CHAPTER IV

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HUNTING IN THE MARQUESAS

The French have never actually prohibited the carrying of arms in the Marquesas, as have the British in the Solomons; but the possession and use of guns has been so hedged about with restrictions as practically to accomplish the same purpose. This is about the way it goes: Coming to the islands with a gun, a permit must first be secured before it may be landed. This allows you to take it to your domicile but not to take it out again. If you would carry it with you on the street, a "Port des Armes" is required, which allows you, however, to fire it only in your own backyard, and when that sanctum is enclosed with a metre-high stone wall. If you desire to fire it anywhere else, a "Permit de Chasse" must be obtained. Finally, if you come to the conclusion that the possession of a gun in the Marquesas imposes too many burdens, and decide to dispose of it, a permit to sell is required; and if, later, you regret your action and want to get it back again, a permit to purchase will have to be taken out before the deal can be consummated. Each of these permits costs a good, stiff fee, and it is largely this which is responsible for the fact that the Marquesan native hunts today much after the fashion of ancient times—with his wits and his hands. A hunt of this kind comes nearer being real sport—that is, of giving the quarry as good a chance to take the hunter's life as the latter has to take that of the quarry—than any form of the chase since the days of the troglodytes, and lucky indeed may the white man esteem himself who is allowed to join one of them. I eliminated a good deal of the sporting element on both the occasions on which I went out by carrying, and using, a rifle or revolver, but as neither of these weapons—through no fault of mine, however—figured seriously in the final dÉnouements, I shall always tell myself that for once in my life at least, I have seen real hunting—hunting in which the hunter has a legitimate right to be proud of the game he brings to earth. But first something of a form of Marquesan hunting which—largely because the white man with his modern weapons enters into it—is as shameless as the old native "cave-man" method is admirable.

One may hunt wild cattle, wild boar and wild goats in the Marquesas, but the pursuit of the latter, however one goes at it, is not worthy of the name of sport. Unlike the mountain goat of the Cascades and the Canadian Rockies, the Marquesan animal of that name is neither hard to find nor hard to kill; so that if one goes out after him with an intelligent guide it is usually a matter of doing a lot of shooting at easy range and letting the natives gather up and bring in the meat. It is about comparable on the score of excitement to shooting seals in their rookeries or starving cariboo in the Arctic. Goat-hunting with beaters, as it is done in Nukahiva, cannot be complained of on the score of lacking excitement, but, on account of the unspeakable barbarity of its inevitable sequel, is not to be contemplated without a shudder, even when the drive is undertaken—as it often is—to exterminate animals that have been ravaging the village gardens.

I had heard in Hawaii that a goat-drive, next to a cannibal feast, was the greatest attraction the Marquesas had to offer, and one of the first inquiries I made after my "battery" had run the gauntlet of French officialdom was regarding the chances for arranging one. The Residente promised at once to lend aid in the form of all the prisoners in the island jail to act as beaters, saying that the goats had become very numerous and troublesome since the last drive and that he would be glad indeed of a chance to get rid of a few of them; but when I broached the subject to the trader, McGrath, who had already become our court of first and last instance in the filling up of the program for our Marquesan stay, he frowned and shook his head dubiously.

"If you're half the sportsman I take you for you would be sorry for it," he said. "You wouldn't engage in one of your California rabbit drives for sport, would you? No. Well, a Marquesan goat drive is just about like one of those—and then some. I'll have to tell you about the first one I took part in, I think, and then if you still feel that you want to go ahead we will see what can be done."

We drew out a couple of canvas deck chairs to a breeze-swept corner of the front veranda of Cramer's trading store, where McGrath, sipping now and then at the long glass of absinthe and water which is the approved drink in that corner of the Pacific, told his story.

"Up at the top of that cliff—it's a thousand feet in the sheer"—he began, pointing to a towering basaltic buttress that reared its black bulk abruptly from the northern loop of the bay, "there is a narrow but fairly level and open table-land. The opposite side drops down to Typee Inlet in the same way, and you will remember how it tapers off to a knife-edge at the outer point. The objective of every goat-drive is the open space upon that point, for from it there is no escape save across the narrow landward neck which is held by the beaters and hunters. There is another escape, if you want to call it that. Imagine an almost solid stream of white furry patches, five hundred feet wide, rushing out over the edge of that table-land there and falling down the face of the cliff like a cataract in flood; and then imagine—but I anticipate.

"The goats were particularly active when I first came to Nukahiva—I was a missionary then, and lived here in Taio-haie—and one night they brought their depredations to a climax by tramping down the thorn fence of the Residency garden and making a clean sweep of all the vegetables. How much of a luxury truck garden stuff is upon a tropical island unserved by steamers and totally lacking in cold storage facilities, only one who has lived under such conditions can appreciate. Probably you're beginning to come to some appreciation of it already. The Residente was, naturally, furious over his loss, and plans were set afoot that afternoon for a big drive to rid the immediate vicinity of as many as possible of the obnoxious animals. I didn't know what a Marquesan goat-drive was then, and readily consented to take part.

"On the morrow at daybreak, mustering between officials, soldiers, trading store employÉs and officers from schooners in the harbour, ten or a dozen mounted men, and between the "trusties" from the prison and other natives drawn in by the opportunity of obtaining fresh meat, fifty or sixty beaters, we set out in a long line that reached from sea to sea across the landward end of the peninsula.

"All morning we scared up the frightened animals and drove them on before us until, at noon, we had a herd that must have numbered some thousands cornered upon the open table-land at the extremity of the point. On three sides of the heaving mass of white the cliffs fell sheer to the sea for a thousand feet, while to landward escape was cut off by the hunt, its armed riders drawn up in front, and the beaters, now shoulder to shoulder, bringing up the rear in a solid double line.

"Twice the terrified band, led by a squad of patriarchal old 'billies,' charged down upon us in a wild break for freedom, only to fall back each time before the rain of bullets and the deafening roar from the hard-pumped repeaters and automatics. Even once more they massed and, blindly, desperately, madly, made their last rush to break our lines. Falling by scores, they still braved the rifle fire until the last gun was empty, broke through between the horsemen and, but for the close-packed ranks of the beaters, would have gained their freedom in thousands instead of a few scattered twos and threes.

"But the heavily-swung war clubs and the ear-splitting yells of the natives checked the force of the rush, and suddenly, as though simultaneously possessed of a common impulse, every one of the survivors turned, rushed to the edge of that great black cliff yonder, and went lunging off into space. For a few moments, rising above the dull roar of the surf against the base of the cliff, we heard the thud and splash of the bodies striking rocks and water, and then, save for the bleating of the wounded at our feet, all was quiet. Not a goat had faltered; not an unhurt animal remained on the plateau.

"For several long moments no one moved or spoke, but each, with his horse reined sharply in, glanced guiltily at the man on his left and on his right, and then let his eyes fall shamedly to the ground. Even the natives were awed and silent. Finally the Residente, shaking his heavy shoulders like one who would rid himself of the effects of a bad dream, dismounted, gave his horse to a native, and picked his way out to the edge of the cliff, the rest of us following suit. And then it was that we were given to see the full enormity of the thing which we had done, for the horror that had already befallen was only the preliminary of a still grimmer tragedy, for the final act of which the curtain was just being rung up.

"Lucky indeed—as luck went that day—were the goats that had been killed on the plateau or had mercifully plunged to instant death on the rocks. Many of the animals, due to their falls having been broken by striking the yielding mass formed by the bodies of their mates, were still alive, and for the hundreds of these that were floundering in the water a worse fate was reserved. The reek of blood which welled up from below, and the piteous bleats that assailed our ears, smote also on keener senses than our own, and at even our first glance there were revealed to us the black dorsals of countless lurking tiger sharks, cutting the water from every direction and converging in a deadly focus on the spot where the helpless little wisps of white were floating at their mercy. They came and came, and still kept coming, until it seemed that the whole Pacific was giving up the sharks of the ages gone by to join in the bloody carnival. The sea along the foreshore for hundreds of yards was literally alive with great brown-black forms that slashed and fought and piled upon one another in frantic fury, while the water, five minutes before us limpid as a woodland pool, was dyed to a deep crimson, and its foam-lines in the eddies frothed up a ghastly pink. I have surveyed the remains of several cannibal feasts since that sickening noontide at the brink of that great cliff, but never again have I known anything to approach the overpowering feeling of mingled horror, awe, disgust and regret that I then experienced."

McGrath straightened up with a long breath and gulped the last of his glass of absinthe and water.

"Thus my first goat-drive," he concluded; "and thus are the goat-drives of today. It's just as well you should know what they are beforehand, for, if you're anything like me, you would never forgive yourself for getting drawn into one. However, goat-driving doesn't exhaust the possibilities of Nukahiva by any means. I shall be able to arrange a pig hunt for tomorrow or next day without any trouble, I think, and, if there is any way of getting the natives keyed up to it, I will get them to take you out after a wild bull before you go. You'll see something you never saw before in either case."


It may be largely coincidence, but it is a fact at any rate, that in nearly every place in the world where the wild pig is found it is not considered quite the sporting thing to hunt it with guns. There is no hard and fast rule against it, of course, but in these places shooting a wild boar, except as a dernier ressort, is considered about on a par with potting ducks or pheasant. Thus, in Germany, Austria and the Balkans it is customary for the keenest sportsman still to take his chance with a boar on foot, and armed only with a spear; in India the British army officers ride that animal down in the jungle and dispatch it with a short lance, and in Africa the sporting thing to do is for the hunter to endeavour to give the coup de grace with a native assegai. In North America, for some reason, this custom is honoured only in the breach, and the Texas peccary and the Mexican javelin—neither of which is much more than an oversized razor-back hog—are dispatched on sight with rifle and shotgun.

Boar-hunting with a spear or assegai,—or even according to the Indian practice of killing from the saddle, which requires the greatest steadiness of seat, hand and nerve,—are certainly not open to criticism on the ground of being un-sporting; but the Marquesan native, in attacking the boar of his islands with a two-foot cutlass or machetÉ, which has been made for slashing underbrush and opening coconuts—for cutting, not thrusting—unquestionably goes all of them one better on the score of taking chances, for he works literally at arm's length and with his body unprotected even by the lightest of clothes.

A Marquesan boar hunt, with no other weapons than knives or cutlasses, is as exciting and hazardous an undertaking as the most adventurous can desire. The pigs are scared up in the bush by dogs and men, headed off in their flight along the narrow run-ways in the guava scrub, and dispatched by a knife-thrust between the base of the neck and the shoulder. Killing a large boar in this manner is an extremely nice piece of work, as a difference of an inch to the right or the left in plunging the knife means that the thrust will be almost harmless and leaves the hunter open to the deadly sweep of one of the scimitar-like tusks of the powerful animal. The commonest scar one sees on the body of a Marquesan is a long diagonal welt of white where the flesh of calf or thigh has been laid open to the bone by the tusk of a charging boar. If, as occasionally happens when the boar is a large one, the slash is across the abdomen, the hunter rarely survives to bear the scar.

McGrath was as good as his word in the matter of arranging the pig hunt he had promised, but unfortunately, through being called to Hatiheu to look after the loading of one of his schooners, was unable to go along himself.

"Be content to remain a spectator," was his parting injunction; "and don't think because it looks easy for a native to drop a charging boar with a cutlass and a twist of the wrist that you can do it yourself. That was the way I got this limp of mine—it comes from a tendon that was cut by a side-swipe from a tusk of the first—and the last—boar I ever tried to stick. Best take your six-shooter along, but don't use it unless you have to. It might serve to turn a boar that was charging you; but it also might make one that was running away swing around and come back. There are only two or three small spots on a wild pig in which a pistol bullet—or a half dozen of them, for that matter—will prove fatal, and these you would hardly be able to locate with the animal at a run."

McGrath laid special stress on my adhering to the spectator rÔle, and I set out with that injunction firmly impressed on my mind. But the sticking trick looked so ridiculously easy after I had seen it performed once or twice that it was not long before I began to tell myself that it was a case of "once bitten, twice shy" with my trader friend, and that he had probably lost his nerve on account of his unpropitious initial experience. And so it chanced—but I had best tell something of the way of a Marquesan with a pig before obtruding my own troubles.

We set out from Taio-haie on foot in the first flush of a heliotrope and daffodil sunrise—a dozen or more natives, about twice that number of dogs, and myself—followed the Typee trail for a mile up the mountain through the endless ruins of the old Marquesan villages, finally to branch off by a barely discernible foot path into the veritable carpet of low scrub which belts the island at the 500-foot level. Guava and lantana it was for the most part, the former heavy with lucious yellow-red fruit and the latter bright with tiny golden flowers. As we fared farther from the main travelled trail, dim runways through the bush began to appear, and these, gradually converging as they led down toward the neck of a rolling little valley which opened up beyond a sharp ridge we had crossed, formed a narrow but well marked path.

Four of the natives and I headed for a point where two jutting walls of rock formed a natural gateway, which was scarcely a dozen feet wide between the cliffs and choked with several giant trees and a maze of lianas and brush. Through this opening ran the runway we were following, the only path by which pigs going back and forth between the upper and lower valley could pass. The others, with the dogs still held in leash by strands of light liana, circled to the upper hills preliminary to swinging around and beating back down the valley. I was led, gently but firmly, up to a natural "grandstand" in the angle of the buttressed roots of a big maupÉ tree, one of the natives—a servant of McGrath's who was evidently acting under orders—stopping alongside in case I showed a disposition to "stray." My three other companions—strapping bronze giants with the muscles of gladiators—took their stands in the centre of the runway. One behind the other, at ten or twelve-foot intervals, they lined up—there was no chance in the narrow, bush-walled passage for anything in the nature of a three-abreast, Horatius-at-the-Bridge formation—each with his cutlass hand resting lightly on his hip, like a fencer standing at ease. Cool, alert, ready, they waited, three living, breathing incarnations of deadly efficiency. So had I seen a puma waiting, patiently tense, upon the limb of a tree above a path where deer were wont to come on their way to water; so have I since seen sharks lurking in quivering readiness among the coral spines where ventured the divers for pearls.

Ten minutes passed, in which occasional stifled yelps, now from this side, now from that, told that the dogs, still in leash, were being spread out as quietly as possible across the upper valley. Only occasional sharp crashes in the scrub gave evidence of an increasing current of uneasiness among the pigs. Tebu, who stood at "Number 1," broke into a low crooning chant, with a throaty kluck and a queer chesty roll to it, which my "guard" translated as an invitation to the pigs to come down and join our party. Presently the other two natives took up the air, the three of them swaying gently to the rhythm of the barbaric chant.

The dogs appeared to have been released upon a preconcerted signal, for their choruses of baying broke out all the way across the valley at the same time, accompanied by the ringing shouts of the men and the shrill ululations of a bevy of women and girls who had trailed along after us and had now joined the hunt.

Tebu hushed his singing and froze to attention as the underbrush began to crackle, and I knew by the flash of blood-lust in his eyes the instant he sighted the first pig. This animal, which was startled but not aroused, lunged back into the scrub before he reached the "gateway," and two or three other half-hearted mavericks did likewise before one arrived on the scene who really had his mind made up about going through to the lower valley. Singleness of purpose showed in every line of the flying black mass that came dashing down the runway and headed straight for the "gate." Possibly the fear of the dogs was in his heart, but he looked more mad than frightened as, without a pause or a side-glance of indecision, he hurled himself upon the motionless bronze figure that blocked the way. On he came, like a bull at a gate, and even as I gasped to myself that a regiment of soldiers couldn't block his flight, he dashed against the lone human barrier and the miracle was enacted. The impassive giant hardly seemed to move. There was sharp tensing of the powerful frame, a flash of sunlight glinting across the golden muscles, a quick movement of the wrist that might almost have been a caress—and the flying mass of bone and sinew was quivering at the gladiator's feet. There was not a squeal or a kick. It was almost as though the bronze Titan had waved his hand and muttered "Alive! Dead! Presto! Change!" and that thus it had come to pass. The swift transition from life to death reminded me of the wilting of a steer under the touch of the "killer" in an Uruguayan matadero, where they slay by severing the spinal cord at the base of the horns with a knife thrust. But there the twinkle of the wrist snuffed the life spark in the body of a passive animal, while here the same easy, effortless movement had smothered it while it flared at full power in a quarter of a ton of flying flesh and bone that was itself a Bolt of Death.

Another and yet another charging monster was crumpled to earth while I was still lost in speculation respecting the manner of the passing of the first, and it was not until the fourth or fifth fugitive appeared that I gathered my wits together for a dispassionate study of the way the wonder was wrought. Then I quickly came to the conclusion that it was the almost absolute "evenness" of the charge that made the thing possible at all. The surface of the runway was smooth and sloped but slightly, while its narrowness and straightness at the "gate" held the pig to an undeviating course whether he wished it or not. Though he came at a great speed, the huge body advanced almost as evenly as though running on a track, making it possible for a man with a steady hand and nerve to locate to a nicety that little three-inch-wide spot between the neck and shoulder where the point of knife must enter to be effective. That vulnerable point would be covered by the upward toss of the head that the boar has timed to make at the moment of impact, and the whole success of the thrust depends upon a quick forward step and a lunge that anticipates that toss by the hundredth part of a second.

While he is waiting the native receiving the charge scrapes a shallow depression in the path—something similar to a sprinter's starting holes—into which the toes of his left foot are set for a firm grip on the earth. At the psychologic moment the right foot is advanced half a pace, the left leg straightened into a brace, the right arm, with its extended cutlass, stiffened to a bar of steel—and the thing is done. The keen two-foot blade, slipping between the shoulder blade and the first rib, shores its way through heart and lungs, and its point may even penetrate to the abdominal cavity. If the stroke is true the blade and handle of the knife are buried to the wrist of the arm that drives it and the charging animal crumples up into an inert mass without uttering a sound. If the vital spot is missed, what happens depends largely upon the extent of the error. If the point of the knife meets a bone squarely—as rarely happens, however—the man behind it may be thrown backward or to one side by the impact, and escape unscathed. The usual miss, however, comes through having the point of the knife deflected by the toss of the boar's head, and the result is a glancing thrust which will probably leave the hunter still in the path of the charge and exposed to the deadly side-swipe of the great back-curving tusks.

It is not often that there is more than one wound—a charging boar rarely returns to the attack once his impetus has carried him clear of his enemies—and the consequences of this depend largely upon its location. If a thigh is cut deeply enough the wounded man will bleed to death; and if the slash is across the abdomen, though he may linger, it is rarely indeed that blood-poisoning fails ultimately to claim him for a victim. Because the wild pig is so foul a feeder, there is also grave danger of blood-poisoning from the superficial wounds on the arms and legs, but most of these, it is said, are recovered from.

Tebu dropped another pig or two with the same easy nonchalance that had marked his manner from the outset, and then, reluctantly, gave place to the man next in line. This one was called Maro, and he was reputed the champion pig-sticker of the leeward side of the island. As first "backer-up," he had been chafing under the enforced inactivity for some minutes and complaining that Tebu was taking the cream of the sport for himself. The new "Number 1" was less massive of build than his predecessor, but was muscled with the fluent undulations of swift-running water—a man compact of watchsprings, a human tiger-cat. Deftly and easily he dropped his first pig—a rangy boar—slapped a flying half-grown shote contemptuously with the flat of his cutlass as beneath his notice, and had just got well "set" on his toes again, when that bane of the Marquesan pigsticker, a "double"—two boars running close together—came charging down.

By all the rules of the game this twin terror should have been allowed to go by unmolested, for successfully to stick a "double" is a feat as rare as a triple play in baseball or the "hat trick" in cricket—a thing to be talked about for years after it has happened. But it chanced to come at the moment when the shifty Maro was just "on edge"—nicely warmed up and steadied by his first pig and yet not wearied by successive efforts—and then there was the Beretani—the white man—who had to be shown what a Marquesan could really do in a pinch. Probably the latter was the more powerful incentive. At any rate, without a gesture or a glance of hesitation, he settled the toes of his left foot firmly into their hole, poised for an instant in quivering readiness, and then, with the swiftness of a striking cobra, lurched forward in two lightning passes.

The first thrust, which was delivered at the full extension of his reach, appeared barely to brush the neck of the foremost boar, but the next—driven home with a short-arm jab like a pugilist's close-in hook at an opponent's solar plexus—buried the full length of the knife in the shoulder of the second boar, and brought it down in a heap, Maro himself being tripped and half-buried under the inert body. That the first boar had been more than scratched seemed impossible; yet there he lay, almost at my feet, giving what appeared to be his dying kicks. Tebu and his mate were extricating Maro from under the body of the second boar, and it struck me that the humane thing to do would be to put the wounded beast out of his agony. Accordingly, without taking especial care to aim accurately, I directed a couple of bullets from my ".38" automatic at a spot behind one of the ears which appeared to be vulnerable.

Just where the bullets struck I never found out, for the well-meant shots awakened something besides the echoes of the rock-girt gorge. At the touch of the lead the apparently dying boar scrambled to his feet and made a dive for the lower end of the "gate." Tebu struck viciously as the animal passed him, but only landed a harmless slash, and the cutlass of the other native, flung on the chance of severing a rear tendon, went wide of its mark. The fugitive, running blind but strong, disappeared among the mazes of trails that led into the lower valley, followed by the wails of Maro, who saw the feat of a lifetime marred by the interference of a meddlesome outsider who had been too cowardly to take a hand in the dangerous part of the game himself. Shouting something in voluble Marquesan in my direction, he leapt back into the runway as a renewed crashing broke out above, and stood savagely on guard.

"What did he say?" I asked McGrath's boy, Tavu, who had stuck closely to my side through all the excitement.

"He say he kill pig dead. You shoot gun, wake him up. Maro damn mad. He say now he kill three pigs, all one time. Maybe he mean 'long-pig.' Maro bad fella b'long Anaho," and he touched his eye with a finger as a sign that it would be well to be on guard.

The good fellow probably did Maro an injustice in charging him with harbouring the intention of converting my anatomy into that most recherchÉ of Marquesan delicacies, "long-pig"; but if there was any doubt of his willingness, in his anger and disappointment, to tackle three pigs at once it was effectually dispelled by the events of the next few moments. The shouts of the beaters and the barking of the dogs had been growing louder all the time, and the crashings in the underbrush told that the pigs were now coming in increasing numbers. Three or four of them shortly came tearing into view, and then—all of a sudden—the path was packed with bristling black figures, the first few running hard and free and the rest crowding and stumbling.

The rush of pigs as the beaters closed in was always to be expected in this particular cul de sac, and McGrath had warned me regarding it.

"Get out of the way and sit tight," he had said; "and don't worry about the boys. They'll take care of themselves."

I appeared to be sufficiently out of the way already, and Tebu and the third native, as soon as they had caught sight of the impending avalanche, came over and joined me on the roots of the big tree. I watched them clamber up to safety and then turned to see the river of pigs sweep by—and there was that sullen, scowling tiger-cat of a Maro standing his ground in the middle of the runway. Of course, the proper thing to have done would have been for some self-sacrificing soul to leap down and snatch the would-be suicide from "under the wheels," a task for which the powerful Tebu was admirably fitted by nature. I'm not sure that the duty of indulging in this form of self-sacrifice is included in the Marquesan ethical code, but even if it had been, there was no time to put it into practice. Maro dropped his first pig and made a pass at the second even as I looked. The two animals were running almost neck-and-neck, so that the second thrust was hardly more than a slight slash upon the flying brute's shoulder. It served to turn Maro in his tracks, however, and not all of his super-feline quickness could bring him around again in time to meet the rush. The shoulder of the next pig sent him tottering sidewise as the animal passed, and in another moment he had fallen fairly across the upraising head of a huge boar in the van of the ruck. For an instant the shining bronze body ceased to flash against the heaving black background, and then, as a rat is tossed by a terrier, it was flung cleanly into the air, to come slamming down against the gnarled roots of our maupÊ tree and collapse into a lifeless heap. The body seemed to have struck the tree hard enough to break half of its bones; yet the worst injury, I told myself, must have come from the terrific toss that had sent it catapulting through the air.

After the rush was over we lost no time in clambering down to "view the remains." Tebu was smiling sardonically, apparently not greatly shocked by the tragedy and perhaps secretly pleased at having the only man in the island who was held his equal in pig-sticking prowess put out of the running. The other two natives seemed a little more upset, and Tavu was muttering to himself the ancient Marquesan proverb which translates literally as "Wild pig—'long-pig.'" This has lost its meaning since cannibalism became practically extinct, but in the old days it signified that when the men went out to get the meat of the wild pig, there was likely also to be man meat to eat at the feast that was held when the hunt was over.

The body lay on its back, inert as the carcasses of the pigs that littered the sides of the runway. Tebu and I picked it up and turned it over to reveal the wound which we knew must have been inflicted when it was tossed into the air—and lo, beyond some bluing bruises, there was no wound! We could only guess how so seemingly impossible a thing as a man's being tossed ten feet by a wild boar without being slashed to ribbons could have happened; but the most probable explanation seemed to be that Maro had fallen sidewise across the head of the animal, behind the tusks, so that the upward thrust of the powerful neck had only resulted in a mighty push. No bones appeared to be broken. A welt on the back of the head where it had struck the tree accounted for the senseless condition of the scrappy pig-sticker, and this, as far as we could discover, was the extent of the injuries. A dash of water from the nearby stream brought Maro back to life again, but too dazed, for the time being at least, to recall the resentment he had harboured against me on the score of the pig I had "waked up" with my pistol shots.

The natives now cleared a space of brush with their cutlasses and we prepared to rest and lunch in the shadow of the big tree. A fire was started to heat stones for roasting a young pig that had been captured, breadfruit and plantain were put to cooking, coconuts were opened and guavas, mangoes and a lucious array of other tropical fruits were laid out on the broad leaves of the taro plant. And then came the women to our Eden, and with them the Serpent.

McGrath had given the strictest orders that nothing in the form of toddy should be brought along on the hunt, and this injunction had apparently been heeded as far as the hunters themselves were concerned. But the dozen or more girls who had come on later to help as beaters and share in the division of the meat, claimed to have heard nothing of the prohibition. Possibly it was a "frame-up" on the part of the men, or perhaps it just happened. At any rate, when the beating brigade began to straggle in, it became apparent at once that tippling had been going on, and shortly I saw the bruised and battered Maro taking a long draught from a calabash that was being held to his lips by a star-eyed minx with a red hibiscus blossom behind her ear and a rakish chaplet of fern frond tilted across her comely brow.

"Coco toddy," muttered Tavu, half in alarm, half in anticipative ecstasy. "Plenty coco toddy b'long vahine."

It would be churlish, I told myself, to attempt to forbid the ambrosia to any of the tired gladiators when the common herd of the beaters had already been cheering themselves with it. Then—fatal mistake—I nodded my head in acquiescence when an epu was held up for Tavu, my guardian, to quaff, and—but I had already taken a gulp of the liquid fire from a calabash that a bronze, flower-crowned Hebe, with arms that were symphonies of rippling loveliness and eyes that were twin wells of limpid light, had brought and hung about my neck. Another brought a wreath for my brow and a flower for my ear, and thus crowned the king of the Bacchic revel it became all the more difficult to inaugurate a temperance program among my festive subjects. There wasn't enough of the toddy to put them in a cannibalistic mood, I argued; and, anyhow, they were bound to have all they wanted, and at my expense, as soon as they got back to Taio-haie.

At any rate, the "women did offer us of the wine to drink, and we did drink," and it was all a very merry little "hunting breakfast." It is not my purpose to write here of the imp who lurks in the depths of the coco toddy calabash to spring out upon the unwary one who uncovers him, as I shall have more to say of him later on in Tahiti. On this occasion such mischief as was wrought was only indirectly traceable to him, and it is by no means impossible that it might not have occurred anyway.

This was how it came about: From time to time some of the dogs that had strayed would come straggling in, and in nearly every case driving a pig or two ahead of them. As the animals appeared, now one and now another of the natives would jump up, intercept the fugitive in the runway and bring him to earth with that easy, effortless neck-thrust that, to the beholder, was more like a caress than a stab. But because they had drunken of the insidious toddy and there were many spectators, the stickers were more than ordinarily nonchalant in their motions, and—possibly because I, also, had partaken of the toddy—the trick kept looking easier and easier every time it was done. And probably it was because Maro had been stimulating his dazed faculties with the toddy that the recollection of the "double" I had spoiled for him reawakened, and he began to tell the party how it happened. I didn't need to know Marquesan to understand the fluent gestures which pictured me resting comfortably in the tree while the killing was going on, and showed how I didn't even dare to shoot off my pistol at anything but a dead pig; and as for having the courage to stand before one with a knife—the scorn of his "let-me-forget-it" expression was positively effacive.

In my own action I have always told myself that toddy played no part; but that delectable beverage certainly was responsible for the fact that Tavu, who was under the strictest orders from McGrath to keep me out of mischief, only nodded approbatively when I picked up Tebu's big cutlass from the grass and strode out into the runway to "make my honour white." Tebu, with a roar of delight, seized another cutlass and came out to "back up" for me, but I waved him indignantly aside, resolved to do the trick alone. The good fellow stepped aside obediently, but, unluckily for himself, "stood by" against an emergency.

Flower-crowned and sword in hand! I have called up that incongruous picture in memory many times since, and always to caption it with some classic title. Of these, "Bacchus in the RÔle of Ajax Defying the Lightning" has seemed to me rather the most appropriate.

The crowd fell silent as a crashing and the barking of dogs in the bush above told that another fugitive was approaching, for they scented trouble with the Residente in case anything happened to the Beretani who had been put into their charge. (I learned later that the natives hunting with a French official who had been killed trying to shoot a wild bull the year before had been seriously punished.) Thanks again to the toddy, however, no one made a move to interfere.

It was an uncommonly unkind trick of Fate to have held up the only really large boar that appeared in the course of that hunt until I, the greenest of green novices, had set myself so defiantly in the middle of his path that there was no graceful way of getting out of it. Also, it was harshly ordered that, whereas the other animals had come charging down as evenly as though strung on trolleys, this monster, with two dogs nipping his heels, should be plunging and reeling like a ship in a gale.

I had clearly in mind everything that needed to be done, even to kicking the toe-hole for my left foot, and I kept repeating to myself the words of my old 'varsity baseball coach to his batters—"Step out and meet it." These words had been recalled to me repeatedly during the morning as Tebu or Maro delivered his deadly thrust with a quick forward step, and that, with keeping the eye on the vulnerable spot between the neck and shoulder, seemed to me to be the crucial points upon which the turning of the trick depended. I have since been told that this is quite correct. But this procedure was calculated to be followed in the case of the regulation direct-charging boar; what to do in the case of a brute that was tossing his head in spirals, as now this flank, and now that, was nipped by a pursuing dog, I didn't—and I still don't—know just what to do.

Because I felt that I knew just what to do, and just how to do it, I had myself perfectly in hand until, sudden as a lightning flash, came the realization that the spot that I must strike between the neck and the shoulder was not keeping on an even plane. I had experienced some fairly exciting close-in work with grizzly and silver tip on a couple of occasions previous to that morning, and since then I have stopped the charge of a South American jaguar with a revolver and known what it is to see a Bengal tiger clawing the howdah of an elephant I was riding; but never have I known anything to approach the "all gone" feeling which accompanied the realization that I was not going to be able to locate the spot which had to be located if I was to avoid a collision that would make that of Maro's a friendly jostle in comparison.

The instant the message "You can't do it!" was flashed to my brain, the charging pig ceased to be a pig, so far as I was concerned, and became a Car of Juggernaut, a Bolt of Wrath, the incarnation of everything that was Swift, Terrible and Inevitable. Before I knew it I had dropped the useless cutlass, snatched out my automatic pistol and was discharging it wildly at the approaching monster. The rattle of shots was answered by a burst of savage snarls mingled with quick yelps of pain, and then, as the hammer snapped down on unresponding steel after the last cartridge was fired, I sprang blindly to one side and plunged headlong into the brush. That I dove into the unsympathetic depths of some kind of a fishhook thorn bush, which took ample toll for the intrusion when I was dragged out by the heels a minute later, was only an incident in the light of the fact that—thanks to an instinct for preservation that not even coco toddy had drugged to sleep—I had avoided so much as a brush from the charging boar.

A roar of agony and shouts of consternation told me, even before I was released from the tentacles of the thorn bush, that some one else had got in the way of the charge that I had declined to meet; then the noise of the pursuit passed on and died out beyond the "gate." My pigskin puttees were about the only things I had on that did not remain, wholly or in part, in the embrace of the thorns, but my own scratches were quickly forgotten at the sight of the other victim of the charge. There were two other victims, in fact—one a dog that had been raked by a soft-nosed bullet from my pistol, and the other the stout-hearted old gladiator, Tebu, who, leaping to take up the challenge I had side-stepped, had fallen afoul of the boar itself. His bulldog courage—or the toddy—had impelled him to undertake on short notice the job the Beretani had shirked, and, with no chance to locate the vital spot for his thrust, had lunged wildly and taken the consequences.

The dog was dead, and it looked for a while as though Tebu, with a foot-long gash across his thigh and bleeding like one of the pigs that lay beside him, would follow suit. It transpired presently, however, that no arteries were severed; so after staunching the flow as effectually as possible with a torniquet and bandages that left several members of the party nearly in a state of nature after giving up their pareos for the wherewithal, they rigged up a rough litter of boughs and lianas and set off, not untenderly, to bear the wounded warrior back to Taio-haie. There, thanks to the skilful and kind care of the sisters at the Mission, he was soon on his way to recovery.

A month later, in Tahiti, I received a letter from Cramer, the German trader of Taio-haie. After going on to tell how our friend McGrath had been blown away in his cutter during a hurricane and was given up for lost, he wrote:

"I saw Tebu today. He is still very lame, and probably always will be, but he has been going out every day since he left the mission hospital to hunt the big boar that cut him up so the time he was out with you. He says he is going to keep on hunting it until he kills the boar or the boar kills him."

To this letter was added a postscript, written several days later, which read:

"Tebu brought in the big boar last night. He says he knows it by the cut he gave it on the shoulder. As we found no bullet marks on the body we have thought he is probably mistaken."

To this I replied:

"Probably Tebu is right. I cannot swear that I was looking down the sights of my pistol when I fired those shots."


Thus pig-sticking in the Marquesas. It is bloody and cruel, as is the killing of all animals; but, because the quarry is nearly always dropped in its tracks, it is far less open to criticism on that score than most other forms of hunting. But the finest thing—I may well say, the grandest thing—about it is the fact that it is a strictly man-to-beast, give-and-take affair, with the hunter meeting his quarry more nearly on equal terms than in any other form of hunting practised since the days of the Cave Men.

Of the wild cattle hunt which McGrath, after infinite trouble, arranged for one of the final days of our stay in Nukahiva, I have written elsewhere.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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