable to-day--perfect as though turned on a lathe, and

adorned with a fantastic handle of ancient and forgotten significance.

Mother-of-pearl bonito hooks from a dozen groups were there, and on a

table I saw a rare _Toki Tiki_ from Mangaia, an odd thing which, for

want of a better name, might be called a Peace Adze. It is a slender

little tower of carved wood, set with tiers of windows and surmounted by

a stone adze head, lashed on with wrappings of sennit, above which

extend a pair of pointed ears. The carving--in the close-grained yellow

wood of the Pua--is exquisitely done; I recognized the standard patterns

of the islands---the Shark's Teeth, the Dropping Water, and the

intricate _Tiki Tangata_. The significance of the Peace Adze was

religious and ceremonial; the story goes that when, at the end of a

period of fighting, two Mangaian clans decided to make peace, the adze

played a leading part in the attendant ceremony. A handful of earth was

dug up with its head to show that the ground might now be cultivated,

and the people were told that they might come and go unmolested, freely

as the air through the windowlike openings on its sides. Tari had real

adzes as well--the tools with which trees were chopped down and canoes

hollowed out--stone implements of a perfection I have never seen

elsewhere, carved out of basaltic rock, hard and close as steel,

smoothed by processes at which one can only guess, sharp and symmetrical

as the product of modern machines.

The Marquesan curiosities interested me most of all--relics of those

dark valleys which harbored the most strangely fascinating of all the

island peoples. There were ornaments of old men's beards, arranged in

little sennit-bound tufts, crinkled and yellowish white; beaked clubs of

ironwood, elegantly carved and smooth with countless oilings; ear

pendants cut in delicate filigree from the teeth of sperm whales;

grotesque little wooden gods, monstrous and bizarre; ceremonial food

bowls of _Tamanu_, adorned with the rich and graceful designs of a

culture now forever gone. One felt that the spirits of forgotten artists

hovered about the place, beckoning one back to days a century before

Melville set foot in the valley of Taipi, to scenes of a strange beauty

on which mankind will never look again. Some day--perhaps in a future

less remote than we like to fancy--nature's careless hand may once more

set the stage for a similar experiment, but the people sequestered in

those gloomy islands will be of another blood, and the result can never

be the same. The Marquesans themselves--if one is to believe the

students of antique mankind--were the result of a racial retrogression;

their continental forebears knew iron and pottery and the culture of

rice--things lost in the eastward push which brought them to the Nine

Islands of Iva.

One curious trinket--labeled "Fatu Hiva"--caught my eye; a squat little

figure carved in a sawn-off length of yellow ivory. I examined it

closely; it had the air of being at least a hundred years old, and the

concentric rings of the section showed it to be the tooth or tusk of

some large animal. Where could the Marquesan carver have obtained such

a lump of ivory on which to exercise his skill? Could it be possible

that this was the tusk of an elephant, carved not one hundred but many

centuries ago, and preserved by the people of these distant islands--an

immemorial relic of the days when their ancestors left Persia or the

Indian hills? I looked again; it was large enough to be part of a small

tusk, but the section was flatter than any elephant ivory I had seen.

What could it be? Not the tooth of a hippopotamus--it was too large for

that; not the sword of a narwhal, which shows a betraying spiral twist.

Then I thought of a walrus tusk, and the story seemed clear.

Seventy-five or a hundred years ago some whaling vessel, after a venture

in the northern ice, must have sailed south and put in at Fatu Hiva for

water or wood or fruit. They had killed walrus off Cape Lisburne or in

the Kotzebue Sound and, as was the habit of whalers, some of the tusks

had been kept for scrimshaw work. Knowing the Polynesian passion for

ivory (in Tonga it was death for any but those of the highest rank to

take the teeth of a stranded sperm whale) it is not difficult to imagine

the rest--a lantern-jawed Yankee harpooner, perhaps, trading his walrus

tusk for a canoeload of fruit or the favors of an exceptionally pretty

girl.

I was examining a paddle from Manihiki--a graceful, narrow-bladed thing,

carved out of porcupine wood and set with diamonds of

mother-of-pearl--when Tari came in.

"A pretty paddle, isn't it?" he remarked. "You won't find a more

curious one in the Pacific. Notice the way that reinforcing ridge runs

down the blade from the haft? Everything has a meaning in primitive

stuff of this sort; the original pattern from which this has descended

probably came from a land of little trees, where the paddles had to be

made in two pieces--blade lashed to handle. Look at the shape of

it--more like a Zulu _assegai_ than anything else; it is a weapon,

primarily; a thrust of it would kill a naked man. The Manihiki people

spend a lot of their time in canoes on the open sea--after bonito by day

and flying-fish by night--and those waters swarm with sharks. They have

developed their paddle into a weapon of defence. The Samoans carried a

special shark club for the same purpose."

I asked his opinion on the disputed question of sharks--whether, in

general, the shark is a real menace to the swimmer or the paddler of a

small canoe.

"I've heard a lot of loose talk," he said; "how learned societies have

offered rewards for a genuine instance of a shark attacking a man, but I

have seen enough to know that there is no room for argument. Some idiot

goes swimming off a vessel in shark-infested waters, and talks all the

rest of his life, perhaps, of the silly fears of others--never realizing

that he owes his life to the fact that none of the sharks about him

chanced to be more than usually hungry. The really hungry shark is a

ravening murderer--dangerous as a wounded buffalo, reckless as a mad

dog.... I have seen one tear the paddle from the hand of a man beside

me and sink its teeth, over and over again in a frenzy, in the bottom of

a heavy canoe. How long do you suppose a swimmer would have lived? And

it's not only the big sharks that are dangerous. I remember one day

when a lot of us were bathing in Penrhyn lagoon. Suddenly one of the

boys gave a shout and began to struggle with something in the waist-deep

water--clouded with blood by the time I got there. A small tiger shark,

scarcely a yard long, had gouged a piece of flesh out of his leg, and

continued to attack until a big Kanaka seized it by the tail and waded

to the beach, holding the devilish little brute, snapping its jaws and

writhing frantically, at arm's length. As he reached the dry sand the

native allowed his arm to relax for an instant; the shark set its teeth

in his side and tore out a mouthful that nearly cost the man his life."

The voice of Apakura was summoning us to eat. "_Kaikai!_" she called:

"_Aere mai korua!_" Tari's dining room was a section of the side

veranda, screened off with lattices of bamboo, where we found a table

set for two, fresh with flowers and damask. Apakura sat cross-legged on

a mat near by; she was weaving a hat of native grass and looked up from

her work now and then to speak to the girl who served us--admonishing,

scolding, and joking in turn. Tari followed my glance, and smiled as he

caught the eye of his wife.

"It probably strikes you as odd that she doesn't sit with us," he said

to me. "I tried to get her into the way of it at first, but it's no

good. For generations the women of her family have been forbidden to

eat in the presence of men, and the old _tapu_ dies hard. Then she hates

chairs; when she sits with me she is wretchedly uncomfortable, and bolts

her food in a scared kind of way that puts me off my feed. It is best

to let them follow their own customs; she likes to sit on the floor

there and order her cousin about; when we've finished they'll adjourn to

the cook house for dinner and discuss you till your ears tingle.

Housekeeping down here is a funny, haphazard business--hopeless if one

demands what one had at home; easy and pleasant if one is willing to

compromise a bit. To a man who understands the natives at all the

servant question does not exist; they will jump at a chance to attach

themselves to your household--the trouble is to keep them away. It

isn't wages they are after; I pay these people nothing at all for

cooking and washing and looking after the place. They like to be where

tea and sugar and ship's biscuit are in plenty, and they like to be

amused. An occasional stranger, coming and going like yourself, gives

them no end of food for talk; I have a phonograph I let them play, and a

seine I let them take out for a day's fishing now and then. Once a

month, perhaps, I kill a pig and give a bit of a party, and once or

twice in a year I get a bullock and let them invite all their relatives

to a real _umukai_. In return for all this they look after my fifty

acres of coconuts, make my copra, do my housework, cooking, and laundry,

and provide me with all the native food I can use. It strikes me as a

fair bargain, from my point of view, at least. It is understood that

they are not to bother me; unless there is work to do or they want to

see me they never set foot in the house.

"My greatest trouble has been to get some idea of regularity into their

heads. These people cannot understand why we prefer to eat our dinner

at the same hour every day. Where contact with the white man has not

changed their habits, they eat whenever they are hungry--at midnight or

at four in the morning, if they chance to be awake. Even here they

can't understand my feelings when dinner is an hour or two late."

The cousin of Apakura took away the remnants of a dish of raw fish and

brought us a platter heaped with roast breadfruit, taro, yams, and sweet

potatoes, served with a pitcher of _tai akari_--the sea water and

coconut sauce, worthy of a place on any table. It is only the

uncivilized white who turns up his nose at native food; the island's

vegetables are both wholesome and delicious, and cannot be cooked better

than in a Maori oven. A certain amount of European food is necessary to

health, but the sallow, provincial white man, who takes a sort of racial

pride in living on the contents of tins, need not be surprised that the

climate of the islands does not agree with him. It is the same type,

usually with no other cause for pride than the fact that he chanced to

be born white, whose voice is most frequently heard declaiming on the

subject of color. Everywhere in the islands, of course, the color line

exists--a subtle barrier between the races, not to be crossed with

impunity; but the better sort of white man is ready to admit that God,

who presumably made him, also made the native, and made of the

Polynesian a rather fine piece of work. Tari had stepped across with

eyes open, counting the cost, realizing all that he must relinquish. He

is not a man to make such a decision lightly; in his case the step meant

severing the last material tie with home, giving up forever the

Englishman's dreams of white children and an old age in the pleasant

English countryside. His children--if children came to him--would have

skins tinted by a hundred generations of hot sunlight, and look at him

with strange, dark eyes, liquid and shy--the eyes of an elder race,

begotten when the world was young. His old age would be spent on this

remote and forgotten bit of land, immensely isolated from the ancestral

background to which most men return at last. As the shadows gathered in

the evening of his life there would be long days of reading and

reflection--stretched in a steamer chair on this same veranda, while the

trade hummed through the palm tops and the sea rumbled softly on the

reef. At night, lying wakeful as old men do, in a hush broken only by

the murmur of a lonely sea, his thoughts would wander back--a little

sadly, as the thoughts of an old man must--along a hundred winding paths

of memory, through scenes wild and lovely, savage, stern, and gay.

Dimly out of the past would appear the faces of men and women--long

since dead and already only vaguely remembered--the companions of his

youth, once individually vibrant with the current of life, now moldering

alike in forgotten graves. They would be a strangely assorted company,

Tari's ghosts: men of all the races, scholars, soldiers, sportsmen,

skippers of trading vessels, pearl divers of the atolls, nurses of the

Red Cross, Englishwomen of his own station in life, dark-eyed daughters

of the islands, with shining hair and the beauty of sleek, wild

creatures--bewitching and soulless, half bold and half afraid. Whether

for good or ill, wisely or unwisely, as the case might be, no man could

say that Tari had not lived; I wondered what the verdict would be when,

in the days to come, he cast up the balance of his life....

Apakura ceased her plaiting and began to measure off the narrow braid,

delicately woven in a pattern of black and white, which would eventually

be sewn in spirals to make a hat--my hat, by the way, for it had been

promised to me weeks before. One fathom, two fathoms, three

fathoms--another two fathoms were needed, work for the odd moments of a

month. Some day--in an uncertain future and on a distant island,

perhaps--the cabin boy of a schooner would step ashore and present me

with a box containing this same hat, superbly new, decorated with a gay

puggree and lined with satin bearing my initials in silk. Meanwhile,

though I would have given much for a new hat, there was nothing to do

but wait. Like other things of native make, a hat cannot be bought with

money; the process of manufacture is too laborious to be other than a

matter of good will. Think of the work that goes into one of these

hats. First of all--far off in the mountains--the stalks of _aeho_

(_Erianthus floridulus_) must be gathered. These are split when

thoroughly dry, and the two halves scraped thin as paper before being

split again into tiny strips of fiber less than a sixteenth of an inch

wide. A certain amount of the _aeho_, depending on the pattern to be

woven, must now be dyed--usually black or in a shade of brown. From a

dozen to twenty of these strands--dyed and undyed--are plaited into the

flexible braid of which the hat is built up--a task requiring

extraordinary patience and skill. Such hats are made only for relatives

and close friends; if an unmarried girl gives one to a man the gift has

the same significance as the pair of earrings he would give in return.

When a native boy appears with a new and gorgeous hat, the origin of

which is veiled in doubt, village gossip hums until the truth is known;

even the classic sewing circle of New England can show no faster or more

efficient work than these artless brown women, standing knee deep in the

waters of some dashing stream, prattling, laughing, shattering the

reputations of absent sisters, as they pound and wring the soapy

clothes.

When dinner was over and Tari was filling his pipe in the living room I

took up the lamp for a glance at the titles on his shelves of books.

Side by side with the transactions of the Polynesian Society and the

modern works of S. Percy Smith and McMillan Brown, I found Mariner's

_Tonga_, Abraham Fornander's _Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origin

and Migration_, Lieut. William Bligh's _Voyage to the South Seas for the

Purpose of Conveying the Bread-fruit Tree to the West Indies, in His

Majesty's Ship the_ "Bounty," and the _Polynesian Researches_ of William

Ellis. I took down a volume of Ellis; Tari crossed the room to glance

over my shoulder at the quaint title page--it was evident that he loved

his books.

"Tahiti was the most interesting of all the islands," he said, as we sat

down, "and the best accounts of old Tahiti are those of Bligh and Ellis.

Bligh wrote from the standpoint of a worldly man and, though he was

unable to speak the language fluently and stopped only a few months on

the island, he has left an extraordinarily vivid and detailed picture of

the native life before European religion and trade began their work of

change. Ellis was a missionary of the finest sort--broad-minded as

religious men go, inspired by the purest of motives, a close and

sympathetic observer, and able to appreciate much of the beauty and

interest of the old life. If you believe that one branch of mankind is

justified in almost forcibly spreading its religion among the other

races, and that trade should follow the Bible, you will enjoy every page

of Ellis. His point of view concerning temporal matters is summed up in

this volume, at the end of a chapter on Hawaii. Here it is: 'Their

intercourse with foreigners has taught many of the chiefs to prefer a

bedstead to the ground, and a mattress to a mat; to sit on a chair, eat

at a table, use a knife and fork, etc. This we think advantageous, not

only to those who visit them for purposes of commerce, but to the

natives themselves, as it increases their wants, and consequently

stimulates to industry.' There you hear the voice of the mechanical

age, which began a hundred years ago and ended--I rather fancy--when we

fired the last shots of the war. Increase their wants, advertise, speed

up production--whatever the impalpable cost, make the way smooth for the

swift wheels of progress--those are the germs of a disease from which

the world may need another century to recover. But the change in these

islands was only the insignificant corollary of a greater change

throughout the world; Ellis and his kind were no more than the

inevitable instruments of a harsh Providence.

"Ellis's book was published in eighteen thirty-one. During the

eighty-nine years that have passed since that date we have seized the

islands and profited largely by them--as coaling stations, as naval

bases, as sources of valuable raw material, as markets for our surplus

manufactured goods. What have we done for the natives in return?

Instead of the industrious, piously happy, and increasing communities

foreseen by the missionaries as the result of their efforts, one finds a

depressed and dying people, robbed of their old beliefs and secretly

skeptical of the new. We who conduct our wars in so humane and

chivalrous a spirit have taught them to abolish human sacrifice and to

stop the savage fighting which horrified the first messengers of

Christianity, but, in the case of the islands of which Ellis wrote, the

benefits of civilization end here. Infanticide is now a punishable crime

and rarely practiced, but perhaps it is as well to have children and to

kill a certain number of them, as to be rendered sterile by imported

disease. After all, infanticide, repulsive though it may be, is only a

primitive form of the birth control which is making its appearance in

Europe and America, as the continents--the white man's islands--approach

the limit of population.

"As for true religious faith of the kind which the missionaries

sincerely hoped to instill, that plays in the life of the Kanaka a part

of about the same importance as in the life of the average white man.

Don't think I am cynical in saying this--I respect and envy men who

possess real faith; they are the ones by whom every great task is

accomplished. But the religion of the native is less than skin deep;

his observance of the Sabbath day a survival of the old _tapu_; his

churchgoing and singing of hymns--satisfying the social instinct, the

love of gossip, the desire to be seen in fine clothes--replace the

old-time dance, wrestling matches, and exhibitions of the _areoi_. You

have seen something of the outer islands, where the people are half

savage even to-day, still swayed by what we call heathen superstition.

Now consider Tahiti, where the people for more than a hundred years have

been subjected to exhortations of an intensity almost unparalleled. If

it is possible to inject our religion into their blood, it must have

been accomplished in Tahiti, but in my opinion the efforts of three

generations of missionaries have produced a result surprisingly small on

this island--the most civilized of the South Pacific--where heathen

superstition is far from dead to-day.

"Before the schooners took to Penrhyn Lagoon we used to spend the

hurricane season in Papeete; I never cared much for towns; I usually put

in the time wandering about the more remote districts. Civilization has

barely scratched the inner life of Tahiti. Men who wear trousers and go

to church by day would fear to sleep at night unless a lamp burned in

the house to repel the _varua ino_ and ghastly _tupapau_ of their

ancestors. If a girl falls ill the native doctor--a lineal descendant of

the heathen priest--is called in. 'What have you done during the past

week?' he asks.... 'You spoke harshly to that old woman? Ah, I knew

there was a cause!' He administers a remedy in the form of a certain

bath or a sprinkling with the water of a young coconut, and takes his

leave. If the girl recovers it is a remarkable instance of the doctor's

skill; if she dies it is proof that her offense was too grave to be

remedied. Perhaps a ghost walks and the native doctor is again

consulted. 'It is your wife who comes to trouble you at night? How was

she buried?' Eventually the grave is opened and the body found to be

lying face down; when turned on her back and again covered with earth

the lady is content, and ceases her disreputable prowlings.

"I am not convinced that all of these things are absurdity.... I told

you, when we were on the schooner, about some of my curious experiences

in this group. There are happenings fully as strange on Tahiti and

Moorea. You must have heard of what the natives call _varua ino_--a

vague variety of devil, a sort of earth spirit, quite unhuman and

intensely malignant. The people are not fond of discussing this

subject, and their beliefs have become so tangled that it is impossible

to get a straightforward story, but as nearly as I can make out, numbers

of these _varua ino_ are thought to lie in wait wherever a man or woman

is dying, struggling fiercely with one another in their effort to catch

and devour the departing human soul. If the spirit makes its escape the

first time the ravening watchers do not give up hope, but linger about

the body, to which the soul is apt to return from time to time during

the day or two following death. The human soul, at this stage, is

considered nearly as malignant and dangerous as the _varua ino_--you can

see what a garbled business it is. Sometimes an earth spirit enters the

corrupted body and walks abroad at night. On one subject the natives

all agree: the struggles of the preying spirits and the human soul are

apt to be marked by splashes and pools of blood--whose blood I have

never learned to my satisfaction.

"A friend of mine--an educated and skeptical Englishman, in whose word I

have the utmost confidence--was the witness of one of these

blood-splashing affairs. He lived on Moorea, just across from Tahiti;

Haapiti was the village, I think. One afternoon he whistled to his fox

terrier and strolled to a near-by house, where the body of a native (an

old fellow he had liked) lay in state, surrounded by mourning relatives.

As he stood on the veranda the dog began to growl furiously, and at the

same moment the oldest man present--a sort of doctor and authority on

spiritual matters--shouted out suddenly that everyone must leave the

house. The native explained afterward that he had caught a glimpse of

something like a small comet--a shapeless and luminous body, trailing a

fiery tail--rushing horizontally toward the rear of the building. The

people gathered outside in a bit of a panic; the fox terrier seemed to

have gone mad on the porch--alternately cowing and leaping forward with

frenzied growls toward some invisible thing. All at once there was a

great racket of overturned furniture inside the house, and next moment

the Englishman saw gouts of what looked like blood splashing over the

outer wall and the floor of the veranda. The dog was covered--it was a

week before his coat was clean. The net result of the affair was that

the veranda needed a cleaning, a couple of tables were overturned, and

the body of the old man considerably disturbed; but its most curious

feature is the fact that my friend--suspecting native trickery and the

desire to impress a white man--took a specimen of the blood across to

Papeete, where he got the hospital people to examine it. It was human

blood beyond a doubt. What do you make of that?

"The other evening, when I was having a yarn with Apakura, she told me

about another kind of _varua ino_, who figures as the villain in the

tale of a Polynesian Cinderella. It may interest you. A great many

years ago, on Ahu Ahu, there was a man named Tautu--one of Apakura's

family--a renowned fighting man, who dabbled in sorcery when there were

no wars to be fought. Tall, handsome, and famous, it was no wonder that

Tautu was pursued by all the island girls--scheming sisters, in

particular, who went so far as to build a hut near where he lived.

Hoping to catch the eye of the hero, they took their finest ornaments

and robes of tapa and went to live in the hut, accompanied by their

little sister, Titiara, who was to act as a drudge about the house.

Young Titiara had no designs on Tautu, and she possessed no finery to

make herself beautiful in his eyes, but one day, when she was gathering

wood in the bush, he chanced to pass. Stopping to speak with her, he was

struck with her goodness and beauty, and from that time the two met

every day in the forest. The older sisters, meanwhile, were the victims

of a mischievous earth spirit which haunted the vicinity and visited

them in the guise of Tautu. They were triumphant--when it was known

that they had won the warrior's favors all their friends would be wild

with jealousy; they could not resist preening themselves before their

little sister. 'Tautu loves us,' they told her; 'he comes every day

when you are off gathering wood.' 'But that is impossible,' said

Titiara, 'for Tautu is my lover; he meets me each day in the forest.'

The older girls laughed scornfully at this, but Titiara said no more

until she met her lover in the evening. When she told him what her

sisters had said, he laughed. 'It is a _varua ino_,' he informed her,

'a mischievous spirit whose true appearance is that of a hideous old

man. To-morrow I will prove to your sisters that it is not I who visit

them.' That night Tautu sat up late, weaving a magic net of hibiscus

bark--a net which had the property of causing a spirit to assume its

true shape. Next afternoon Tautu and Titiara stole up to the house

where the spirit, in the form of a splendid warrior, was talking and

laughing with the two sisters. Tautu cast the net; next moment the

spirit was howling and struggling in the magic meshes, unable to escape,

moaning as it shriveled and changed to the appearance of an old man,

gray-bearded, trembling, and hideous. The two sisters shrank back in

loathing and mortification, while Tautu told them that he had chosen

Titiara to be his wife."

As he finished his story Tari rose, crossed the room to a bookshelf, and

returned to hand me a volume bound in worn yellow leather.

"I'm going to turn in now," he remarked; "we'll go fishing in the

morning if you will plan to stop over. Take this to your room if you

are not sleepy; it is worth running over--Bligh's account of the voyage

of the _Bounty_, published at Dublin in seventeen ninety-two."

Propped up in bed, with a lamp burning on the table beside me, I opened

Bligh's quaint and earnest account of his voyage. The mutiny, the

commander's passage in an open boat from Tonga to Timor, and the

settlement of the mutineers on Pitcairn Island have been made familiar

by a voluminous and sentimental literature, but I had never before come

across the story of Bligh's residence among the natives of Tahiti, one

hundred and thirty-two years ago.

More than any other Eastern island, perhaps, Tahiti was the cradle of

the oceanic race; called the Lap of God by Kamapiikai, the fabled

Hawaiian voyager, who discovered, in the southern group, the fountain of

eternal youth. Knowing something of the island as it is to-day, I had

listened with interest when Tari remarked, "Civilization has barely

scratched the inner life of Tahiti." Bligh was a close observer,

blessed with insight and a pleasant sense of humor; at the time of his

visit the people were untouched by European influence. It is

interesting to check his observations against what any traveler may see

nowadays--to judge for oneself how deeply the civilization of Europe has

been able to modify the peculiarities of Polynesian character.

The family of Pomare, of which the chief Tu (called Otoo by Cook, Tinah

by Bligh) was the founder, owed its rise to power largely to the

friendship of the English. Bligh often entertained Tinah and his wife,

Iddeah, on board the _Bounty_--they must have been amusing parties.

"Tinah was fed by one of his attendants, who sat by him for that purpose

... and I must do him the justice to say he kept his attendant

constantly employed: there was, indeed, little reason to complain of

want of appetite in any of my guests. As the women are not allowed to

eat in presence of the men, Iddeah dined with some of her companions

about an hour afterward, in private, except that her husband, Tinah,

favored them with his company and seemed to have entirely forgotten that

he had already dined." In his rambles about the island Bligh noticed

precisely what strikes one to-day: "In any house that we wished to enter

we always experienced a kind reception and without officiousness. The

Otaheiteans have the most perfect easiness of manners, equally free from

forwardness and formality. When they offer refreshments, if they are

not accepted, they do not think of offering them the second time; for

they have not the least idea of that ceremonious kind of refusal which

expects a second invitation." Bligh was not deceived, like the French

philosophers who read Bougainville's account of Tahiti, and rhapsodized

about the beauty of a life free from all restraint; he remarked the

deep-rooted system of class inherent in the island race, a system of

which the outward marks are gone, but which is far from dead to-day.

"Among people so free from ostentation as the Otaheiteans, and whose

manners are so simple and natural, the strictness with which the

punctilios of rank are observed is surprising. I know not if any

action, however meritorious, can elevate a man above the class in which

he was born, unless he were to acquire sufficient power to confer

dignity on himself. If any woman of the inferior classes has a child by

an Earee it is not suffered to live."

Bligh's observations on the gay and humorous character of the people and

their extraordinary levity might have been written yesterday. "Some of

my constant visitors had observed that we always drank His Majesty's

health as soon as the cloth was removed; but they were by this time

become so fond of wine that they would frequently remind me of the

health in the middle of dinner by calling out, 'King George Earee no

Brittanee'; and would banter me if the glass was not filled to the brim.

Nothing could exceed the mirth and jollity of these people when they met

on board." One day Tinah told Bligh of an island "to the eastward of

Otaheite four or five days' sail, and that there were large animals upon

it with eight legs. The truth of this account he very strenuously

insisted upon and wished me to go thither with him. I was at a loss to

know whether or not Tinah himself gave credit to this whimsical and

fabulous account; for though they have credulity sufficient to believe

anything, however improbable, they are at the same time so much addicted

to that species of wit which we call humbug that it is frequently

difficult to distinguish whether they are in jest or in earnest." On

another occasion, while walking near a place of burial, Bligh was

"surprised by a sudden outcry of grief. As I expressed a desire to see

the distressed person, Tinah took me to the place, where I found a

number of women, one of whom was the mother of a young female child that

lay dead. On seeing us their mourning not only immediately ceased, but,

to my astonishment, they all burst into an immoderate fit of laughter,

and, while we remained, appeared much diverted at our visit. I told

Tinah the woman had no sorrow for her child, otherwise her grief would

not have so easily subsided, on which he jocosely told her to cry again:

they did not, however, resume their mourning in our presence. This

strange behavior would incline us to think them hard-hearted and

unfeeling did we not know that they are fond parents and, in general,

very affectionate: it is therefore to be ascribed to their extreme

levity of disposition; and it is probable that death does not appear to

them with so many terrors as it does to people of a more serious cast."

When the surgeon of the _Bounty_ died and was buried ashore "some of the

chiefs were very inquisitive about what was to be done with the

surgeon's cabin, on account of apparitions. They said when a man died

in Otaheite and was carried to the Tupapow that as soon as night came he

was surrounded by spirits, and if any person went there by himself they

would devour him: therefore they said that not less than two people

together should go into the surgeon's cabin for some time." I thought

of Tari and his tales of the _varuo ino_ ... four generations of schools

and churches have failed to work a metamorphosis.

I read on till drowsiness overcame me and the pages blurred before my

eyes. It was late and the night was very calm; a vagrant night breeze,

wandering down from the mountains, rustled gently among the fronds of

the old palms around the house. When the rustling ceased--so faint as

to be almost inaudible--I could hear the far-off whisper of the sea.

The world about me was asleep; I roused myself with an effort, adjusted

the mosquito net, and blew out the lamp.

[Illustration: Chapter XIII tailpiece]

*CHAPTER XIV*

*In the Valley of Vaitia*

It is not easy to analyze the magic which cozens every traveler into

believing that he is the first to see Tahiti with clear eyes--one feels

that it is made up of nature in a mood of unearthly loveliness; of a

sense of ancient and unalterable life; of a realization that strange

beliefs persist under a semblance of Christianity; of the lure of a race

whose confidence the white man can never fully gain. The mail steamers,

the wireless, the traders, the scattering of French officials--these

things are a mere play of shadows on the surface. Even the churches, I

was tempted to say; but the church plays more than a shadowy part in the

life of the native, whose religion, at the present day, is a singular

blending of Christian doctrine and old heathen belief. The Tahitian

reads his Bible (he has no other book) and sings loudly every Sunday in

church; but the dead are still things of horror in his mind;

sorcerers--masquerading as doctors--still carry on a brisk trade; and

Tautau, the Great-headed, is still a living presence in the valley of

Punaruu.

When the people of the Society Islands accepted Christianity a century

ago they did so with reservations of which the missionaries, perhaps,

were not aware. Here and there, as at Faatoai on Moorea, there was a

burning of idols, but a great mass of material--old gods and heathen

weapons--was stored in secure hiding places among the hills. To-day,

after three generations of increasing European influence, hundreds of

natives know of these caves and repair to them for purposes of their

own, yet a white man might spend his life on Tahiti without a glimpse of

a cinnet-bound orooro or a slender ironwood spear.

My friend Airima is typical. The widow of a Yankee skipper, the owner

of a neat wooden villa in Papeete, where she appears regularly, on her

way to church, in shoes, stockings, and a black-silk gown, she finds it

necessary, from time to time, to cast off the unnatural manners of

Europe and live as she was meant to live; to be herself, an elderly and

delightful savage. When the mood comes she closes the villa in Papeete,

gathers the willing members of her family, and repairs to her native

house, far off on the peninsula of Taiarapu.

The house of Airima stands on the river bank, shaded by a pair of mango

trees, dark green and immemorially old. The roof is thatched with

braided fronds of coconut; breezes play through the lofty single room,

bare of furniture and floored with mats spread on white coral gravel,

leveled and packed. Past the veranda, on which the family sleeps

through the warm hours of the day, the river flows out gently to the

sea; a broad, still water, deep and glassy clear, peopled with darting

shoals of fish--mullet, young pampano, and _nato_, the trout of the

South Seas. Opposite the river mouth the reef is broken by a pass,

through which the steady lines of combers sweep in to crash and tumble

on the bar. Morning and afternoon the breakers are alive with naked

children, shouting and glistening brown in the sunlight as they ride the

waves.

Inland, the valley marking the river's course is lost in a maze of

broken and fantastic peaks; seaward, bordering the green and blue of the

lagoon, the snowy line of the reef stretches off endlessly; and beyond a

three-league expanse of bright sea the headlands of Tahiti Nui rise in

vast, swelling curves, up and up to the perpetual clouds which veil the

heights. Under a bright sun at midday, when the palm tops toss to the

trade which paints the lagoon--in the deep passes and over the patches

of sandy bottom--with ruffled sapphire and emerald, and sets the

whitecaps to dancing beyond the reef, or in the calm of night, with the

moon hanging low over pinnacles of basalt--when the polished surface of

the lagoon is broken by the plunge and swirl of heavy fish, and native

songs, rising and falling in savage cadences, float out across the

water--it is a place not easily forgotten.

It was still dark when we rose--Maruae and I; the brothers of Maruae had

returned from the reef, and the ovens behind the cook house were

smoking, for in these places the hour of the day's first meal is set by

the return of the fishermen. I took one shuddering plunge into the

river, dressed myself in a shirt, a waistcloth, and a pair of hobnailed

boots, and squatted with the rest to consume a fresh-caught mackerel and

a section of breadfruit, dipped in the common bowl of sauce.

Maruae sucked his fingers and stood up, calling to the dogs. Airima

glanced at me over the back of a large fish she was gnawing, holding it

with both hands. "Go, you two," she said. "You stay," replied Maruae,

as he turned to take the path to the mountains. The oceanic tongue

possesses no other words of parting.

We followed the river across the flatlands of the coast. Dawn was

flushing in the east; the profile of lofty ridges, fern clad and

incredibly serrated, grew sharp against the sky. The mynahs were

awakening; from the thick foliage of orange and mango trees came their

extraordinary morning chorus--a thousand voices, whistling, screaming,

and chattering that it was time the assembly broke up for the foraging

of another day. In one place, where a turn of the path brought us

suddenly to the edge of a still reach of water, a pair of native ducks

(_Anas superciliosa_) rose vertically on beating wings and sped off over

the palm tops. A little farther on, where volcanic bowlders began to

appear through the alluvial soil and the river leaped and foamed over

the first rapids, a family of Tahitian jungle fowl, led by a splendid

burnished cock, sprang out of the grass and streamed away, in easy,

rapid flight, toward the hills. The dogs bounded forward and stopped,

whining as they watched the wild chickens dwindle to speeding dots.

The groves of coconut palms and open pasture land were behind us now;

the valley was narrowing, hemmed in by thousand-foot cliffs to which a

tangle of vegetation clung. The river had become a torrent, boiling and

waist deep--plunging over cataracts, roaring down dark rapids under a

roof of matted trees: giant hibiscus a yard through, too remote to tempt

the ax of the canoe builder; candle nut, Barringtonia, and mape, the

island chestnut, with boles like fluted columns of a temple. The trail

wound back and forth, across the river, over the trunks of fallen trees,

around masses of rock tumbled from the cliffs above, mounting higher and

higher into the heart of the island. Once, as we stopped to rest, I

looked back and caught a glimpse of the sea--a wedge of blue, far behind

us and below. The dogs had begun to range ahead, for they knew that any

moment we might start a sounder of wild pig. I was growing tired--it

was not easy to follow Maruae at his own gait. He walked with the

rapid, springy tread of a mountain man; when he stooped to clear a

low-branching limb or lopped off a section of creeper with an easy swing

of his machete I admired the play of muscles on his back, rippling

powerfully under the smooth, brown skin. Silken and unblemished--unless

it be by scars--the skin of these people is not like ours, but softer

and closer in texture; seeming, like marble, to glimmer with reflected

light.

The gorge grew narrower; we rounded a buttress of jointed basalt and

came suddenly into the light and open of a lonely valley. A quarter of

a mile wide and twice as long, set high above the sea, and hemmed in by

untrodden ridges, it lay here uninhabited and forgotten, in a silence

broken only by the roar of savage cataracts and the far-off bellowing of

wild bulls. Yet man had been here. Along the base of the cliffs we

found the terraced stone of his dwellings, the blocks of volcanic rock

pried apart by the roots of huge old trees.

Maruae was squatting on his heels beside me, contemplating in silence

these relics of an older time. Finally he turned his head. "Those

stones are very old," he remarked; "they have been here always, since

the beginning. Men placed them there and men slept on them, but not the

men of my people." My thoughts dwelt on the old idle tales I had

heard--of the Lizard men, of the dark-skinned aborigines, the Manahune,

said to have been in possession of the land when the eyes of Polynesian

voyagers first rested on cloudy Orofena. There were other tales, too,

of a later day; of a tribe of men dwelling in the valleys, neither

tasting fish nor setting foot on the beach except when, at certain

intervals, they were permitted to come down to worship by the sea. Even

to-day it needs no effort of the imagination to see two distinct types

among the island people: men and women of the kind one considers

typically Polynesian--tall, clean limbed, and light brown, with clear,

dark eyes, straight or waving hair, and heads not differing greatly from

the heads of Europeans; and another kind, of a negroid or Melanesian

cast--short, squat, and many shades darker in complexion, thick-lipped

and apish, with muddy eyes, kinky hair, and flattened, undeveloped

heads. And, strangely enough, after more than a century of missions and

leveling foreign influence, the dark and awkward people seem still to

fill the humbler walks of life--they are the servants and dependents,

the feeders of pigs, the carriers of wood and water. Great stature,

physical beauty, and light complexion are still the hall marks of

aristocratic birth. Writing of the islands a hundred years ago, old

Ellis, the often-quoted, closest observer of them all, remarked: "It is

a singular fact in the physiology of the inhabitants of this part of the

world that the chiefs, and persons of hereditary rank and influence of

the islands, are, almost without exception, as much superior to the

peasantry or common people in stateliness, dignified deportment, and

physical strength as they are in rank and circumstances, although they

are not elected to their station on account of their personal

endowments, but derive their rank and elevation from their ancestry.

This is the case with most of the groups of the Pacific, but peculiarly

so in Tahiti and the adjacent isles. The father of the late king was

six feet four inches high; Pomare was six feet two. The present king of

Raiatea is equally tall.... Their limbs are generally well formed, and

the whole figure is proportioned to their height, which renders the

difference between the rulers and their subjects so striking that

Bougainville and some others have supposed they were a distinct race,

the descendants of a superior people, who at a remote period had

conquered the aborigines and perpetuated their supremacy." There is a

curious inconsistency in the matter of complexion, for in the old days a

dark skin was considered the sign of a strong, warlike, and masterly

man. Ellis records an extract from an old song: "If dark be the

complexion of the mother, the son will sound the conch shell"; and yet,

on the same page, he observes that "the majority of the reigning family

in Raiatea are not darker than the inhabitants of some parts of southern

Europe."

While Maruae and I rested among the ruins of the ancient settlement the

dogs had been more usefully engaged. My musings were disturbed by a

sudden burst of squeals, punctuated by excited yelpings. Maruae sprang

to his feet, long knife in hand. It was only a small pig, a

sixty-pounder, but he was bursting fat, stuffed with Vi apples fallen

from the great tree under which he had been feeding. The dogs had him

by the ears when we arrived; a thrust of the machete put an end to his

short and idyllic life. I hung him from a branch and skinned him while

Maruae went off in search of _fei_. Presently he returned, carrying on

his shoulder a stout pole of hibiscus, from either end of which swung a

bunch of the mountain plantains, like huge, thick bananas, the size of

quart bottles and bright yellowish red. There was a clump of palms near

by, another sign, perhaps, of man's former occupation--the relics of

unnumbered vegetable generations; we had coconuts to drink, pork and

_fei_ were at hand, and plenty of fresh-water crayfish to be had in the

river. In the islands, the obtaining of food is always the signal for a

meal. Maruae beckoned to me and led the way to the river, where he

readjusted his waistcloth to leave a kind of apron hanging in front and

plunged up to his armpits in the still water. With the apron spread as a

trap for the darting crayfish, he moved slowly along the grassy and

overhanging bank of the stream, stopping every moment or so to hand a

struggling victim up to me. This little fresh-water lobster is one of

the most delicious shellfish in the world--of the same dimensions as the

French ecrivisse, and not unlike it in flavor. In fifteen minutes we

had enough, and the work of preparing our meal began.

I gathered wood and started a fire against a face of rock. Maruae cut a

section of giant bamboo, half filled it with water, threw in the

crayfish, and stood it beside the fire to boil. Our meal was genuinely

primitive; I had cigarettes, matches, and a paper of salt stowed in the

tuck of my _pareu_--excepting our knives, we had nothing else that the

rudest of savages might not have possessed. Turning up the earth with

his machete, my companion scraped out a shallow trench--a Maori oven.

He set a ring of stones about the edge, lined the inside with pebbles,

and filled the whole with coals from our camp-fire. While the coals

glowed, heating the earth and stones, he cut off a loin and hindquarter

of pork, wrapped the meat carefully in plantain leaves, and selected

half a dozen of the riper plantains for our meal. Finally, when the

oven was thoroughly hot, he scraped away the coals from the middle, laid

in the leaf-wrapped pork, surrounded by a ring of plantains, pushed the

hot stones close to the food, and covered the whole with a thick layer

of plantain leaves. We ate the crayfish--boiled to a bright

scarlet--while the balance of our meal was cooking. I added salt to the

boiled-down liquor in the bottom of the bamboo, and dipped in this

natural sauce. The first course whetted our appetites for the tender

meat and juicy plantains which soon came from the oven.

As we lay smoking after our meal I could see that Maruae had something

in his mind and was debating whether or not to speak. Finally he began,

cautiously and with an air of skeptical restraint at first, but with

more and more assurance as he saw that I listened seriously to his

story.

"The old people say," he remarked, pointing to the head of the valley,

where the cliffs narrowed to a deep crack through which the river

rushed, "that far up in this same valley, beyond the upper gorge you

see, a spirit dwells, one of the heathen spirits which are as old as the

land. You and I may not believe in these things, but it is good, when

the evenings are long, to listen to the stories of the old men. The

name of this spirit is Tefatu; some call him _varua ino_, saying that he

dogs the footsteps of the living and preys upon the souls of the newly

dead, but that is not true, for many times in the memory of my fathers

he has been known to aid those in perplexity or distress. The old men

believe that if a traveler, lost in these mountains at nightfall, calls

on Tefatu for succor, the spirit will appear before him in the likeness

of a pale, moving fire, and lead him in safety down to the sea. Once in

sight of the sea, the man must cry out in a loud voice, 'You have aided

me, Tefatu, and I am content; stop here and I will go on my way.' It is

not good to neglect these words of parting. Sometimes he is seen at

night, flying from ridge to ridge of the mountain--a great glowing head,

trailing a thin body of fire. Long ago, during the childhood of my

grandmother, Tefatu left this land for a space of years; men said that

he had flown to Hawaii, but now he is returned beyond a doubt. High up

among the cliffs I found the cave in which he sleeps by day.... These

eyes of mine have seen the Old Lord lying there among the whitened heads

of men--I looked and turned away quickly, for my stomach was cold with

fear.

"I cannot tell you clearly," Maruae went on, in answer to my obvious

question, "for I was greatly afraid. It seemed to me that he was a

figure of wood, longer and thinner than a man, black with age, covered

with carved patterns, and bound, in places, with close wrappings of

_nape_--the fine sennit my people have forgotten how to make. The place

was full of bones; scores of men had been slain and their bodies offered

there, as was the custom of our old kings. Once, not many years ago, a

wise man came here from the islands of Hawaii--an old man, bearded and

wearing spectacles. It was his work to write down the names of our

ancestors, and he spoke our tongue, though haltingly and with a strange

twist. He lived with us for a time and we grew fond of him, for he was

a simple man, who made us laugh with his jokes and was kind to the

children. One evening I told him how I had found the place of Tefatu.

As I spoke his eyes grew bright behind their windows of glass, and when

I had done he begged me, in great excitement, to lead him to the

cave--offering a hundred of your dollars if I could prove that I had

spoken true words. I was younger then, and in need of money, for I was

courting a girl. We went together into the mountains, but as we drew

near the place something within me made me hesitate and I grew afraid.

In the end I deceived that man who was my friend, telling him that I

could not find the way. He was indeed a wise man; another would have

mocked me for a liar and a teller of idle tales, but he only smiled,

looking at me kindly--he knew that my words were true and that I feared

to betray the sleeping place of the Old Lord."

Maruae rose to his feet with the sigh of a man who has eaten well and is

deprived of his rightful siesta. He shouldered his ponderous load of

_fei_--which I could scarcely raise from the ground--and led the way

toward the sea, while I followed, bearing the remnants of the pig. It

was noon when we reached the flatlands of the coast.

A quarter of a mile above the house of Airima we stopped to watch a

large canoe, loaded with a mound of seine, gliding up the river,

followed by a fleet of smaller craft. An old woman stood in the bow,

directing the proceedings with shrill volubility; she was the proprietor

of the net, a village character at once kindly and tyrannical--widow of

one chief and mother of another. As her canoe drew abreast of us she

gave the command to halt and spread the net. The river at this point is

almost without current, very still and clear; Maruae and I sat on the

high bank, too tired to do more than play the part of spectators.

They grounded the big canoe just below where we sat, putting one end of

the seine ashore and paddling slowly across the river while the net was

laid out in a deep, sagging curve downstream. One after another the

smaller canoes were beached, and the people, half naked and carrying

spears, ran along the bank to take to the water a few hundred yards

above. The river was alive with them, splashing and shouting as they

drove the fish toward the trap. Next moment the bright shoals began to

appear beneath us, the sunlight glinting on burnished sides as they

darted this way and that by hundreds, seeking a way of escape. A run of

mullet flashed downstream, saw the net, turned, and were headed back

toward the sea. A series of cries went up--"_Aue! Aue!_"--as fifty or

sixty of the beautiful silvery fish leaped the line of floats and dashed

away to safety. The old headwoman, dressed in a Mother Hubbard of

respectable black and a rather handsome hat, was swimming easily in

three fathoms of water; nothing escaped her watchful eye.

"_E ara!_" she shouted, angrily; "the best fish are getting away!

Hurry, you lazy ones--splash the water below the net, or we shall not

have a mullet left! Remember that when the haul is over he who has not

worked shall have no fish."

As the line of beaters drew near, the men in the big canoe paddled

upstream and across behind them, throwing out net as they went, until

the frightened fish and a score of swimmers were encircled. The two

ends of the seine were now close together on the bank, and half a dozen

men began to haul in with a will, their efforts causing the circle to

narrow slowly and steadily. Looking down from the high bank, one could

see children of ten or twelve, stark naked, and carrying tiny spears in

their hands, swimming like frogs a fathom deep in the clear water,

pursuing the darting fish. Now and then a youngster came to the surface

with a shrill cry of triumph, holding aloft the toy spear on which was

transfixed a six-inch fish. The people of the islands, as a rule, are

neither fast nor showy swimmers; one can see prettier swimming any

summer afternoon on the Long Island shore, but the Polynesian is at home

in the water in a way the white man can never match. I watched an old

woman, all of seventy and wearing a black blouse girded tightly to her

waist with a _pareu_, treading water at the lower end of the net, where

the fish were beginning to concentrate. She was as much at her ease as

though she had been lying on her veranda exchanging gossip with a

neighbor. Each time she thought the headwoman's eyes were turned away

she reached over the net, seized a fish, and stuffed it into her blouse,

until a flapping bulge hung down over her _pareu_. But old Tinomana's

eyes were sharp. "Enough," she cried, half laughing and half in anger,

"_aue, tera vahine e!_ Perhaps she thought to get a string of fish, too,

for that worthless son-in-law of hers!"

At length the seine lay in two great piles on the beach, and only a

bulging pocket, filled with a pulsating mass of silver, remained in the

river. Under the direction of Tinomana the fish were divided into

little piles, strung on bits of hibiscus bark, and apportioned among the

people, according to the size of their families and the amount of help

they had given in the haul. For herself she reserved a considerable

share, for her household was large, and as the owner of the net she was

entitled to a full half--more than she loaded into the big canoe.

It was early afternoon when we laid down our burdens in the cook house

and stripped for a swim. The others were awakening from their siesta; a

flock of brown children, all vaguely related to the family of Airima,

followed us to the river, carrying miniature surf boards. Next moment

they were in the water, splashing and shouting as they paddled

downstream toward where the surf broke on the bar. Tehinatu, the pretty

sister of Maruae, passed us with a rush and leaped feet first from the

high bank. She rose to the surface thirty yards away, shouting a

challenge to catch her before she could reach the opposite shore. Her

brother and I dove together, raced across the river, and had nearly

overtaken the girl when she went under like a grebe. I was no match for

her at this game; under water she could swim as fast as I, and was a

hundred times more at home. I gave up the pursuit and landed for a

sunning among the warm rocks of the point.

Out where the seas reared for the landward rush the black heads of

children appeared and disappeared; I could hear the joyous screams of

others, flattened on their boards and racing toward me, buried in flying

spray. The old woman I had seen helping herself to fish was coming down

the river, paddling an incredibly small canoe, laden with an enormous

bunch of bananas and four kerosene tins of water. She lived a mile down

the coast and, like many of her neighbors, braved the surf daily to

supply her house with fresh water from the river. The gunwale of her

canoe seemed to clear the water by no more than a couple of inches; I

watched with some anxiety, thinking of the feelings of an American

grandmother in the same situation.

She ceased to paddle at the river mouth and watched her chance, while

the frail dugout rose and fell in the wash of half a dozen big seas.

Then in a momentary lull she dug her paddle into the water. I sat up to

watch; a boy standing in the shallows near by shouted encouragement. At

first I thought that she had chosen her moment well. The canoe passed

the white water, topped a little wave without swamping, and was

seemingly out of danger; but suddenly a treacherous sea sprang up from

nowhere, rearing a tossing crest. It was too late to retreat--certain

disaster lay ahead. Stoically, without a sign of dismay, the paddler

held her craft bow on; the canoe rose wildly against the foaming wall,

seemed to hang for an instant almost vertically, and then canoe, cargo,

and old woman disappeared in the froth. The boy screamed in ecstasy as

he galloped through the shallows to lend a hand. The other children

ceased their play and soon the canoe and its recovered cargo were

brought ashore. They emptied the dugout and filled the tins with fresh

water; I heard the old woman laugh shrilly as she wrung her clothes on

the beach. Presently, coached by a dozen amused spectators, she made a

second attempt, and passed the surf without a wetting; when I saw her

last she was paddling off steadily to the west.

I was dozing among the rocks when a ringing whistle startled me and I

looked up to see a bird like a large sandpiper alight on the beach and

begin to feed, running briskly after the receding waves or springing

into the air for a short flight when threatened by a rush of water. It

was a wandering tattler, and no bird was ever better named. Solitary in

its habits, except in the breeding season, when it resorts to northern

lands so remote that its nest and eggs are still (I believe) unknown, it

travels south at the approach of winter, making lonely passages across

some of the widest stretches of ocean in the world ... to Hawaii, to the

Galapagos, to the Marquesas, and probably to the remote southern islands

of Polynesia. What obscure sense enables the migrating bird to follow

its course far out of sight of land? In France, I have flown side by

side with wild geese, heading steadily southward above a sea of clouds.

It seemed to me that--like the pilot of an airplane--they might guide

themselves, in a general way, by the sun, the stars, or the look of the

land below--an idea borne out by the fact that geese become lost and

confused in a fog. But in considering a bird like the carrier pigeon or

the tattler, all such theorizing comes to an end. No general sense of

north and south could guide the tattler to the lonely landfalls of the

South Pacific; his wanderings--like the migration of the golden plover,

or the instinct of the shearwater, which sends him unerringly, on the

darkest night of storm, to his individual burrow in the cliff's--must be

classed among the inexplicable mysteries of nature.

On the road which passes close to the house of Airima I found Tehinatu

in conversation with the driver of a Chinese cart. She was bargaining

for a watermelon; the Chinaman stood out for three francs--she offered

two. "Enough of talking," she said, firmly; "the melon is the best you

have, but it is green. I will give two francs."

"_A toru toata_," muttered the proprietor of the melon, indifferently.

("_Toata_" means a franc, but is obviously a corruption of quarter, for

the dollar passed current here long before the money of France.)

"Look at my clothes," pleaded the deceitful girl, changing her tactics

suddenly. "I am a poor woman who cannot afford to pay the prices you

expect from the chief. Come, dear _Tinito_, give me the melon for two

francs."

The Chinaman shrugged his shoulders and glanced at me. The glint in his

narrow eye might have meant, "Ah, these women--what's the use!" He

sighed; for a moment, while Tehinatu looked at him pleadingly, he was

silent.

"Take the melon," he said, "and give me two francs; I must be on my way.

But do not think you have deceived me, cunning woman; I know that you

are not poor, for only yesterday your brother sold the copra from your

land."

Without a sign of embarrassment the girl opened her hand and held up a

hundred-franc note. "Ah, you are rich," remarked the Chinaman, as he

undid an oilcloth wallet and stripped the change from a substantial roll

of bills. "I knew it. Are you not ashamed to practice such deceit?"

But Tehinatu only tucked the melon under her arm with a triumphant

smile.

It is a curious study to watch the contact of Chinese and Polynesian,

races separated by the most profound of gulfs, yet possessing the

meeting ground of a common love of bargaining. All through the French

islands you will find Chinamen, scattered singly or in little

groups--through the windward and leeward Societies; the Marquesas; among

the distant atolls of the Paumotu; in the remote Gambiers; in Tupuai,

Rurutu, and lonely Rimatara. They are keepers of small stores, for the

most part, where you may see them interrupted at their eternal task of

copra making to exchange a box of matches for a single coconut or to

haggle for a quarter of an hour over a matter of five sous. Patient,

painstaking, and unobtrusive--existing in inconceivable squalor, without

the common pleasures which enable most of us to tolerate our lives--they

seem to be impelled by motives far more profound than the longing for

material gam, by a species of idealism equally incomprehensible to the

native and to the visitor of European race. It is not beyond

possibility that in the course of a few more generations it will be the

native islander who lingers here and there, isolated in communities

principally Chinese; for the islanders, superb physically, are the least

prolific of men, while the weedy little _Tinito_, who brings his own

women with him, or succeeds, with his own peculiar knack, in obtaining

women from a population which regards him with amused contempt,

surrounds himself with children in as short a time as nature allows. I

have sometimes thought that the secret of the Chinaman's dogged and

self-denying labors might lie here--traceable to his cult of ancestor

worship: to become a revered ancestor one must have children, and in

order to bring up properly a large family of children one must spend

one's life in unceasing toil.

I doubt that Europeans in large numbers will ever be tempted to make the

islands their home; the life is too alien, the change too great. As

things are, the relation of Polynesian and Chinese amounts to a subtle

contest for the land--a struggle of which both parties are aware. The

native, incapable of abstract thought, feels and resents it vaguely; to

the Chinaman, whose days are spent in meditation undisturbed by the

automatic labors of his body, the issue is no doubt clear cut. The

native is by far the more attractive of the two--clean, kindly, selfish,

jolly, childish, well bred, and pleasing to the eye; but the Chinaman

possesses the less attractive qualities which make for the survival of a

race--the industry, the unselfishness, the capacity to live for an

idea--and in the end, if only by force of numbers, he will win. Looking

into the future, one can see the Eastern islands populated by Chinese,

as our own islands of Hawaii have been peopled with immigrants from

Japan. "They are dying, anyway, and they won't work," the commercial

gentleman will tell you; "here is rich cane land, needing only labor to

produce bountifully--and the world needs sugar." Perhaps this view is

correct--for myself, I feel that the question is debatable. There are

certain parts of the world--like our American mountains, deserts, and

lonely stretches of coast--which seem planned for the spiritual

refreshment of mankind; places from which one carries away a new

serenity and the sense of a yearning for beauty satisfied. Ever since

the days of Cook the islands of the South Sea have charmed the white

man--explorers, naturalists, traders, and the rough crews of whaling

vessels; the strange beauty of these little lands, insignificant so far

as commercial exploitation is concerned, seems worthy of preservation.

And the native, paddling his outlandish canoe or lounging in picturesque

attitudes before his house, is indispensable to the scene. If the day

comes when his canoe lies rotting on the beach and his house is tenanted

by industrious Chinese--though the same jagged peaks rise against the

sky and the same sea thunders lazily along the reef--when the anchor

drops and the call comes to go ashore, I, for one, shall hesitate.

In the Cook group, six hundred miles west of Tahiti, the prospect is

less depressing, for the British have adopted a policy of exclusion and

made it impossible for the native to sell his land. The Cook-Islander,

reinforced here and there with a dash of white blood, and undiscouraged

by a competition he is not fitted to meet, seems to be holding his own.

The reason is clear--the native has been little tampered with, left in

possession of his land, and protected rigidly against epidemics like the

influenza of 1918, which ravaged the island populations wherever

infected vessels were permitted to touch. Imported disease,

exploitation of the land, and coolie immigration--these are the

destroying forces from which the native must be preserved if a shadow of

the old charm is to linger for the enjoyment of future generations of

travelers.

Following Tehinatu toward the house, I thought to myself how wonderfully

the island charm had been preserved here on the peninsula of Taiarapu.

We were within fifty miles of Papeete, where business is carried on, and

steamers call, and perspiring tourists walk briskly about the streets;

yet here, in this lonely settlement by the lagoon, civilization seemed

half a world away. When I walked abroad the sight of a white man

brought the people to their doors, and bands of children followed me,

staring and bright eyed, with interest.

On the veranda children surrounded us while the girl cut and distributed

thin slices of her melon. There is a fascination in watching these

youngsters, brought up without clothes and without restraint, in an

environment nearly as friendly as that of the original human pair. Once

they are weaned from their mothers' breasts--which often does not occur

until they have reached an age of two and a half or three--the children

of the islands are left practically to shift for themselves; there is

food in the house, a place to sleep, and a scrap of clothing if the

weather be cool--that is the extent of parental responsibility. The

child eats when it pleases, sleeps when and where it will, amuses itself

with no other resources than its own. As it grows older certain light

duties are expected of it--gathering fruit, lending a hand with fishing,

cleaning the ground about the house--but the command to work is casually

given and as casually obeyed. Punishment is scarcely known; yet under a

system which would ruin forever an American or English child the brown

youngster flourishes with astonishingly little friction--sweet tempered,

cheerful, never bored, and seldom quarrelsome. The small boy tugs at the

net or gathers bait for the fishermen, seemingly without a thought of

drudgery; the small girl tends her smaller sister in the spirit of

playing with a doll. Perhaps the restless and aggressive spirit which

makes discipline necessary in bringing up our own children is the very

quality that has made the white race master of the world; perhaps the

more hostile surroundings of civilization have made necessary the

enforcement of prohibitory laws.

I filled my pipe and lay smoking on a mat, with an eye on the youngsters

at their play. For the time being, a little girl, at the most

attractive period of childhood, was the center of interest. One of her

front teeth was loose; she had tied a bit of bark to it and was

summoning up courage for a determined pull. A boy stole up behind her,

reached over her shoulder, and gave the merciful jerk; next moment he

was dancing around her, waving the strip of bark to which the tooth was

still attached. The owner of the tooth began to sob, holding a hand

over her mouth, but her lamentations ceased when a larger boy shouted,

seriously, "Give her the tooth and let her speak to the rat!" The small

girl trotted to the edge of the bush, where I heard her repeat a brief

invocation before she flung the tooth into a thicket of hibiscus. I

knew what she was saying, for I had made inquiries concerning this

children's custom--probably as old as it is quaint. It is a sort of

exchange; the baby tooth is thrown among the bushes and the rat is

invoked to replace it with one as white and durable as his own. The

child says:

"Thy tooth, thy tooth, O rat, give to the man;

The tooth, the tooth of the man, I give to the rat."

No doubt the games of children everywhere are very much the same; in the

islands, at any rate, an American child would soon find itself at home.

The boys walk on stilts, play tag, blindman's buff, prisoner's base, and

a game called _Pere Pana_, like what we called Pewee when I was a

youngster in California--almost exactly as these things are done at

home. The girls play cat's cradle, hopscotch, jackstones, and

jackstraws--often joining in the rougher games of their brothers. One

curious game, evidently modern, and perhaps originated by the children

of missionaries, is called _Pere Puaa Taehae_ (the Game of the Wild

Beast). The boys and girls, who pretend to be sheep, stand in line one

behind the other, clinging together under the protection of the mother

ewe at the head of the line. Presently the wild beast appears, demanding

a victim to eat. "You are the wild beast?" the sheep ask. "Yes," he

replies, "and I want a male sheep." He then waits while the sheep--in

whispers inaudible to him--decide on which boy (for the beast has his

choice of sexes) shall be sacrificed. When the decision is made the

mother at the head of the line says, "You want a male sheep?" At that,

all the others chant in unison, "Then take off your hat, and take off

your clothes, and strike the hot iron." The last word is the signal for

the victim to make a dash for safety; if he can get behind the mother

before the wild beast catches him the performance is repeated until the

beast succeeds in catching another boy or girl, who then becomes the

_Puaa Taehae_.

The twelve-year-old daughter of Maruae--for Airima was a

great-grandmother, not an uncommon thing in this land of rapid

generations--had been talking for several days of piercing her ears in

order to install a pair of earrings to which she had fallen heir. This

evening she had finally mustered courage for the ordeal; I watched her

hesitating approach and saw her hand Tehinatu the necessary

instruments--a cork, a pair of scissors, and a brace of sharp orange

thorns from which the green bark had been carefully stripped. Whatever

her color, woman's endurance in the name of vanity is proverbial; the

child made no outcry as the thorn passed through the lobe of her ear,

sank into the cork, and was snipped off, inside and out, close to the

skin--the remaining section to be removed a fortnight later, when the

small wound had healed. As Tehinatu smiled at me and flourished the

scissors, to which clung a drop of blood, I heard a shrill call from the

cook house, "_Haere mai tamaa!_" It was supper time.

Some of the children, in answer to the call, straggled toward where

Airima squatted beside her oven; others, already stuffed with odds and

ends of fruit, went on with their play. Maruae beckoned to me as he

passed. The meal was a casual affair; one helped oneself without

ceremony, squatting to exchange conversation between bites, or walked

away, food in hand. There were pork, cold fish, baked taro, and

sections of cream-colored breadfruit, ripe and delicately cooked.

The sun had set when we finished, and as the sky gave promise of a clear

night I spread a mat on the river bank. Bedtime in these places comes

when drowsiness sets in; as I fell asleep the clouds veiling the

highlands of Tahiti Nui were still luminous in the afterglow.

It was midnight when I awoke. In the house, faintly illuminated by the

light of a turned-down lamp, the family of Airima slept. The air was

warm and scented with the perfume of exotic flowers. The river was like

a dark mirror reflecting the stars; even the Pacific seemed to sleep,

breathing gently in the sigh of little waves, dallying with the bar.

Presently I became aware of subdued voices--Airima and Tinomana, the

chief's mother, were seated on the rocks below me, fishing with long

rods of bamboo for the _faia_ which runs in with the night tide. They

were recalling the past, as old ladies will.

"The women of Tahiti," remarked Tinomana, "are not what they were when I

was young; nowadays you may travel from morning till night without

seeing a really beautiful girl."

"Those are true words," said Airima; "_Aue_, if you had seen my eldest

daughter, who died when she was fifteen! She was lovely as the

_itatae_, the white tern which hovers above the tree tops. Her eyes

were brown and laughing, her hair fell in ringlets to her knees, her

teeth were small white pearls, and her laughter like the sound of cool

water running in a shady place. Alas, my Vahinetua! She was our

first-born; my husband loved her as he loved none of the others. A

strange, dreamy child.... I used to watch her when she thought herself

alone. Sometimes, I know not why, the tears came to my eyes as I saw

her gazing into the sky while she chanted under her breath the little

old song the children sing to the tern:

"O Itatae, sailing above the still forest, where shall

you fly to-night?

Downwind across the sea to Tetiaroa, the low island ...

"As she grew older a wasting illness fell on her; the doctors could do

nothing to stop her coughing; my husband even took her to the white

doctor in Papeete--it was on his recommendation that we took her to sea.

We were in Mangareva, far off in the Gambier Islands, when I saw that

the end was near. My husband was not blind--he headed back for Tahiti

at once, giving up the rest of his trip. Vahinetua was never more

beautiful than on the last morning of her life--cheeks flushed and eyes

shining soft and clear as the first star of evening. We were nearly

home--off Maitea, the little island which lies between Tahiti and Anaa;

she died in my arms and I covered her with the bright patchwork

_tifaefae_ her own hands had sewn. 'Our child is dead,' I told the

captain, her father, as I came on deck. He said nothing, but put a hand

on my shoulder and pointed toward the masthead, where I saw a small

white tern hovering above us. I cannot tell you how, but I knew at once

the soul of my daughter was in that pretty bird. It flew with us all

day, and at evening, as we entered the harbor of Papeete, it turned back

and disappeared in the night. For many years thereafter, each time my

husband passed Maitea homeward bound, the white bird was waiting for him

at the place where my daughter had died...."

The voices of the old women murmured on, recalling the joys and sorrows

of other days. Suddenly, in a mango tree behind the house, a rooster

crowed, answered far and near by others of his kind. As the last

drawn-out cry died in the silence of the night I yielded to an

overpowering drowsiness and fell asleep.

*CHAPTER XV*

*Tahitian Tales*

The evening was very warm and still. The sea rumbled faintly on the

reef, half a mile offshore, and behind us--above the vague heights of

the interior--a full moon was rising. The palms were asleep after their

daily tussle with the trade--fronds drooping and motionless in

silhouette against the sky. We had spread mats on the grass close to the

beach; Tehinatu lay beside me, chin propped in her hands--she had been

bathing, and her dark hair, still damp, hung in a cloud about her face.

Her grandmother, Airima--the woman of Maupiti--sat facing us,

cross-legged in the position of her people. Now and then a fish leaped

in the lagoon; once, far down the beach, a ripe nut thudded to the

earth.

"If you two like," said old Airima, "I will tell you the story of my

ancestor, the Lizard Woman."

The girl smiled and raised her head in the little gesture which

corresponds to our nod. "That is a good tale," she declared, "and true,

for I am named after that Lizard Woman who died so many years ago."

The woman of Maupiti lit a match to dry a leaf of black tobacco over the

flame; when she had twisted it in a strip of pandanus and inhaled deeply

of the smoke, she spoke once more. Her voice was flexible and soft with

a sweet huskiness--an instrument to render the music of the old island

tongue--its cadences measured or rapid, falling or rising with the ebb

and flow of the tale.

"In the old days," Airima began, "so long ago that his name is now

forgotten, there was a king of Papenoo, a just man, successful in war

and beloved by his people. His wife was a daughter of Bora Bora--the

most beautiful woman of that island; she was the delight of his heart,

and they had many children. When she fell ill and died, a great sadness

came over the king; he could do nothing but brood over his loneliness.

In his dreams he saw the face of his wife; life was hateful to him; even

his children, shouting and playing about the house, grew hateful in his

eyes. A day came at last when he could endure the sight of them no

longer, and a plan to be rid of them took form in his mind.

"There had been a storm and he knew that the waves would be running high

at a place where there was a break in the reef. 'Come,' he said to the

women of his household, 'bring my children to swim--it will hearten me

to see them sporting in the surf.' But when they came to that beach and

the women saw the great waves thundering in through the pass, they were

afraid, for even a strong swimmer could not live in such a sea. Then

the king, whose hope was that his children might drown, bade them forget

their fears. One after another the young boys and girls went into the

sea and were swept out by the undertow--fearless and shouting. The

waves broke over them and at times they disappeared; the women began to

cover their faces, for they thought, 'Those pretty children, so dear to

us, are as good as dead.'

"Then the watchers saw a strange thing--a true thing, told me by my

grandfather, who had learned it from the lips of his ancestors. Beyond

the breaking of the surf, the children began to sport in the water,

diving and leaping higher and higher into the air. Their skins grew

black and glistened in the sunlight; their arms turned to fins and their

feet became like the tails of fish; the gods of those days had taken

pity on their innocence and made of them the first dolphins--the playful

children of the sea. And the king was glad, for he saw that his

children would not die, and he knew that they could no longer come to

his house to bring back bitter memories.

"As the years went on, the daughters of many chiefs were brought to the

king, but no woman found favor in his eyes; his heart was always heavy

and no man saw him laugh. Sometimes he walked alone in the mountains

where men do not go even to-day, for he feared nothing---neither the

ravening spirits of the dead, nor the Lizard People, who in those days

lived in the interior of the island. Fifty generations of men have

lived and died since our ancestors came to this island; they found the

Lizard People already in possession of the land. Ta 'a ta Moo, they

called them--half human, half lizard; able to climb among the cliffs

where no man could follow. The human warriors were more powerful in

battle, and as time went on the Lizard Folk were driven into the

fastnesses of the mountains. Now the last of them is dead, but if you

doubt that they once lived, go into the hills and you will see the

remains of their plantain gardens high above cliffs no human creature

could scale. My own people are traveling the same path--soon the last

of us will also be dead, and the white man will glance at the scattered

stones of our _maraes_ to make sure that once upon a time we lived.

"But I was telling you of the king. One day, as he wandered alone in

the mountains, a Lizard Woman was lying in the fern beside the trail--a

head woman of her people, skilled in magic and able to read the future.

This king was a tall man, very strong and handsome; as he passed without

looking down, she seized his foot gently. At that he looked down and

his heart swelled with love of her. He dwelt with her in the mountains,

and when at last he came down to the sea his people had given him up for

dead.

"In due time a son was born to that Lizard Woman--a strong and beautiful

boy, the image of the king his father; she reared him alone in the

mountains and grew to love him better than her life. But when she

looked into the future her tears fell. When the child was twelve years

old she led him to the mouth of her valley and talked long with him,

telling him what he was to do, before she turned away and went back to

her own place, weeping. Taking thought of her words, the boy went alone

to the village of the king. His dress was the skin of lizards.

"When he came to that Place he said to those about, 'Take me to the

king, my father.' But when they repeated his words, the king said, 'It

is false; I have no wife and no child.' Then the child sent back word

asking the king if he had forgotten walking one day in the mountains

many years before. With that the king remembered his love for the

Lizard Woman and bade his men bring the boy to him. And when he saw the

strong, fearless child and heard his people exclaim at the beauty of the

boy and the wondrous likeness to himself his heart softened and he said,

'This is indeed my son!'

"The years passed, and the heart of the Lizard Woman--sad and alone in

the mountains--grew ever more hungry for her son, until at length her

life became intolerable without sight of him. She stole down from the

hills by night and went softly about the village, weeping and lamenting

because her son was not to be seen; the people trembled at sight of her

in the moonlight and at the sound of her weeping, and the king feared

her, for he knew that she was powerful in magic, and thought that she

had come to take her son away. In his fear he took canoe with the young

man, and they went down the wind to Tetuaroa, the Low Island, where he

thought to be safe from her. But the Lizard Woman, by her magic, knew

where they had gone; she looked into the future and saw only sadness and

death for herself. What must be cannot be avoided. She leaped into the

sea and swam first to Raiatea, where she had lands and where the bones

of her ancestors lay in the _marae_. When she came to that shore she

knew that her death was near and that she would die by the hand of her

own son. Close by the beach she stopped to weep, and the place of her

weeping is still called Tai Nuu Iti (the Little Falling of Tears).

Farther on her path, she stopped again to weep still more bitterly, and

to this day the name of that place is Tai Nuu Rahi (the Great Falling of

Tears). When she had been to her _marae_, she plunged again into the

ocean and swam to Tetuaroa--in all the islands there was no swimmer like

her; because of his mother, her son was named Au Moana (Swimmer in the

Sea).

"The king and the king's son saw Tehinatu coming far off--for Tehinatu

was the name of that Lizard Woman--and they felt such fear that they

climbed to the top of a tall palm. Then, knowing the manner of her

death, she came out of the water--weeping all the while--and began to

climb the palm tree. The two men trembled with fear of her; they threw

down coconuts, hoping to strike her so that she would fall to the earth.

But though she was bruised and her eyes blinded with tears, she climbed

on until she was just beneath them, clinging to the trunk where the

first fronds begin to branch. She stopped to rest for a moment, and as

she clung to the palm, allowing her body to relax, her son hurled a

heavy nut which struck her on the breast. She made no outcry, but her

hands let go their hold and she fell far down to the earth. But the men

still trembled and were afraid to come down out of the tree, for she

struck in a swampy place and was long in dying; all afternoon she lay

there, weeping and lamenting, until at sunset the spirit left her body.

When she was dead, they took her to Raiatea and buried her in her

_marae_. After that the two men returned to Papenoo, and when the king

died the son of the Lizard Woman reigned long in his stead, these are

true words, for the blood of Swimmer in the Sea, born of the Lizard

Woman, flows in my veins."

Old Airima ceased to speak. From the coconut shell at her side she took

a lump of black native tobacco and began to tear off a leaf for a fresh

cigarette. Her granddaughter turned on one side--head resting on a

folded forearm--and looked at me.

"Aye, those are true words," she said; "for is my name not the same as

that of the Lizard Woman? During a thousand years, perhaps more--_mai

tahito mai_: since the beginning--the women of our family have been

called Tehinatu. You yourself, though we call you Tehari, have a real

name among us--Au Moana, after her son. These names belong to us; no

other family does well to use them."

The flare of a match illuminated for an instant the wrinkled and

aquiline face of Airima. As she tossed the glowing stick aside, the

moonlight smoothed away the lines; I was aware only of her black eyes,

wonderfully alive and young.

"Tell him of Poia," she suggested, "and the dead ones in robes of

flame."

"_Aue_," said the girl; "that is a strange tale, and it came about

because of a name." She sat up, shaking the hair back over her

shoulders.

"The woman who saw these things," she went on, "was another of our

ancestors. She was called Poia, a name her grandfather had given. She

lived at Tai Nuu Iti in Baiatea, where Tehinatu first stopped to weep.

"One day, in midafternoon, Poia was sitting in the house beside her

mother, busy with the weaving of a mat. All at once a darkness closed

in before her eyes and she felt the spirit struggling to leap from her

body. It was like the pangs of death, but at last her spirit was free

and with its eyes she saw her body lying as if in sleep, and perceived

that there were strangers in the house--two women and a man. The women

were very lovely, with flowers in their hair and robes of scarlet which

seemed to flicker like fire. They were Vahinetua and Vivitautua,

ancestors dead many years before, who loved Poia dearly. The man was

likewise dressed in flaming scarlet, and he wore a tall headdress of red

feathers. He was Tanetua, another of Poia's ancestors. The three had

come from the _marae_ to seek Poia, and they spoke to her kindly,

saying, 'Come with us, daughter.' And though she felt shame when she

looked down at her dull dress and disordered hair, she followed where

they led.

"They took her to the _marae_ of Tai Nuu Rahi, and there Poia saw a huge

woman waiting for them. The right side of that woman was white, and the

left side black; when she saw them coming she fell on her knees and

began to weep for joy. 'Is it you, Poia?' she cried. 'Then welcome!'

As Poia stood there, marveling, the stone of the _marae_ opened before

her like the door of a great house, and Vahinetua and Vivitautua said to

her, 'Go in.' The door gave on a chamber of stone--the floor was of

stone, and the ceiling and the walls. They passed through another door

into a second empty room of stone, and thence into a third, and there

Poia chanced to look down at herself. She had become lovely as the

others; her hair was dressed with flowers and her robe was scarlet,

seeming to flicker like fire. While she was looking at herself, no

longer ashamed, the two women said to her: 'You must stay here, for you

belong to us. We are angry with your grandfather because he called you

Poia. That is not all of your name--your true name is Tetuanui Poia

Terai Mateatea. That name belongs to us, and you must have it, for you

are our descendant and we love you.'

"She did not know that this was her name; she thought it was only Poia.

In spite of their kindness she was frightened and told them that she

wished to go home. They took her to the door of her house and left her

there; and she found herself lying with the half-woven mat in her

fingers. Her mother, who was sitting beside her, only said, 'You have

slept well.' But Poia, in fear and wonder at what she had seen, said

nothing to her mother, not even when the two went to bathe.

"The next day, in midafternoon, Poia again felt the darkness close in

before her eyes, the pangs of death as her spirit struggled and at last

escaped from the body. But this time she found herself gloriously

clothed and beautiful at once. All went as before until they came to

the third chamber of the _marae_; there were leaves spread on the floor

of that place as if for a feast, but the only food was purple flowers.

The others sat down and began to eat, and Poia attempted to do likewise,

but the taste of the flowers was bitter in her mouth. Again the two

women said, 'You belong to us; you must not be called Poia, but Tetuanui

Poia Terai Mateatea.' And they coaxed her to stay with them, but she

wept and said that she could not bear to be separated from her husband,

whom she loved. As before, they were kind to her and took her to her

house, where she awoke as if from sleep, and said nothing.

"It was the same the next day, but this time, when they had come to the

third chamber of the _marae_, Vehinetua and Vivitautua said: 'Now you

must no longer think of returning. You are ours and we wish you to stay

here with us.' Poia wept at their words, for she began to think of the

man she loved. 'I must go,' she said; 'if I had no husband I would

gladly remain with you here.' At last, when her tears had fallen for a

long time, the three dwellers in the _marae_ took her home; they bade

her farewell reluctantly, saying that next day she must come to them for

good.

"This time Poia awoke in great fear, and she told the story to her

mother when they went to bathe together. Her mother went straight to

the grandfather, to tell him what she had seen and ask him if her true

name was Poia, as he had said years before. Then the old man said that

he had done wrong, for the name was not only Poia, but Tetuanui Poia

Terai Mateatea, a name which belonged to Vahinetua and Tanetua and

Vivitautua. And these three came no more to get Poia; they were

content, for they loved her and wanted her to have their name."

As she finished her story, Tehinatu lay down once more, resting her head

on her grandmother's knee. My thoughts were wandering far away--across a

great ocean and a continent--to the quiet streets of New Bedford, set

with old houses in which the descendants of the whalers live out their

ordered lives. In all probability the girl beside me, Polynesian to the

core and glorying in a long line of ancestors whose outlandish names

fell musically from her lips--had cousins who lived on those quiet

streets; for she was the granddaughter of a New Bedford whaling captain,

the husband of Airima--a Puritan who ate once too often of the _fei_,

and lingered in the islands to turn trader and rear a family of

half-caste children, and finally to die. The story is an old one,

repeated over and over again in every group: the white cross; the

half-white children at the parting of the ways; their turning aside from

the stony path of the father's race to the pleasant ways of the mother.

And so in the end the strain of white, further diluted with each

succeeding generation, shows itself in nothing more than a name ...

seldom used and oftentimes forgotten. It is Nature at work, and she is

not always cruel.

"Is it the same with names in your land?" Airima was asking. "Are

certain names kept in a family throughout the years?"

"It is somewhat the same," I told her, "though we do not prize names so

highly. My father and grandfather and his father were all named

Charles, which you call Tehari."

"Among my people," she said, "the possession of a name means much. As

far back as our stories go, there has been a man named Maruae in each

generation of my father's family. Some of these Maruaes were strange

men. There was Maruae Taura Varua Ino, who fished with a bait of

coconut for the spirits of men drowned in the sea; and another was

Maruae Mata Tofa, who stole a famous shark--the adopted child of a man

of Fariipiti. That was a good shark; it lived in the lagoon, harming no

one, and every day the man and his wife called it to them with certain

secret words. But Maruae coveted the shark, and he prepared an

underwater cave in the coral before his house. Then, when the cave was

ready, he hid in the bushes on the shore of the lagoon while the man was

calling his shark, and in this way Maruae learned the secret words of

summons. When the man and his wife had gone, Maruae called out the

words; the shark appeared close inshore and followed him to the cave,

where it stayed, well content. And that night he taught it new words.

Next day the man and his wife called to their shark; and when it did not

come they suspected that Maruae had enticed it away. After that they

went to the house of Maruae and accused him of the theft; but he said:

'Give the call, if you think I have stolen your shark. I have a shark,

but it is not yours.' They called, but the shark did not come, for he

had taught it new words. Then Maruae called and the shark came at once,

so he said, 'See, it must be my shark, for it obeys me and not you.' As

he turned away to return to Fariipiti, the other man said, 'I think it

is my shark, but if it will obey you and no other, you may have it.'

"Some days later, a party of fishermen came to Maruae's cave, where the

shark lived. They baited a great hook and threw it into the water, and

as it sank into the cave they chanted a magic chant. Then the shark

seized the bait, and as they hauled him out they laughed with joy and

chanted, '_E matau maitai puru maumau e anave maitai maea i te rai_.'

This chant is something about a good hook and a good line, but the other

words are dead--what they mean no man knows to-day. That night there

was feasting in the houses of the fishermen, but next morning, when

Maruae went down to the sea and called his shark, nothing came, though

he stayed by the lagoon, calling, from morning till the sun had set.

After that he learned that his shark had been killed and eaten, and from

that day none of Maruae's undertakings prospered; finally he pined away

and died."

Tehinatu stirred and sat up, eyes shining in the moonlight. The subject

of sharks has for these people a fascination we do not understand, a

significance tinged with the supernatural.

"They did evil to kill that shark," she said, "for all sharks are not

bad. I remember the tale my mother told me of Viritoa, the long-haired

Paumotuan woman--wife of Maruae Ouma Ati. Her god was a shark. It was

many years ago, when the vessels of the white men were few in these

islands; Maruae shipped on a schooner going to New Zealand, taking his

wife with him, as was permitted in those days. That woman was not like

us; she understood ships and had no fear of the sea; as for swimming,

there were few like her. When she came here the women marveled at her

hair; it reached to her ankles, and she wore it coiled about her head in

two great braids, thick as a man's arm.

"The captain of that schooner was always drinking; most of the time he

lay stupefied in his bed. As they sailed to the south the sea grew

worse and worse, but the captain was too drunk to take notice. The men

of the crew were in great fear; they had no confidence in the mate, and

the seas were like mountain ridges all about them. The morning came

when Viritoa said to Maruae: 'Before nightfall this schooner will be at

the bottom of the sea; let us make ready. Rub yourself well with

coconut oil, and I will braid my hair and fasten it tightly about my

head.' Toward midday they were standing together by the shrouds when

Viritoa said, 'Quick, leap into the rigging!' That woman knew the ways

of the sea; next moment a great wave broke over the schooner. The decks

gave way, and most of the people--who were below--died the death of rats

at once, but Viritoa and her husband leaped into the sea before the

vessel went down.

"A day and a night they were swimming; there were times when Maruae

would have lost courage if Viritoa had not cheered him. 'Put your hands

on my shoulders,' she said, 'and rest; remember that I am a woman of the

Low Islands--we are as much at home in the sea as on land.' All the

while she was praying to the shark who was her god. The storm had

abated soon after the schooner went down; next day the sea was blue and

very calm. Presently, when the sun was high, Viritoa said to her

husband, 'I think my god will soon come to us; put your head beneath the

water and tell me what you see.' With a hand on her shoulder, he did as

she had told him, gazing long into the depths below. Finally he raised

his head, dripping, and when he had taken breath he spoke. 'I see

nothing,' he said; 'naught but the _miti hauriuri_--the blue salt

water.' She prayed a little to her god and told him to look again, and

the third time he raised his head, with fear and wonder on his face.

'Something is rising in the sea beneath us,' he said as his breath came

fast--'a great shark large as a ship and bright red like the mountain

plantain. My stomach is sick with fear.' 'Now I am content,' said the

Paumotuan woman, 'for that great red shark is my god. Have no

fear--either he will eat us and so end our misery, or he will carry us

safely to shore.' Next moment the shark rose beside them, like the hull

of a ship floating bottom up; the fin on his back stood tall as a man.

Then Viritoa and her husband swam to where he awaited them, and with the

last of their strength they clambered up his rough side and seated

themselves one on each side of the fin, to which they clung.

"For three days and three nights they sat on the back of the shark while

he swam steadily to the north-east. They might have died of thirst, but

when there were squalls of rain Viritoa unbound her hair and sucked the

water from one long braid, while Maruae drank from the other. At last,

in the first gray of dawn, they saw land--Mangaia, I think you call it.

The shark took them close to the reef; they sprang into the sea and the

little waves carried them ashore without a scratch. As they lay resting

on the reef the shark swam to and fro, close in, as though awaiting some

word from them. When she saw this, Viritoa stood up and cried out in a

loud voice: 'We are content--we owe our lives to thee. Now go, and we

shall stay here!' At those words the shark-god turned away and sank

into the sea; to the day of her death Viritoa never saw him again.

After that she and her husband walked to the village, where the people

of Manitia made them welcome; and after a few years they got passage on

a schooner back to Maruae's own land."

The soft voice of the girl died away--I heard only the murmur of the

reef. Masses of cloud were gathering about the peaks; above our heads,

the moon was sailing a clear sky, radiant and serene. The world was all

silver and gray and black--the quiet lagoon, the shadowy land, the palms

like inky lace against the moonlight. Tehinatu stifled a little yawn

and stretched out on the mat with the abrupt and careless manner of a

child. Her grandmother tossed away a burnt-down cigarette.

"It is late," said the woman of Maupiti, "and we we must rise at

daybreak. Now let us sleep."

*Becalmed at Pinaki*

[Illustration: Woodcut]

*CHAPTER XVI*

*Anchored off the Reef*

On the third day of the homeward voyage the wind died away, and in the

middle of the afternoon it fell dead calm when we were less than a mile

distant from the atoll of Pinaki. With the exception of a small group

of Papeete traders, I don't suppose there are a dozen white men who have

ever heard of the place; and those who have seen it or set foot upon it

must be fewer still. It lies toward the eastern extremity of the Low

Archipelago, and is one of four small atolls, all within a radius of

thirty miles of one another. On charts of that segment of the eastern

Pacific these four islands are barely discernible, and Pinaki, the least

of them, appears but little larger than the dot of the "i" in

Whitsunday, its English name.

The current carried us slowly along the north-westerly side of the

island. It was intensely hot. Teriaa, nephew of Miti, the skipper, was

sluicing the blistered deck, but the water steamed out of the scuppers,

and in a moment the planking was as dry and as hot to the touch as

before. He soon left off and took refuge in the whaleboat, which he

covered with a piece of canvas. I crawled in with him, but the

suffocating shade was less endurable than the full glare of the sun.

Tane, the other sailor, a man of fifty, was below. He had remained

there most of the time since our departure from Rutiaro, sleeping on a

greasy mat, indifferent to the cockroaches--the place was alive with

them by night--or the copra bugs, which were a nuisance at all hours.

The stench from the little cabin, filled almost to the ceiling with

unsacked copra, was terrible; and it was not much better on deck. I

took shelter beside Miti, who was sitting in the meager shade of the

mainsail. Presently, pointing casually toward the shore, he said: "You

see him? What he do there?"

I saw the man plainly enough, now that he was pointed out to me,

standing with his arms folded, leaning lightly against a tree. I was

limited to a hasty glance through my binoculars, for he was looking

toward us; but I saw that he was unmistakably white, although his skin

seemed as dark as that of a native. He was barefoot, naked to the waist,

and for a nether garment wore a pair of trousers chopped off at the

knee.

I, too, wondered what a white man could be doing on an uninhabited

island. Miti knew no more of the atoll than that it was or had formerly

been uninhabited. It belonged, he said, to the natives of Nukatavake,

which lay nine miles to the northwest. We could see this other atoll as

we rode to the light swell, a splotch of blue haze a nail's breadth

wide, vanishing and reappearing against the clear line of the horizon.

In two hours' time the current had carried us to the lee side of the

island. It ran swiftly there, but in a more northerly direction, so

that we were forced out of the main stream of it, and drifted gradually

into quiet water near the shore. An anchor was carried to the reef and

we brought up to within thirty yards of it. With another anchor out

forward, the schooner was safely berthed for the night.

I went ashore with the two sailors for a fresh supply of drinking

coconuts, but I gave no help in collecting them. A fire was going on

the lagoon beach, and there I found the solitary resident frying some

fish before a small hut built in the native fashion. He might have been

of any age between thirty-five and forty-five; was powerfully built,

with a body as finely proportioned as a Polynesian's. His voice was

pleasant and his manner cordial as he gave me welcome, but a pair of the

coldest blue eyes I have ever seen made me doubt the sincerity of it. I

felt the need of making apologies for the intrusion, adding, lamely, "I

haven't seen a white man in three months, and our skipper speaks very

little English."

"I was about to look you up," he said. "I can't say that I'm lonely

here. I manage to get along without much companionship. But to be

frank, I'm hungry for tobacco. There's none left at Nukatavake, and

I've been sucking an empty pipe since last November. You haven't a fill

in your pouch by any chance?"

I would have given something for his relish of the first pipeful, or the

fifth, for that matter. Finally he said: "I imagine you are in for

several days of Pinaki. You have noticed the sky? Not a sign of wind.

I can't offer you much in the way of food; but the fishing is good, and

if you care to you are welcome to stop ashore."

I accepted the invitation gladly; but as I walked back to the schooner

for a few belongings and some more tobacco I questioned the propriety of

my decision. My prospective host was an Englishman by his accent,

although, like my friend Crichton at Tanso, he was evidently long away

from home. He struck me as being a good deal of the Crichton type,

although he differed greatly from him outwardly. I remembered that

Crichton, too, had been pleasant and friendly, once the ice was broken

between us; but the prospect of an early parting and the certitude of

our never meeting again had been the basis for the friendship in so far

as he was concerned. This other Englishman was not living on an

uninhabited atoll because of a liking for companionship. I was debating

the matter of a return to shore when Tane crawled out of the cabin to

make preparations for supper, and as he was a sufferer from

elephantiasis, the sight of his immense swollen limbs and his greasy,

sweating body decided me. Papeete was far distant, and I would have

enough of Tane before we reached the end of the journey.

Supper was ready by the time I reached the hut. It consisted of fish

deliciously broiled, coconuts, and hard biscuit. Over it I gave my host

an account of my stay at Rutiaro and of the unsuccessful experiment in

solitude.

"Yes," he said, "they are rather too sociable, these natives. The

people of Nukatavake used to bother me a good deal when I first came

here. I thought nine miles of open sea would keep them away; but they

often came over in sailing canoes--a dozen or two at a time when the

wind favored; and they would stay until it shifted back into the

southeast. I didn't encourage them. In fact, I made it quite plain

that I preferred to be alone. The island is theirs, of course, and I

can't prevent them from coming during the copra-making season; but they

no longer come at other times. Nine months out of the year I have the

place to myself. But they are damnably inquisitive. I don't like

Kanakas in the aggregate, although I have one or two good friends among

them."

The dying fire lit us to bed about midnight. I lay awake for a long

time after my host was sleeping. We had talked for three hours, chiefly

about the islands. In fact, all that he told me of himself was that he

was fond of fishing.

There was not a hint of a breeze the next day, nor the next, nor the day

after that. The sea was almost as calm as the lagoon, and the _Potii

Ravarava_ lay motionless at anchor as though frozen in a sheet of clear

ice. Miti and the two sailors remained on board most of the time,

sleeping during the heat of the day under a piece of canvas rigged over

the main beam, and at night fishing over the side in dreamy contentment.

If they came ashore at all it was only for a few moments, and they never

crossed to the lagoon beach. During these three days I remained the

Englishman's guest, and although I was out of patience with myself for

my curiosity, it grew in spite of me. What under the sun was the man

doing here? Evidently he had not come to an atoll, as my friend

Crichton had, to do his writing and thinking undisturbed. Crichton had

books, a practical interest in planting, and a cultural interest in

Polynesian dialects. He would muse for hours over a word in one dialect

which might or might not bear a remote resemblance to some other word in

usage a thousand miles away. The study fascinated him. As he once told

me, it gave his imagination room to work in. I have no doubt that he

made up for himself stories of the early Polynesian migrations vastly

better than any romances he might have read. This other Englishman had

no books; not so much as a scrap of writing paper. At least I saw none

in his house, which was as bare as it was clean. There was a sleeping

mat in one corner; a chest and some fishing gear against the wall; picks

and shovels in a corner; a few old clothes hanging from nails driven

into the supports, and absolutely nothing else. How did he put in his

time? Fishing was a healthy interest, but it was not enough to keep a

man sane for a period of seven years. He let that bit of information

slip in one conversation I had with him.

He was not a taciturn chap. After our first evening he talked quite

freely about his earlier adventures. He had spent three years in

northern Australia, prospecting for gold, and he gave me an intensely

interesting account of the aborigines there--of their marvelous skill at

following a trail, no matter over what sort of country. I had heard

that these people were biologically different from the rest of humankind

and that their blood would not cross with white blood. This was not the

case, he said. He had known white men animal enough to take the

Australian blacks for wives, and had seen the children which they had by

them. From Australia he had gone to New Guinea, still prospecting for

gold, although at times he sought relief from the disappointment of it

by making expeditions with the natives in search of bird-of-paradise

feathers. But "gold" was the word that rang through all his talk.

Several times it was on the tip of my tongue to say, "But there's no

gold at Pinaki." I was able to resist the temptation, remembering his

remark about the damnable inquisitiveness of the people of Nukatavake.

Then, on the morning of my third day on the island, an incident occurred

which made the situation clear.

[Illustration: Chapter XVI tailpiece]

*CHAPTER XVII*

*The Englishman's Story*

I rose at dawn, but my host was out before me. He had left two fish

cleaned and ready for cooking on a plate outside the door. Having

breakfasted, I started on a walk around the atoll, which I estimated I

could accomplish in about an hour. I expected to meet the Englishman

somewhere on the way, and I did find him on the opposite side of the

lagoon. The shore was steep-to there. He had a steel-tipped rod in his

hand and was diving off a ledge of rock, remaining below for as long as

a full minute. He waved when he saw me, but kept on with his work. In

about a quarter of an hour he came over to where I was standing.

"Tiresome work," he said. "I need a blow." Then, "You see, I've been

doing a bit of digging here."

I had walked along the lagoon beach and had not noticed before the

series of trenches higher up the land. I should think he had been

digging! I inspected the ditches under his guidance. There were three

at least a quarter of a mile in length each and from three to four feet

deep. These ran in parallel lines and were about four paces apart.

Fifteen to twenty shorter trenches cut through them at right angles.

The sun was well above the horizon. We lit our pipes and sat down in

the shade. After a few moments of silence he said: "I suppose you know

what I'm doing here? If you have been in Papeete you must have heard.

There is no secret about it--at least not any longer."

I said that I had left Papeete shortly after my arrival. I had spent

several idle afternoons on the veranda of the Bougainville Club, but in

the talk which went around there I didn't remember having heard of

Pinaki.

"So much the better," he said. "Yes, seven years is a long time, and

I'm not keen about feeding gossip; but when I first came down here there

was a clacking of tongues from one end of the group to the other. I

believe I have since earned the reputation of being rather queer. I

thought you must know. The fact is I'm looking for treasure. Would you

care to hear the story?"

"Very much," I said, "if it won't bore you to tell it."

"On the contrary, it will be something of a relief. Seven years of

digging, with nothing to show for it, must strike an outsider as a mad

business. Sometimes I'm half persuaded that I am a complete fool to go

on with the search. But you can't possibly know the fascination of it.

It seems only yesterday that I came here. As you see for yourself, it's

not much of an island. And to know that there is a treasure of more

than three million pounds buried somewhere in this tiny circle of scrub

and palm--"

"But do you know it?" I asked.

"I'm as sure of it as that I am smoking your tobacco. That is, I am sure

it was buried here. Whether it has been removed since, I can't say, of

course. The natives at Nukatavake remember a white man whom they called

Luta, who came here about twenty years ago and remained for something

over a month. One of the four men who stole the gold and brought it to

Pinaki was a man named Luke Barrett, and it may have been he who came

back, although he was supposed to have been killed in Australia forty

years ago. It is the uncertainty which makes this such killing work at

times. But when I think of giving it up--you would have to live with

the thought of treasure for seven years, and to dream at night of

finding it, before you could understand." He rose suddenly. "If you

don't mind a short walk, I will show you something rather interesting."

We went along the lagoon beach for several hundred yards, then crossed

toward the ocean side. Near the center of the island we came upon an

immense block of coral broken from the reef and carried there by some

great storm of the past. Cut deeply into the face of the rock I saw a

curious design:

[Illustration: design]