  Palm CHAPTER VI |
| To Terii Tuahu, Dr., | ||
| 1 dozen beacon lanterns | at 480 frs. | Frs.480 |
| To Ohiti Poene, Dr., | ||
| 12 sacks Lily-Dust flour | at 300 frs. | Frs. 3600 |
| To Low Hung Chin, Dr., | ||
| 1 gross Night-King flash lamps | at 3600 frs. | Frs. 3600 |
The work of checking up finished, we went out for a breath of air. The atoll lay abeam and still far distant; a faint bluish haze lifted a bare eighth of an inch above
"Look here," he said. "What is it that interests you in these islands? I've never known anyone to visit them for pleasure before. Is it the women, or what?"
Under pressure, I admitted that Nature seemed to have spent her best effort among the Paumotuans in fashioning the men.
"You're right," said Tino. "The women are healthy enough, of course, but they don't set your heart beating a hundred to the minute. They have fine hands and white teeth, and you won't find such black hair in all the world as you find in these atolls. But that's the size of it. You can't praise them any further for looks. Maybe you haven't noticed their ears, because they always cover them up with their hair; but they're large, and their feet and ankles—tough as sole leather and all scarred over with coral cuts. That is well enough for the men, but with the women it's different. Makes you lose your enthusiasm, don't it?"
I had seen a good many striking exceptions in our wanderings, but I agreed that, in the main, what he said was true.
"Well, if it isn't the women, what else is there to be interested in? Not the islands themselves? Lord! When you've seen one you've seen the lot. Living on one of them is like living aboard ship. Not room to stretch your legs. They're solid enough, and they
"Well, we won't have to stop long," he added, grouchily. "I'll take what copra they have and get out. It's a God-forsaken hole. They only make about twenty-five tons a year. The island could produce three times that amount under decent management. They're a lazy, independent lot, at Rutiaro. You can't get 'em to stir themselves."
I asked him what they had to gain by stirring themselves.
"Gain?" he said. "They have everything to gain. There are only two frame houses on the place. The rest of them are miserable little shelters of coconut thatch. I haven't sold them enough corrugated iron in ten years to cover this cockpit. You remember Takaroa and Niau and Fakahina? Well, there's my idea of islands. Nice European furniture—iron beds, center tables, phonographs, bicycles—"
A further catalogue of the comforts and conveniences of civilization which the inhabitants of Rutiaro might have and didn't convinced me that this was the atoll I had been looking for, and I regretted that our stay there was to be so brief. I did not begrudge the inhabitants of richer atolls their phonographs and bicycles. They got an incredible amount of amusement out of them; listened with delight to the strange music, and spent entire evenings taking turns with the bicycles, riding them back and forth from the lagoon
At ten o'clock we were three miles to windward of the village island. It lay at the narrower end of the lagoon, the inner shore line curving around a broad indentation where the village was. The land narrowed in one direction to a ledge of reef. At the farther end there was a small motu not more than three hundred yards in length by one hundred broad, separated from the main island by a strip of shallow water. Seen from aloft, the two islands resembled, roughly, in outline, an old-fashioned, high-pooped vessel with a small boat in tow. I could see the whole of the atoll from the mainmast crosstrees, the lagoon, shimmering into green over the shoals, darkening to an intense blue over unlit valleys of ocean floor; a solitude of sunlit water, placid as a lake buried in the depths of inaccessible mountains. I followed the shore line with my glasses. Distant islands, ledges of barren reef, leaped forward with an effect of magic, as though our atom of a vessel, the only sail which relieved the emptiness of the sea, had been swept in an instant to within a few yards of the surf. Great combers, green and ominous looking in the sunlight, broke at one rapidly advancing point, toppled and fell in segments, filling the inner shallows with a smother of foam. Beyond it lay the broad fringe of white, deserted beach,
The village was hidden among the trees, but I saw the French flag flying near a break in the reef which marked the landing place for small boats. Farther back, a little knot of people were gathered, some of them sitting in the full glare of the sun, others in the deep shade, leaning against the trees in attitudes of dreamy meditation. Three girls were combing their hair, talking and laughing in an animated way. They were dressed in all their European finery, gowns of flowered muslin pulled up around their bare legs to prevent soilure. A matronly woman in a red wrapper had thrown the upper covering aside and sat, naked to the waist, nursing a baby. I put down my glasses, feeling rather ashamed of my scrutiny, as though I had been peeping through a window at some intimate domestic scene. The island leaped into the distance; the broad circle of foam and jagged reef narrowed to a thread of white, and the Caleb S. Winship crept landward again under a light breeze, an atom of a ship on a vast and empty sea. Eight bells struck, a tinkling sound, deadened, scarcely audible in the wide air. I heard Tino's voice as though coming from an immense distance: "Hello, up there! Kai-kai's ready!" I said:
The pass was at the farther end of the lagoon, and in order to save time in getting the work ashore under way, the supercargo and I, with three of the sailors, put off in the whaleboat, to land on the ocean side of the village. Half a dozen men rushed into the surf, seized and held the boat as the backwash poured down the steep incline at the edge of the reef. Among them was the chief, a man of huge frame, six feet two or three in height. Like the others who assisted at the landing, he was clad only in a pareu, but he lost none of his dignity through his nakedness. He was fifty-five
Wherever one goes in Polynesia one is reminded, by contrast, of the cost physically to men of our own race of our sheltered way of living. There on every hand are men well past middle life, with compact, symmetrical bodies and the natural grace of healthy children. One sees them carrying immense burdens without exertion, swimming in the open sea for an hour or two at a time while spearing fish, loafing ashore with no greater apparent effort for yet longer periods. Sometimes, when they have it, they eat enormous quantities of food at one sitting, and at others, under necessity, as sparingly as so many dyspeptics. It would be impossible to formulate from their example any rules for rational living in more civilized communities. The daily quest for food under primitive conditions keeps them alert and sound of body, so that, whether they work or loaf, feast or fast, they seem always to acquire health by it.
There had been no boats at Rutiaro in five months and the crowd on the beach was unfeignedly glad to see us. The arrival of a schooner at that remote island was an event of great importance; the sight of new faces lighted their own with pleasure, which warmed the heart toward them at once. We had brought ashore a consignment of goods for Moy Ling, the Chinese storekeeper, and when the handshaking was over they gathered around it as eagerly as a group of American children at a Christmas tree. Even the village constable seemed unconscious of any need for a show of dignity or authority. The only badge of his office was a cigarette-card picture of President PoincarÉ, fastened with a safety pin to his old felt hat. He neglected his duties as a keeper of order, and was one of the most excited of Moy Ling's helpers with the cargo. He kept patting him affectionately on the back, saying, "Maitai! maitai!" which in that situation may be freely translated as, "You know me, Moy Ling!" And the old Chinaman smiled the pleasant, noncommittal smile of his countrymen the world over.
Tino's was the only sour face on the beach. He moved through the crowd, giving orders, grumbling and growling half to himself and half to me. "I told you they were a lazy lot," he said. "They've seen us making in for three hours, and what have they been doing? Loafing on the beach, waiting for us instead of getting their copra together! Moy Ling is the only one in the village who is ready to do business. Five tons all sacked for weighing. He's worth a dozen Kanakas. Well, I'll set 'em to work in quick time now. You watch me! I'm going to be loaded and out of here by six o'clock."
As I have said, my box of marbles came to light again only a few hours before we reached Rutiaro. I took them ashore with me, thinking they might amuse the children. They had a good knowledge of the technic of shooting, acquired in a two-handed game common among the atolls, which is played with bits of polished coral. But theirs had always seemed to me a tame pastime, lacking the interest of stakes to be
I followed the street bordering the lagoon, past the freshly thatched houses with their entryways wide to the sun and wind, and came at length to a small burying ground which lay in an area of green shadow far from the village. There were a dozen or more graves within the inclosure, some of them neatly mounded over with broken coral and white shell, others incased in a kind of sarcophagus of native cement to keep more restless spirits from wandering abroad. Most of them were unmarked. Two or three had wooden headboards, one of which was covered with a long inscription in Chinese. Beneath this the word "Repose" was printed in English, as though it had some peculiar talismanic significance for the Chinaman who had placed it there. It was the grave of a predecessor of Moy Ling's. I fell to thinking of him as I sat there, and of all the
I was awakened by some one shaking me by the shoulder. A voice said, "Haere i te pai!" ("Come down to the boat!") and a dark figure ran on before, turning from time to time to urge me to greater speed. It was almost night, although there was still light enough to see by. I remembered that Tino had told me to be at the copra sheds at five. The tide would serve for getting through the pass until eight, but I hurried, nevertheless, feeling that something unusual had happened. Rounding a point of land which cut off the view from the village and the inner lagoon, I saw the schooner, about three hundred yards off shore, slim and black against a streak of orange cloud to the northward. She was moving slowly out, under power; the whaleboat was being hoisted over the side, and at
I shouted: "Hi! Tino! Wait a minute! You're not going to leave me behind, are you?"
A moment of silence followed. Then came the answer with the odd deliberation of utterance which I knew meant Tahiti rum:
"You can stay there and play marbles till hell freezes over! I'm through with you!"
What had happened, as nearly as I could make out afterward, was this: my box of marbles which I had brought ashore for the amusement of the children, interested the grown-ups as well, particularly the hazard of stakes in the games I had shown them. Paumotuans have a good deal of Scotch acquisitiveness in their make-up. They coveted those marbles—they were really worth coveting—and it was not long until play became general, a family affair, the experts in one being pitted against those in another, regardless of age or sex. Tino's threats and entreaties had been to no purpose. All work came to an end, and the only copra which got aboard the Winship was Moy Ling's five tons, carried out by the sailors themselves. Evidently Puarei, the chief, had been one of the most enthusiastic players. He was not a man to be bulldozed or browbeaten. He had great dignity and force of character, for all his boyish delight in simple amusements. What right had Tino to say that he should not play marbles on his own island? He gave me to understand, by means of gestures, intonation, and a mixture of French and Paumotuan, that this was what the supercargo had done. At last, apparently, Tino had sent Oro on an unsuccessful search for me. He thought,
Most of these details I gathered afterward. At the moment I guessed just enough of the truth not to be wholly mystified. The watery sputtering of the Winship's twenty-five horse-power engine grew faint. Then, with a ghostly gleam of her mainsail in the starlight, she was gone. I was thinking, "By Jove! I wouldn't have missed this experience for all the copra in the Cloud of Islands!" I was glad that there were still adventures of that sort to be had in a humdrum world. It was so absurd, so fantastically unreal as to fit nothing but reality. And the event of it was exactly what I had wanted all the time without knowing it. There was no reason why I shouldn't stop at Rutiaro. To be sure, I was shortly to have met my friend Nordhoff at Papeete, but our rendezvous was planned to be broken. We were wandering in the South Pacific as opportunity and inclination should direct, which, I take it, is the only way to wander.
For a few moments I was so deeply occupied with my own thoughts that I was not conscious of what was taking place around me. All the village was gathered there, watching the departing schooner. As she vanished a loud murmur ran through the crowd, like a sough of wind through trees—a long-drawn-out Polynesian, "Aue!" indicative of astonishment, indignation,
"I been Frisco," he said, with an odd accent on the last syllable. He had made the journey once as a stoker on one of the mail boats. Then he added, "You go to hell, me," his eyes shining with pride that he could be of service as a reminder of home to an exiled American. He was about to take charge of me, in view of his knowledge of English, but the chief waved him away with a gesture of authority. I was to be his guest, he said, at any rate for the present. He began his duties as host by entertaining me at dinner at Moy Ling's store. I was a little surprised that we did not go to his house for the meal until I remembered that the Chinaman had received the only consignment of exotic food left by the Winship. Puarei ordered the feast with the discrimination of a gourmet and the generosity of a sailor on shore leave for the first time in months. We had smoked herring for hors-d'oeuvre, followed by soup, curried chicken and rice, edible birds' nests flavored with crab meat, from China, and white bread. For dessert we had small Chinese pears preserved in vinegar, which we ate out of the tin—"Woman Brand Pears," the label said. There was a colored picture on it of a white woman, in old-fashioned puffed sleeves and a long skirt, seated in a garden,
Puarei gave all his attention to his food, and consumed an enormous quantity. My own appetite was a healthy one, but I had not his capacity of stomach; furthermore, he ate with his fingers, while I was handicapped from the first with a two-prong fork and a small tin spoon. I believe they were the only implements of the sort on the island, for the village had been searched for them before they were found. It was another evidence to me of the unfrequented nature of Rutiaro, and of its slender contact, even with the world of Papeete traders. At most of the islands we had visited, knives and forks were common, although rarely used except in the presence of strangers. The onlookers at the feast—about half the village, I should say—watched with interest my efforts to balance mouthfuls of rice on a two-prong fork. I could see that they regarded it as a ridiculous proceeding. They must have thought Americans a strange folk, checking appetite and worrying digestion with such doubtful aids. Finally I decided to follow the chief's example and set to with my fingers. They laughed at that, and Puarei looked up from his third plate of rice and chicken to nod approval. It was a strange
Paumotuan hospitality is an easy, gracious thing, imposing obligations on neither host nor guest. Dinner over, I told Puarei that I wanted to take a walk, and he believed me. I was free at once, and I knew that he would not be worrying meanwhile about my entertainment. I would not be searched for presently, and pounced upon with the dreaded: "See here! I'm afraid you are not having a good time," of the uneasy host. I was introduced to no one, dragged nowhere to see anything, free from the necessity of being amused. I might do as I liked—rare and glorious privilege—and I went outside, grateful for it, and for the cloak of darkness which enabled me to move about
Returning from my walk, I found the village street deserted and all of the people assembled back of Moy Ling's shop. He was mixing bread at a table while one of the sons of his strange family piled fresh fuel on the fire under a long brick oven. It was a great event, the bread making, after the long months of dearth, and of interest to everyone. Mats were spread within the circle of the firelight. Puarei was there, with his wife—a mountain of a woman—seated at his side. She was dressed in a red-calico wrapper, and her
I took a place among them as quietly as possible, for I knew by repeated experience how curious they are about strangers, and first meetings were usually embarrassing. Without long training as a freak with a circus, it would try any man's courage to sit for an hour among a group of Paumotuans while he was being discussed item by item. There is nothing consciously brutal or callous in the manner of it, but, rather an unreflecting frankness like that of children in the presence of something strange to their experience. I knew little of the language, although I caught a word here and there which indicated the trend of the comment. It was not general, fortunately, but confined to those on either side of me. Two old grandmothers
Moy Ling's fire was burning brightly and it occurred to several of the youngsters to resume their marble playing. I saw Puarei's face light with pleasure, and he was on his feet at once with his stake in the ring. Others followed, and soon all those who had marbles were in the sport. I understood clearly then how helpless Tino had been. I could easily picture him rushing from group to group, furious at the thought of his interests being neglected through such childish folly. Those marbles were more desirable than his flour and canned goods, which he stood ready to exchange for copra. The explanation of this astounding fact may have been that no one thought he would go off as he did, and to-morrow would do just as well for getting down to business. Since he had gone, there was an end of that. It was futile to worry about the lost food. Certainly it was forgotten during the great tournament which took place that evening. Moy Ling worked at his bread making unnoticed. His fire died down to a heap of coals, but another was built and the play went on. Puarei was a splendid shot, in marble playing as in other respects, the best man of the village; but there was a slip of a girl who was even better. During the evening she accumulated nearly half of the entire marble supply, and at length these two met for a test of skill. It was a long-drawn-out game. I had never seen anything to equal the interest of both players and spectators; not even at
The lateness of the hour—the bizarre setting for a game so linked with memories of boyhood, combined to give me an impression of unreality. I had the feeling that the island and all the people on it might vanish at any moment, and the roar of the surf resolve itself into the rumble of street traffic in some gray city. And, though it were the very city where marbles are made, where in the length or breadth of it could there be found anyone who knew the use of them, with either the time or the inclination to play? I might search it, street by street, to the soot-stained suburbs; I might go on to the green country, perhaps; visit all the old-time marble-playing rendezvous from one coast to the other, with no better success. And, though I passed through a thousand villages of the size of Rutiaro, could an evening's amusement be provided in any one of them, for men, women, and children, at an outlay of four dollars, American? The possibility would not be worth considering. People at home live too fast in these days, and they want too much. I could imagine Tino, in a sober mood, giving a grudging assent to this. "But, man!" he would have added, "I wish they had more of their marble-making enthusiasm at Rutiaro. I would put in here three times a year and fill the Winship with copra to within an inch of the main boom every trip."
Moy Ling had enough of it for the whole island, it seemed to me. His ovens were opened as the tournament
CHAPTER VII
A Debtor of Moy Ling
PUAREI'S house stood halfway down the village street at Rutiaro, facing a broad indentation from the lagoon. The Catholic church adjoined it on one side, the Protestant church on the other. Neither of them was an imposing structure, but they towered above the small frame dwelling of the chief with an air of protection, of jealous watchfulness. On sunny days they shaded his roof in turn; and, when it rained, poured over it streams of water, through lead pipes projecting from their own ampler roofs—a purely utilitarian function, since the drainage from the three buildings furnished the fresh-water supply of the settlement. If the showers were light the overflow from the largess of the rival churches, plashing on the sheets of corrugated iron, filled the house with a monotonous murmur, like the drowsy argument of two soft-voiced missionaries; but during a heavy downpour the senses were stunned by the incessant thunder, as though one were inclosed in an immense drum, beaten with nonsectarian vigor by all the Salvation Armies in the world.
It was during such a deluge, one day in early spring, that I lay on the guest bed in Puarei's one-room house,
It would not occur to either Puarei or his wife that I was in need of funds. Theirs was one of the more primitive atolls of the Low Archipelago, where all white men are regarded as mysteriously affluent. If, instead of being marooned at Rutiaro through Tino's fit of
His supply of European clothing was limited, but ample to supply my wants. He found for me three undershirts, size forty-four, two gingham outer shirts of less ample proportions, a pair of dungaree overalls, and a pair of rope-sole shoes. I asked him to put these articles aside and went off to reflect upon ways and means of opening a credit account with the canny Chinaman. There was one possible method open to me; I might adopt the pareu as a costume. I could buy three of them for the price of one undershirt, and
But how obtain clothing without money—without divulging to anyone that I had no money? The question dinned through my brain with annoying persistence, like the thunder of falling water on Puarei's iron roof. Would it, after all, be best to confide in the chief? I could tell him of my bank account at Papeete, and he knew, of course, that the Caleb Winship had left me without a word of warning, taking my sea chest with her. I was tempted to make a confession of my predicament, but pride or a kind of childish vanity prevented me.
"No, by Jove!" I said. "I'll be hanged if I do! Puarei, his wife—all the rest of them—expect me to live up to their traditional conceptions of white men. I am supposed to be mysteriously affluent, and I owe it to them to preserve that myth in all its romantic glamour."
I had no feeling of guilt in making this decision; rather, a sense of virtue, like that of an indulgent father upon assuring his children that there is a Santa Claus. I decided to be not only mysteriously, but incredibly, affluent. Therefore, when the rain had passed I put on my mended garments and went to Moy Ling's shop.
I found him splitting coconuts in front of his copra shed, and beckoned to him in a careless way. He came forward, smiling pleasantly as usual, but there was a shrewd glitter in his eyes which said, quite as plainly as words, "Honorable sir, I bow before you, but I expect an adequate monetary return for the service." I was not intimidated, however, and when he brought forth the articles I had selected earlier I waved them aside—all of them excepting the rope-sole shoes, the only male footgear of any kind on the island. I explained that I had not before seen the bolt of white drill—the most expensive cloth in his shop—and that I wanted enough of it to make four suits. I saw at once that I had risen in his estimation about 75 per cent, and, thus encouraged, I went on buying lavishly—white-cotton cloth for underwear and shirts; some pencils and his entire supply of notebooks for my voluminous observations on the life and character of the Paumotuans; a Night-King flash lamp; a dozen silk handkerchiefs of Chinese manufacture; a dozen pairs of earrings and four lockets and chains;
At the beginning I had no thought of going in so recklessly. But as I went from article to article the conviction grew upon me that the deeper I plunged the greater the impression I should make upon Moy Ling, and it was essential that I should convince him that my mythical wealth was real. He became more and more deferential as my heap of purchases increased in size. I made no inquiry as to the price of anything, believing that to be in keeping with the mysteriously affluent tradition. At my back I heard a hum of excited conversation. The shop was filled with people. I felt the crush behind me, but took no notice of it and went on with my passionless orgy of spending: two bolts of women's dress goods; four pocketknives; a can of green paint and another of white—but details are tiresome. It is enough to say that I bought lavishly, and selected odds and ends of things because Moy's shop contained nothing else. He had a large supply of food, but in other respects his stock was low, and when I had finished, some of his shelves were almost bare. On one there remained only a box of chewing gum. An inscription printed on the side of it read: "Chew on, MacDuff! You can't chew out the original mint-leaf flavor" of somebody's pepsin gum—words to that effect. That product of American epicureanism
I succeeded very well in impressing Puarei. He was astonished at the number of my purchases; and Poura said, "Au-e!" shooed out the mint-breathed porters who carried them to the house, and sat down in the doorway, her enormous body completely blocking the entrance. On the veranda the conversation crackled and sparkled with conjecture. I could hear above the others the voice of Paki, wife of the constable, enumerating the things I had bought. It sounded odd in Paumotuan—a high-pitched recitative of strange words, most of them adapted from the English since all of the articles were unknown to the natives before the coming of the traders—faraoa (flour), ripine (ribbon), peni (pencil or pen), taofe (coffee), etc.
I myself was wondering what use I could make of some of my wealth. The flour I would give to Puarei, and his ten-ton cutter was badly in need of paint. Poura would be glad to have the dress goods for herself and her girls, for the Rutiaroans put aside their pareus on Sunday and dressed in European costume. I could also give her the mosquito netting as a drapery for the guest bed. I had, in fact, bought it with that end in mind, for on windless nights, particularly after
I was thinking with pleasure of his tolerance and of the comforting beverage I should have the following morning when I remembered that mine was green Tahiti coffee which must be taken to Moy Ling for roasting. His shop was deserted. I could see it at the end of the sunlit street, steaming with moisture after the rain. The open doorway was a square of black shadow. It lightened with a misty glimmer as I watched, and suddenly Moy flashed into view. He ran quickly down the steps, halted irresolutely, and stood for a moment, shading his eyes with his hand,
When one is without them, clothing, coffee, tobacco, and other such necessities assume a place of exaggerated importance, which is the reason why the memories of the earlier part of my stay at Rutiaro are tinged with the thought of them. But I had not come to the Low Islands to spend all of my time and energy in the mere fight for a comfortable existence. I could have done that quite as well at home, with greater results in the development of a more or less Crusoe-like resourcefulness. At Rutiaro the life was strange and new to me, and I found the days too short for observing it and the nights for reflecting upon it. My first interest, of course, was Puarei's household—the chief, his wife, two sons, and three daughters all housed in that one-room frame building. The room was commodious, however, about twenty-five feet by fifteen, and on the lagoon side there was a broad veranda where Poura and her daughters did much of their work and passed their hours of leisure. Behind the house was a large cistern, built of blocks of cemented coral, and a small outkitchen made of the odds and ends of packing cases and roofed with thatch.
I wondered at Puarei's preference for a board box
We spent but little time indoors. All of the cooking was done in the open, and we had our food there, sitting cross-legged around a cloth of green fronds. The trees around us furnished the dishes. I had not used my tin spoon and the two-pronged fork since the evening of my arrival, and learned to suck the miti sauce from my fingers with as loud a zest as any of them. Usually we had two meals a day at Rutiaro, but there was no regularity about the time of serving them. We ate when we were hungry and food was to be had, sometimes in the middle of the afternoon, and as late as ten in the evening. That is one reason why I remember so well the feasts prepared by Poura and her daughters, and served by them, for they never sat down to their own food until we had finished. Feasts of a simple kind, but, by Jove! how good everything tasted after a day of fishing and swimming in the lagoon or out at sea. I didn't tire of coconuts as quickly as I had feared I should; and the fish were prepared in a variety of ways—boiled, roasted over hot stones, grilled on the coals, or we ate them raw with a savor of miti sauce. Puarei's dog, one of the best fishers of the island, was the only member of the family discriminating in his requirements. He often came up while we were at dinner, with a live fish in his mouth, which he would lay at Poura's feet, looking at her appealingly until she cooked it for him. Sometimes, to tease him, she threw it away, but he would bring it back, and, no matter how hungry he might be, refuse to eat it raw.
One thing I had wanted from the first, above all others—a house. The idea of imposing indefinitely upon Puarei's hospitality was distasteful, and no boats were expected within five or six months. I had not, in years, lived for so long a period at any one place. Here was an opportunity I had often dreamed of for having a home of my own. I should have to ask the chief for it, and at first thought the request seemed a large one. Then, too, how could I say to him with any show of logic: "Puarei, I am not willing to bother you longer by occupying the guest bed in your house. Therefore, will you please give me a house to myself?" He might think I had peculiar ideas of delicacy. But further reflection convinced me that, while I could not ask him for a pair of trousers—not even for so trifling a thing as a shirt button, since he would have to purchase it at Moy Ling's store—I might legitimately suggest the gift of a house. It would cost only the labor of making it, and that was not great. At Rutiaro houses were built in less time than was needed to sail across the lagoon and back. The inhabitants might reasonably have adopted the early Chinese method of roasting pig by putting the carcasses in their dwellings and setting fire to the thatch. It would have been a
The upshot of the matter was that I was given not only a house, but an island of my own to set it on—I who had lived much of my life up four or five flights of stairs, in furnished rooms looking out on chimney pots and brick courts filled with odors and family washings. The site was a small motu lying at the entrance to the lagoon, four miles from the village island. It had a name which meant, "The place where the souls were eaten." Once, a man, his wife, and two children went there to fish on the reef near the pass. All of them were taken ill of some mysterious disease, and died on the same day. As their souls left their bodies they were seized and eaten by some vindictive human spirits in the form of sea birds. The legend was evidently a very ancient one, and the events which it described had happened so long ago that fear of the place had largely vanished. Nevertheless, the chief tried to persuade me to choose another site; and Poura, when she learned that I wanted to live on the Soul-Eaters' Island, was deeply concerned. Neither of them could understand why I should want to live away from the village island. I wince, even now, when I think of the appalling tactlessness of that request; but the fact is that the Paumotuans themselves, by their example, had got me into the vicious habit of truth-telling in such matters. There is no word in their language for tact. They believe that a man has adequate, although sometimes hidden, reasons for doing what he wants to
I had accepted, almost unconsciously, their own point of view, so that it didn't occur to me to invent any polite falsehoods. But my knowledge of Paumotuan was more limited than Paurei's knowledge of French, and how was I to explain my desire for so lonely a place as the Soul-Eaters' Island? The Paumotuans, from their scarcity of numbers, the isolation of their fragments of land, the dangers of the sea around them, are drawn together naturally, inevitably. How make clear to them the unnatural gregariousness of life in great cities? Suddenly I thought of my picture post card of the Woolworth Building. I told them that in America many people, thousands of them, were cooped together in houses of that sort. I had been compelled to spend several years in one and had got such a horror of the life that I had come all the way to the Cloud of Islands, searching for a place where I might be occasionally alone.
While the post card was passing from hand to hand, Huirai, the constable, loyal friend in every emergency, gave color to my explanation by describing—for the thousand and first time, I suppose—his adventures in San Francisco. Dusk deepened, the last ghostly light faded from the clouds along the northern horizon, and still he talked on; and the idlers on the chief's veranda listened with as keen interest as though they had never heard the story before. Poura, who was at work on my new wardrobe, lit a lamp and placed it on the floor beside her, shading it from her eyes with a piece of matting. The light ran smoothly over her brown hands, and the mountain of shadow
The story ended abruptly and Huirai sat down, conscious of the effect he had produced. No one spoke for a long while. Then the chief, who was sitting beside me, broke the silence with that strange Polynesian exclamation of wonder too great for words, "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!" uttered with distinct, rapid precision, like the staccato of machine-gun fire. He laid his hand on my knee affectionately, with an air of possessorship; and at the contact a feeling of pride rose in me, as though I were the planner of the cities, the magician whose brain had given birth to the marvels Huirai had described. But conceit of that kind may be measurably reduced by a moment of reflection, and I remembered that the extent of my contribution to my native land was that I had left it. Small cause for vanity there. However, I had no mind for another tussle with my conscience. I had been the indirect cause of eloquence in Huirai and of enjoyment in his auditors. That was enough for one evening on the credit side. On the other side, to Puarei, to Poura, to his children, and to all the kindly, hospitable people of Rutiaro I was under an obligation which I could never hope to cancel.
The Chinese language is richer, I believe, in terms implying obligation. I was reminded, less pleasantly, of another account on the debit side, by the flare of a match which lit up for a moment the pensive, cadaverous face of Moy Ling.
CHAPTER VIII
An Adventure in Solitude
I awoke sometime during the latter part of the night with the bemused presentiment that a longed-for event was approaching or in the process of happening. Hands had passed lightly over my face—either that or I had dreamed it—and I heard a faint shout coming from the borderland between sleeping and waking. Puarei's guest bed, with its billowy mattress of kapok, seemed strangely hard, which led to the discovery that I was not lying on a bed, but on a mat in the corner of an empty room. The floor was covered with crushed krora shell which made a faint radiance in the gloom, and a roof of green thatch was alight with the reflections of moving water. I was trying to puzzle out whose house this could be when I heard the shout again, clearly this time, in a pause of silence between deafening claps of thunder. From nearer at hand came the sound of subdued laughter. Something elfish, light-hearted in the quality of it, stirred a dim memory and there flashed into mind the lines of an old poem:
Come, dear children, come out and play.
The moon is shining as bright as day.
Up the ladder and over the wall—
Imagine coming out of the depths of sleep to the consciousness of such a scene! I was hardly more sure of the reality of it than I had been of the shout, the touch of hands. It was like a picture out of a book of fairy tales, but one quick with life, the figures coming and going against a background of empty sea where the
It was ordered—by chance, which took me there, perhaps—that I was never to see the place in the clear light of usual experience, but rather through a glamour like that of remembered dreams—a long succession of dreams in which, night after night, events shape themselves according to the heart's desire, or even more fantastically, with an airy disregard for any semblance to reality. So it was, waking from sleep on the first night which I spent under my own roof. I was almost ready to believe that my presence there was not the result of chance. Waywardness of fancy is one of the most godlike of the attributes of that divinity, but the display of it is as likely as not to be unfriendly. Here there seemed to be reasoned kindly action. "Providence," I said to myself—"Providence without a doubt; a little repentant, perhaps, because of questionable gifts in the past." A whimsical Providence, too, which delighted in shocking my sense of probability. What could those children be doing on Soul-Eaters' Island in the middle of the night? I, myself, had left the village island, four miles distant, only a few hours earlier, and at that time everyone was asleep. There was not a sound of human activity in the settlement; not a glimmer of light to be seen anywhere excepting in
I dressed very quietly and went to the door, taking care to keep well in the shadow so that I might look on for a moment without being seen. My doubts vanished at once. Not only the children had come out to play; fathers and mothers, as well. Tamitanga was there and Rikitia and Nahea and Pohu and Tahere and Hunga; Nui-Tane and Nui-Vahine, Tamataha, Manono, Havaiki; and I saw old Rangituki, who was at least seventy and a grandmother several times over, clapping her hands with others of her generation and swaying from side to side in time to the music of Kaupia's accordion. All the older people were grouped around Puarei, who was seated in an old deck chair, a sort of throne which was carried about for him wherever he went. Poura, his wife, lay on a mat beside him, her chin propped on her hands. Both greeted me cordially, but offered no explanation for the reason of the midnight visit. I was glad that they didn't. I liked the casualness of it, which was quite in keeping with habits of life at Rutiaro. But I couldn't help smiling, remembering my reflections earlier in the evening. I believed then that I was crossing the threshold of what was to be an adventure in solitude, and was in a mood of absurdly youthful elation at the prospect. "I was to delve deeply, for the
So I had dreamed as I paddled down the lagoon, with my island taking form against the starlit sky to the eastward. It was one of those places which set one to dreaming, which seem fashioned by nature for the enjoyment of a definite kind of experience. Seeing it, whether by day or by night, the most gregarious of men, I am sure, would have become suddenly enamored of his own companionship and the most prosaic would have discovered a second, meditative self which pleads for indulgence with gentle obstinacy. But, alas! my own unsocial nature gained but a barren victory, being robbed, at the outset, of the fruits of it, by the seventy-five convivial inhabitants of Rutiaro. Here within six hours was half the village at my door, and Puarei told me that the rest of it, or as many as were provided with canoes, was following. Evidently he had suggested the invasion. My new house needed warming—or the Paumotuan equivalent to that festival—so they had come to warm it.
I was sorry that Tino, supercargo of the Caleb S. Winship, could not be present to see how blithely the work went forward. He had called the people of Rutiaro a lazy lot, and he was right—they were lazy, according to the standards of temperate climates. But when they worked toward an end which pleased them their industry was astonishing. Tino's belief was that man was made to labor, whether joyfully or not, in order that he might increase his wealth, whether he needed it or not, and that of the world at large. I remember meeting somewhat the same point of view in reading the lives and memoirs of some of the old missionaries to the islands. It seems to have irked them terribly, finding a people who had never heard that doleful hymn, "Work, for the Night Is Coming." They, too, believed that the needs of the Polynesians should be increased, but for ethical reasons, in order that they should be compelled to cultivate regular habits of industry in order to satisfy them. Although I didn't agree with it, Tino's seemed to me the sounder conviction. The missionaries might have argued as reasonably for a general distribution of Job-like boils, in order that the virtues of patience and fortitude might have wider dissemination. But neither trade nor religion had altered to any noticeable extent the habits
Puarei was in a gay mood. Religion sat rather heavily upon him sometimes—by virtue of his Papeete schooling, he was the chief elder of his church; but once he sloughed off his air of Latter Day Saintliness he made a splendid master of revels; and he threw it aside the moment the drums began to beat, and led a dozen of the younger men in a dance which I had not seen before. It was very much like modern Swedish drill set to music, except that the movements were as intricate and graceful as they were exhausting. Three kinds of drums were used—one, an empty gasoline tin, upon which the drummer kept up a steady roll while the dance was in progress. The rhythm for the movements was indicated by three others, two of them beating hollowed cylinders of wood, while a third was provided with an old French army drum of the Napoleonic period. The syncopation was extraordinary. Measures were divided in an amazing variety of ways, and often when the opportunity seemed lost the fragments joined perfectly just as the next one was at hand. The music was a kaleidoscope in sound, made up of unique and startling variations in tempo, as the dance moved from one figure to the next.
At the close of it Kaupia took up her accordion again, and dancing by some of the women followed. At length, Rangituki, grandmother though she was, could resist the music no longer. The others gave way to her, and in a moment she was dancing alone, proudly, with a sort of wistful abandon, as though she were remembering her youth, throwing a last defiance in the teeth of Time. Kaupia sang as she played to an air
Tu fra to potta mi,
Tu fra to potta mi.
Both the words and the air had a familiar sound. They called to mind a shadowy picture of three tall, thin women in spangled skirts, all of them beating tambourines in unison and dancing in front of a painted screen. I couldn't account for the strange vision at first. It glimmered faintly, far in the depths of subconscious memory, like a colored newspaper supplement, lying in murky water at the end of a pier. Suddenly it rose into focus, drawn to the surface by the buoyant splendor of a name—the Cherry Sisters. I remembered then a vaudeville troupe which long ago made sorry capital of its lack of comeliness; and I saw them again on the island where the souls were eaten as clearly as ever I had as a youngster, knocking their tambourines on bony elbows, shaking their curls, and singing
"Shoe, fly, don't bother me,"
in shrill, cracked voices. Kaupia's version was merely a phonetic translation of the words. They meant nothing in the Paumotuan dialect; and—old woman though she was—Rangituki's dance, which accompanied the music, played in faster and faster time, was in striking contrast to the angular movements of the Cherry Sisters, tripping it in the background, across the dim footlights of the eighteen nineties.
Other canoes were arriving during this time, and at
Knowing the wholesomeness of the Paumotuan appetite, I could understand why the loss of the chickens was regarded seriously. A dozen of them remained, and we had eight pigs weighing from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds each, to say nothing of some fifty pounds of fish. All of this was good, in so far as it went, but there was a gloomy shaking of heads as we returned from our fruitless chase. Not that the Paumotuans are particularly fond of chicken; on the contrary, they don't care greatly for fowl of any sort, but it serves to fill odd corners of their capacious stomachs. It was this they were thinking of, and the possible lack, at the end of the feast, of the feeling of almost painful satiety which is to them an essential after-dinner sensation. In this emergency I contributed four one-pound tins of beef and salmon, my entire stock of substantial provisions for the adventure in solitude; but I could see that Puarei, as well as the others, regarded this as a mere relish—a wholly acceptable but light course of hors-d'oeuvre. Fortunately there was at hand an inexhaustible reservoir of food—the sea—and we prepared to go there for further supplies. I never lost an opportunity to witness those fish-spearing expeditions. Once I had tried my hand as a participant and found myself as dangerously out of my element as a Paumotuan would be at
The experiment convinced me that fish spearing in the open sea is not an easily acquired art, but one handed down in its perfection through at least twenty generations of Low Island ancestors. It is falling into disuse in some of the atolls where wealth is accumulating and tinned food plentiful; but the inhabitants of Rutiaro still follow it with old-time zest. They handle their spears affectionately, as anglers handle and sort their flies. These are true sportsman's weapons, provided with a single unbarbed dart, bound with sinnet to a tapering shaft from eight to ten feet long. Their water goggles, like their spears, they make for themselves. They are somewhat like an aviator's goggles, disks of clear glass fitted in brass rims, with an inner cushion of rubber which cups closely around the eyes, preventing the entrance of water. When adjusted they give the wearer an owlish appearance, like the horn-rimmed spectacles which used to be affected by American undergraduates. Thus equipped, with their pareus girded into loin cloths, a half dozen of the younger men jumped into the rapid current which flows past Soul-Eaters' Island and swam out to sea.
Tohetika, Tehina, Pinga (the boat steerer), and I followed in a canoe. Dawn was at hand and, looking back, I saw the island, my house, and the crowd on the beach in the suffused, unreal light of sun and fading
Through the clear water I could see every crevice and cranny in the shelving slope of coral; the mouths of gloomy caverns which undermined the reef, and swarms of fish, as strangely colored as the coral itself, passing through them, flashing across sunlit spaces, or hovering in the shadows of overhanging ledges. It was a strange world to look down upon and stranger still to see men moving about in it as though it were their natural home. Sometimes they grasped their spears as a poniard would be held for a downward blow; sometimes with the thumb forward, thrusting with an underhand movement. They were marvelously quick and accurate at striking. I had a nicer appreciation of their skill after my one attempt, which had proven to me how difficult it is to judge precisely the distance, the location of the prey, and the second for the thrust. A novice was helpless. He suffered under the heavy pressure of the water, and the long holding of his breath
As they searched the depths to the seaward side the bodies of the fishers grew shadowy, vanished altogether, reappeared as they passed over a lighter background of blue or green which marked an invisible shoal. At last they would come clearly into view, the spear held erect, rising like embodied spirits through an element of matchless purity which seemed neither air nor water. The whistling noises which they made as they regained the surface gave the last touch of unreality to the scene. I have never understood the reason for this practice which is universal among the divers and fishers of the Low Islands, unless it is that their lungs, being famished for air, they breathe it out grudgingly through half-closed teeth. Heard against the thunder of the surf, the sounds, hoarse or shrill, according to the wont of the diver, seemed anything but human.
We returned in an hour's time with the canoe half filled with fish—square-nosed tinga-tingas, silvery tamures, brown spotted kitos, gnareas; we had more than made good the loss of the chickens. The preparations for the feast had been completed. The table was set or, better, the cloth of green fronds was laid on the ground near the beach. At each place there was a tin of my corned beef or salmon; the half of a coconut shell filled with raw fish, cut into small pieces in a sauce of miti haari—salted coconut milk—and a green coconut for drinking. Along the center of the table were great piles of fish, baked and raw; roast pork and chicken; mounds of bread stacked up like cannon
It was then about half past six, a seasonable hour for the feast, for the air was still cool and fresh. The food was steaming on the table, but we were not yet ready to sit down to it. FÊte days, like Sundays, required costumes appropriate to the occasion, and everyone retired into the bush to change clothing. I thought then that I was to be the only disreputable banqueter of the lot, and regretted that I had been so eager to see my new house. Not expecting visitors, I had come away from the village with only my supply of food. Fortunately, Puarei had been thoughtful for me. I found not only my white clothing, but my other possessions—bolts of ribbon, perfume, the cheap jewelry, etc., which I had bought, on credit, of Moy Ling. And the house itself had been furnished and decorated during the hour when I was out with the fish spearers. There was a table and a chair, made of bits of old packing cases, in one corner; and on the sleeping mat a crazy quilt and a pillow with my name worked in red silk within a border of flowers. Hanging from the ceiling was a faded papier-machÉ bell, the kind one sees in grocers' windows at home at Christmas time. This was originally the gift of some trader; and the pictures, too, which decorated the walls. They had been cut from the advertising pages of some
The sight of him offering me his useful little instrument put an end to my meditation. I rubbed ruefully a three days' growth of beard, thinking of the torture in store for me when I should next go to Pinga for a shave. He was the village barber, as well as its most skillful boat steerer. His other customers were used to his razor and his methods, and their faces were inured to pain; for had not their ancestors, through countless generations, had their beards plucked out hair by hair? I, on the other hand, was the creature of my own land of creature comforts. The anticipation of a shave was agony, and the realization—Pinga sitting on my chest, holding my head firm with one immense hand while he scraped and rasped with his dull razor—that was to die weekly and to live to die again. I got what amusement I could from the thought of the different set of values at Rutiaro. I had only to ask for a house, and Puarei had given me one, with an island of my own to set it on. He thought no more of the request than if I had asked him for a drinking coconut. But not all the wealth of the Low Island pearl fisheries, had it been mine to offer, could have procured for me a safety razor with a dozen good blades.
I heard Puarei shouting, "Haere mai ta maa!" and went out to join the others, my unshaved beard in woeful contrast to my immaculate white clothing.
The enjoyment of food is assuredly one of the great blessings of life, although it is not a cause for perpetual smiling, as the writers of advertisements would have one believe. According to the Low Island way of thinking, it is not a subject to be talked about at any length. I liked their custom of eating in silence, with everyone giving undivided attention to the business in hand. It gave one the privilege of doing likewise, a relief to a man weary of the unnatural dining habits of more advanced people. It may be a trifle gross to think of your food while you are eating it, but it is natural and, if the doctors are to be believed, an excellent aid to digestion. Now and then Puarei would say, "É mea maitai, tera" ("A thing good, that"), tapping a haunch of roast pork with his forefinger. And I would reply, "É, É mea maitai roa, tera" ("Yes, a thing very good, that"). Then we would fall to eating again. On my right, Hunga went from fish to pork and from pork to tinned beef, whipping the miti haari to his lips with his fingers without the loss of a drop. Only once he paused for a moment and let his eyes wander the length of the table. Shaking his head with a sigh of satisfaction, he said, "Katinga ahuru katinga" ("Food and yet more food"). There is no phrase sweeter to Paumotuan ears than that one.
Clipped to his undershirt he wore a fountain pen, which was as much a part of his costume on those dress occasions as his dungaree trousers and pandanus hat. It had a broken point, was always dry, and, although Huirai read fairly well, he could hardly write his own name. No matter. He would no more have forgotten his pen than a French soldier his Croix de guerre. But he was not alone in his love for these implements of the popaa's (white man's) culture. There was Havaiki, for example, who owned a small
A further account of the feast at Soul-Eaters' Island would be nothing more than a detailed statement of the amount of food consumed, and it would not be credited as truthful. It is enough to say that it was a Latter Day miracle, comparable to the feeding of the five thousand, with this reversal of the circumstances—that food for approximately that number was eaten by twenty-two men. At last Puarei sat back with a groan of content and said, "AuÉ! Paia 'huru paia to tatou." It is impossible to translate this literally, but the exact meaning is, "We are all of us full up to the neck." It was true. We were. That is, all of the men. The women and children were waiting, and as soon as we gave them place they set to on the remnants. Fortunately, there was, as Hunga had said, food and yet more food, so that no one went hungry. At the close of the feast I saw old Rangituki take a fragment of coconut frond and weave it into a neat basket. Then she gathered into it all of the fish bones and hung the
It was midmorning before the last of the broken meats had been removed and the beach made tidy. The breeze died away, and the shadows of the palms moved only with the imperceptible advance of the sun. It was a time for rest, for quiet meditation, and all of the older people were gathered in the shade, gazing out over a sea as tranquil as their minds, as lonely as their lives had always been and would always be. I knew that they would remain thus throughout the day, talking a little, after the refreshment of light slumbers, but for the most part sitting without speech or movement, their consciousness crossed by vague thoughts which would stir it scarcely more than the cat's-paw ruffled the surface of the water. No sudden, half-anguished realization of the swift passage of time would disturb the peace of their reverie; no sense of old loss to be retrieved would goad them into swift and feverish action.
A land crab moved across a strip of sunlight and sidled into his hole, pulling his grotesque little shadow
CHAPTER IX
The Starry Threshold
THE only visible reminder which I have now of my residence on "the island where the souls were eaten" is a pocket notebook of penciled comment, with a dozen pages, blank and fair, at the back—in themselves a reminder of the fragmentary nature of that adventure in solitude, of the blank pages at the close of every chapter of experience, awaiting the final comment which is never set down. It is a small notebook of Chinese manufacture, with a pretty fantasy of flowers woven through the word "Memoranda," and butterflies with wings of gold-and-blue hovering over it, meant to suggest, perhaps, that one's memories, however happy or however seemingly enduring, are as ephemeral as they and must soon fade and die. But I am not willing to accept such a suggestion, to believe that I can ever forget even the most trivial of the events which took place at Rutiaro or at Soul-Eaters' Island. By some peculiar virtue of their own they stand out with the vividness of portions of childhood experience which remains fixed in the memory when other more important happenings have been long forgotten.
The casual reader of the notebook would never guess this from the comment written there. Did he know
But I was rebuked—or so it seemed to me—and now, I fear, the learned monograph is never to be written. A faltering purpose is plainly indicated in the notebook. It becomes apparent in the first observation on "The Life and Character of the Paumotuans," which reads:
Before the starry threshold of Jove's court
My mansion is; where those immortal shapes
Of bright aËrial spirits live ensphered
In regions mild, of calm and serene air.
The president of the Polynesian society would say, and rightly, no doubt, that this is not germane to the subject. But at the time I wrote it it was so accurately descriptive of the place where my house stood that it might have been embodied with scarcely the exchange of a word in an exact real-estate announcement of the location of my property. I set it down one evening in early summer, the evening of my first day's residence at Soul-Eaters' Island. The completion of my house had been celebrated with a feast, and toward midnight I was left alone, watching the departure of the last of the villagers, who were returning in their canoes along the ocean side of the atoll. The sea was as calm as I have ever seen it, and as they went homeward, dipping their paddles into the shining tracks of the stars, my guests were singing an old chant. It was one of innumerable verses, telling of an evil earth spirit in the form of a sea bird which was supposed to make its home on the motu, and at the end of each verse the voices of the women rose in the refrain which I could hear long after the canoes had passed from sight:
"AuÉ! AuÉ!
Te nehenehe É!"
("Alas! Alas!
How beautiful it is!")
a lament that a spirit so vindictive, so pitiless, should be so fair to outward seeming.
Standing at the starry threshold, listening to the
"The Paumotuans are very fond of perfume. This is probably due to the fact that their islands, being scantly provided with flowers and sweet-smelling herbs, they take this means of satisfying their craving for fragrant odors."
Alas! Alas!
How erroneous it was!
that observation. But I thought when I made it that it was based upon a careful enough consideration of the
I thought no more of the episode until the following Sunday when I went to church at the village. A combined service of Latter Day Saints and the Reformed Church of Latter Day Saints was being held, an
The church was full, the men sitting on one side and the women on the other, according to island custom, and the children playing about on the floor between the benches. Many of the older people, too, sat on the floor with their backs to the posts which supported the roof. Interest lagged during the intervals between the singing, and although Huirai was preaching in his usual forceful, denunciatory manner, I found my own thoughts wandering on secular paths. Of a sudden it occurred to me that June Rose should be discernible among the women of the congregation if it had as much body as had been claimed for it. But I could not detect its presence nor did the faintest breath reach me from the forest floor. I was conscious only of the penetrating odor of drying copra which came through the open windows and the not unpleasant smell of coconut oil.
What had become of the perfume, I wondered. On Sunday, if at all, it should have been in evidence, for
"Ua taparahi Kaina ia Abela (Cain killed Abel).... Why did he kill him?... Because he was a bad man, a
Huirai talked at great length on this theme, the members of the congregation sometimes listening and sometimes conversing among themselves. They had no scruples about interrupting the sermon. While Huirai was awaiting further inspiration hymns were started by the women and taken up at once by the others. Pinga, who sang bass parts, rocked back and forth to the cadence, one hand cupped over his right ear, the better to enjoy the effect of the music. Rangituki, who went to the different churches in turn, because of the himines, had one of her granddaughters in her lap, and while she sang made a careful examination of the child's head, in search of a tiny parasite which favored that nesting place. Nui-Vahine sat with her breast bare, suckling a three-months-old baby. Old men and women and young, even the children, sang. Huirai alone was silent, gazing with moody abstraction over the heads of the congregation as he pondered further the ethical points at issue in the Cain and Abel story.
I had witnessed many scenes like this during the months spent in cruising among the atolls on the Caleb S. Winship—scenes to interest one again and again and to furnish food for a great deal of futile speculation. How important a thing in the lives of these primitive people is this religion of ours which has
Sunday, March 5, 1797.
The morning was pleasant, and with a gentle breeze we had, by seven o'clock, got abreast of the district of Atahooroo, whence we saw several canoes putting off and paddling toward us with great speed; at the same time it fell calm, which, being in their favor, we soon counted seventy-four canoes around us, many of them double ones, containing about twenty persons each. Being so numerous, we endeavored to keep them from crowding on board; but, in spite of all our efforts to prevent it, there were soon not less than one hundred of them dancing and capering like frantic persons about our decks, crying, "Tayo! Tayo!" and a few broken sentences of English were often repeated. They had no weapons of any kind among them; however, to keep them in awe, some of the great guns were ordered to be hoisted out of the hold whilst they, as free from apprehension as the intention of mischief, cheerfully assisted to put them on their carriages. When the first ceremonies were over, we began to view our new friends with an eye of inquiry; their wild, disorderly behavior, strong smell of coconut oil, together with the tricks of the arreoies, lessened the favorable opinion we had formed of them; neither could we see aught of that elegance and beauty in their women for which they have been so greatly celebrated. This at first seemed to depreciate them in the estimation of our brethren; but the cheerfulness, good nature, and generosity of these kind people soon removed the momentary prejudices.... They continued to go about the decks till the transports of their joy gradually subsided, when many of them left us of their own accord.... Those who remained, in number
How clear a picture one has of the scene, described by men whose purity of faith, whose sincerity of belief, were beyond question. But one smiles a little sadly at the thought of their austerity, their total lack of that other divine attribute—a sense of humor. "Tayo! Tayo!" ("Friend! Friend!") the Tahitians cried, and the missionaries, to requite them for their kindly welcome, organized a prayer meeting an hour and a quarter in length, and sang, "O'er the Gloomy Hills of Darkness." It was a prophecy, that song. The Tahitians and others of the Polynesian family have gone far on that road since 1797.
Of course one doesn't blame the missionaries for this; but it seems to me that the chief benefit resulting from the Christianizing process is that it has offset some of the evils resulting from the rest of the civilizing process. This was not the opinion of Tino, supercargo of the Caleb S. Winship, however. I remember a conversation which I had with him on the subject, when Rutiaro itself lay within view, but still far distant. For the sake of argument I had made some willfully disparaging remark about traders, and Tino had taken exception to it.
"You're wrong," he said. "You know as well as I do—or maybe you don't—what these people used to be: cannibals, and not so many years ago at that. I
That was a new angle of vision to me. I said nothing, but I thought I could detect a hint of a smile in his eyes as he waited for the statement to sink in.
"I have had some fun in my time," he went on, "arguing this out with the missionaries. I say tinned beef and they say the four gospels. Can't be proved either way, of course. But suppose, right now, every trading schooner in the archipelago was to lay a course for Papeete. Suppose not one of them was to go back to the atolls for the next twenty-five years. Leave the people to themselves, as you say, and let them have their missionaries, with the Golden Rule in one hand and the Ten Commandments in the other. What chance would they have of dying a natural death? The missionaries, I mean. About as much chance as I have of getting old Maroaki at Taka Raro to pay me the eight hundred francs he owes me.
"What makes me laugh inside is that the missionaries are so serious about the influence they have had on the natives. I could tell them some things—but what would be the use? They wouldn't believe me. Just before we left Papeete this time I was talking to one of the Protestants. He told me that his Church had two thousand converts in French Oceania, while the Catholics had only around six hundred, I believe it was. I said that I knew how he could get that extra six hundred into his own fold, and probably a good many more if he wanted to. All he had to do was to charter my schooner, load her with Tahiti produce—bananas, mangoes, oranges, breadfruit; he needn't take
"That's about what happened at Taka Raro the last time I was down there. The population is supposed to be divided about half and half between the Latter Day Saints and the Catholics. There are no missionaries living on the island. The head churches in Papeete send their men around when they can to see how things are going with their flocks. That is usually about once a year for each of them. Boats don't often put in at Taka Raro. I've been there only four times in ten years, myself, and the last time I brought down a young fellow from the Protestant crowd. He had been with me the whole cruise, holding services at the islands where I had put in for copra. I hadn't gone to any of them, but at Taka Raro I felt the need of some religion. I had spent the whole day chasing that Maroaki I spoke about. The old rascal has owed me that eight hundred francs since nineteen ten. He is an elder in his church too. The minute he makes out my schooner standing in toward the pass off he goes on important business to the far end of the lagoon. I went after him that day, with my usual luck. He wasn't to be found, and I came back to the village feeling a bit ruffled up.
This conversation with Tino was running through my mind as I strolled down the village island after the service. Tino, I decided, was prejudiced. His was the typical trader's point of view. I had heard many other incidents which bore him out in his findings, but they came usually from men interested in exploiting the islands commercially. Huirai's exposition of the old biblical story—was that merely the result of a prolonged tinned-beef crusade? Remembering the kind of sacrifice which was discussed, very likely on this very island, in the days of pure heathendom, such a conclusion seemed fantastical. No, one must be fair to the missionaries. Perhaps they were over-zealous at times, oversanguine about the results of their efforts—so were all human beings in whatever line of endeavor; but their accomplishment had been undeniably great. Here were people living orderly, quiet lives. They didn't drink, although in the early days of their contact with civilization—until quite recently, in fact—there had been terrible orgies of intoxication. To overcome that was, in itself, a worthwhile accomplishment on the part of the Church. Only a few weeks before I had met Monsieur Ferlys, the administrator of the Paumotus, at Taenga. "The reign of alcohol is over," he had said to the islanders there—strange words, coming from the lips of a Frenchman. There was to be no more rum nor gin nor wine for any of the Paumotuans. Henceforth, any
I continued my walk to the far end of the island and, selecting a shady spot, sat down to rest. The pressure of a notebook in my hip pocket interrupted my examination of the problem, "The missionary versus the trader as a civilizing influence." I was reminded that I had made no recent observations on the life and character of the Paumotuans, and the recollection was annoying. Was I never to be able to pursue, in indolence, my unprofitable musings? Why this persistent feeling that I must set them down in black and white? Why sully the fair pages of my notebook? Words, words! The world was buried beneath their visible manifestations, and still the interminable clacking of innumerable typewriters, the roar of glutted presses. In the mind's eye I saw magnificent forests being destroyed to feed this depraved appetite for words, which were piled mountain high in libraries; which encumbered all the attics in Christendom. Words, blowing about the streets and littering the parks on Sundays; filling the ash carts on Mondays. "No," I thought, "I will no longer be guilty of adding to the sum of words. I'll not write my learned monograph." But that inner voice, which itself is a creature born of many words—an artificial thing, however insistent its utterance—spoke out loud and clear: "You idler! You waster of your inheritance of energy! You throwback to barbarism—write!"
"But why?" I replied. "Tell me that! Why?"
"Sir, because it is your vocation. And have you no convictions? Your grandfather had them, and your great-grandfather, and those missionaries of the Duff
I know that I should have no peace until I did, so I drew forth my notebook and, in line with my thoughts of a moment before, wrote, underneath the last observation on perfume: "The sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages among these islands is now prohibited by law. It is strange to find such legislation in territory under French administration. Is the prohibition movement to become world-wide, then? Is the reign of alcohol doomed in all lands?"
Exhausted by the mental effort, but somewhat easier in conscience, I replaced the notebook in my pocket. It was pleasant then to let the mind lie fallow or to occupy it with the reception of mere visual impressions. At length, although I didn't sleep, I was scarcely more animate then the fluted shell lying close by on the beach or the kopapa bushes which formed a green inclosure around my resting place.
Something whirled through the air over my head and fell with a light splash in the water before me. I sat gazing at it without curiosity, hardly moved, so slowly does one come out of the depths of dreamless reverie. Little waves pushed the object gently shoreward until it lay, rolling back and forth in a few inches of clear water. "What!" I shouted. I didn't actually shout—I didn't open my lips; but the shock of astonishment seemed vocal—as loud as a blare of
I passed the furtive revelers unnoticed by going along the lagoon beach, keeping under the screen of kopapa bushes. Should I tell Puarei, the chief, of this evasion of the law? I decided that I would not, for he was a stern man and would punish the culprits severely. After all, on an island where there were so few distractions, what was a little perfume among friends?
All of which proves plainly enough, it seems to me, the folly of keeping a notebook; at any rate, the folly of jumping hastily to conclusions.
I find no other observations on Paumotuan life and character, under this date, unless the word, "Mama-faaamu" scribbled on the margin of a leaf, may be regarded as a discouraged hint at one; a suggestion for a commentary on a curious Polynesian relationship, when—and only when—I should have had time to gather all of the available data concerning it. This relationship has to do with the transfer of a child, or children, from the original blood parents to another set known as "feeding-parents." My interest in the practice dates from the moment when I made my first notebook reference to it, and it was aroused in a very casual, leisurely fashion. For this reason it will be best, I think, to tell the story of it in a leisurely way.
Returning to the village from the scene of the perfume orgy, I found the church still occupied, although the service was long over. The benches had been stacked in one corner; the mats shaken out and spread again on the floor, where fifteen or twenty people were reclining at ease or sitting native fashion—some of them talking, some sleeping, some engaged in light tasks such as hat weaving and the fashioning of pearl-shell fish hooks; others in the yet more congenial task of doing nothing at all. It was the practice, on Sunday, for the village to gather at the Reformed church, which they felt at liberty to use for secular as well as for sacred purposes, for it was a native-built structure, with walls and roof of thatch, like those of their own houses. The two other churches were never so used. They were frame buildings, in the
I was thinking of this and other primitive reactions to ecclesiastical furniture, and my hand was faltering toward my notebook pocket when Huirai's little daughter, Manava, entered the church, carrying a white cloth which she spread on the pulpit table. She returned a moment later with a tin of sardines, some boiled rice on a kahaia leaf, and a bowl of tea. I was Huirai's guest for the day, and had been anxiously awaiting some evidence that food was on the way; but I had not expected that it would be served in the church. I had not eaten a church dinner since boyhood, and, strangely enough, the memory of some of those early feasts came back to me while Manava was setting the table. As one scene is superimposed upon another on a moving-picture screen, I saw an American village of twenty years ago—a village of board sidewalks and quiet, shaded streets bright with dandelions, taking ghostly form and transparency among the palms of Rutiaro. Two small boys walked briskly along, ringing hand bells, and shouting, "Dinner at the Pres-by-terian church ri-i-i-ight awa-a-a-ay." The G. A. R. band—a fife, two tenor drums, and one bass—played outside the church where the crowd was gathering, and horses, attached to buggies and spring wagons, were pawing the earth around the hitching
Church dinners at Rutiaro were not such sumptuous affairs. They were not, in fact, an integral part of the community life. In so far as I know, this was the only one ever held there and was the result of Huirai's peculiar notions of the hospitality due a white man. I told him that I was not accustomed to dining in churches at home, even on Sunday, and, furthermore, that I liked companionship at table. But he was not convinced, and he refused to join me. He and his family had already eaten, he said; so I sat on a box
I smiled inwardly at the thought of the inheritance of prestige, granted me without question, at Rutiaro, merely because I was the sole representative there of a so-called superior race. No white wasters had preceded me at the atoll. This was fortunate in a way, for it gave me something to live up to—the ideal Rutiaroan conception of the popaa—white man. Huirai was partly responsible for the fact that it was ideal. His tales of San Francisco—which, to the Paumotuan, means America—had been steadily growing in splendor. He seemed to have forgotten whatever he may have seen there of misery or incompetence or ugliness. All Americans were divinities of a sort. Their energy was superhuman; their accomplishment, as exemplified in ships, trains, buildings, automobiles, moving-picture theaters—beyond all belief unless one had actually seen those things. And the meanest of them lived on a scale of grandeur far surpassing that of the governor of the Paumotus at Fakavava. Yes, I had something to live up to at Rutiaro. The necessity was flattering, to be sure, but it cost some effort and inconvenience to meet it. I didn't dare look as slack as I often felt, both mentally and physically. I could not even sit on the floor, or stretch out at my ease, when in a native house; and I was compelled, when eating, to resume the use of my two-pronged fork and the small tin spoon, although it was much simpler and easier to eat with my fingers as the rest of them did.
Having finished my meal, I took what comfort prestige permitted by placing my box by the wall and leaning back against a post. Takiero, a woman of
I blundered atrociously in asking that question. Without meaning to, I touched her pride as a woman, as a mother. Takiero looked at me for a moment without speaking. Then she tore open her dress and gave me absolute proof—not that I wanted it—of her ability to nurse her own or any other child. Following this, she went over to where Nui-Vahine was sitting, snatched the baby from her arms, and almost smothered it against her body. She fondled it, kissed it, covered it with her magnificent hair. I had never before seen such a display of savage and tender maternal passion.
By that time Nui-Vahine had recovered from her astonishment and came to the defense of her own. Her month of motherhood gave her claims to the child, apparently, and she tried to enforce them physically. Takiero stood her ground, her black eyes flaming and, holding the baby in one arm, pushed Nui-Vahine away with the other. I expected to see hair flying, but, luckily, both women found their tongues at the same moment. They were like—they were, in fact—two superb cats, spitting at each other. The torrent of words did not flow smoothly. It came in hot, short bursts, like salvos of machine-gun fire, and,
When I left the village to return to Soul-Eaters' Island Takiero was still playing the old border ballad on my ocharina. It had once been my favorite air for that instrument. I first heard it in northern France on a blustering winter evening when a brigade of English regiments was marching, under heavy shell fire, into one of the greatest battles of the war, to the music of pipes and drums. Humming the air now,
Should there be some other Polynesian scholar who wishes to pursue farther an inquiry into a curious practice of child adoption I would advise extreme caution at an atoll far on the southeasterly fringe of the Low Archipelago.
The place may easily be identified; for he will find there a young woman of barbaric beauty who will be playing "Conquer the North" on an ocharina.
CHAPTER X
Costly Hospitality
FOR an authentic test of one's capacity for solitude—or better, perhaps, for convincing proof of the lack of it—two conditions are essential: complete isolation—that goes without saying, of course; and the assurance that such isolation will not be broken into. At Soul-Eaters' Island I expected to find both of these conditions fulfilled. My house was four miles from the settlement, but in reality I had no more seclusion there than a hermit whose retreat is within easy walking distance of a summer hotel. Visitors came in canoes, in cutters; and as the pass and the reef on either side of it were a favorite fishing ground many of them came prepared to spend the day, or the night, or both.
It is as well, perhaps, that the event fell out as it did. If life is to keep its fine zest many wished-for experiences must be perpetually unrealized, and we perpetually following our alluring phantoms until we tumble headlong out of existence. Not having been put to the proof, I may still persuade myself that I am a lover of solitude, gifted for the enjoyment of it beyond other men. Meanwhile, at Soul-Eaters' Island, I had a further experience with Moy Ling, the Chinese storekeeper,
Some time after I had taken up residence there the village came in a body to the adjacent island on the other side of the pass. During the year they moved in this way from one piece of land to another, collecting the ripe coconuts and making their copra on the spot. The land was not owned in common, but they worked it in common; and as house building was a simple matter, instead of going back and forth from the village, they erected temporary shelters and remained at each island in turn until the work there was finished. They were not unremitting toilers. After an hour or two of copra making in the cool of the early morning they were content to call it a day, and spent the rest of the time at more congenial occupations—swimming, fishing, visiting back and forth, talking forever of the arrival of the last trading schooner and the probable date of arrival of the next one.
During all of this time I kept open house, and since I was indebted to nearly all of my friendly visitors for past hospitalities I felt that it was necessary to make returns. Unfortunately, I had nothing to make returns with, except such supplies of provisions and trade goods as I was able to purchase on credit of Moy Ling. Fish were abundant in the lagoon, and a few minutes of fine sport each day more than supplied my wants; but I knew that fish was not acceptable to palates long accustomed to little else. Furthermore, having accepted, at the time of my arrival at Rutiaro, the role of the generous, affluent popaa, I had to carry it through. As previously related, although I had been left at Rutiaro unexpectedly, the
Having traded upon the native tradition of the mysterious affluence of all white men by opening up a credit account with the Chinaman I had to sustain his confidence in my ability to cancel it at once if I choose; and, feeling inwardly abject, it was all the more necessary to maintain a reassuring front in the face of his growing anxiety. It was growing. I could see that. He never actually dunned me, but I escaped the humiliating experience only by making additional purchases on so vast a scale, according to island standards, that even Moy seemed to be awed, for brief periods, into a stupefied acceptance of the mysteriously affluent myth. I, myself, was awed when I thought of the size of my bill. Trade goods carried across thousands of miles of ocean are more than usually expensive. A one-pound tin of bully beef cost nine francs, and other things were proportionally dear. The worst of it was that Moy's stock of supplies was much larger than I had at first supposed. He had a warehouse adjoining his store which was full of them, and so, with guests making constant demands upon my hospitality, I was forced to buy with the greater abandon as his confidence waned. But I returned from these encounters with a washed-out feeling, regretting
Relief came in histrionic, eleventh-hour fashion. Providence saved me when I thought Pride was riding me to a starry fall. One evening I paddled across to the other island for further supplies. Huirai and his family had been staying with me for several days. Fishing was better on my side of the lagoon pass, he said, but I think his real purpose in coming had been to eat my, or, rather, Moy Ling's tinned beef. At any rate, when they returned I had nothing left. It was still fairly early, but no one was abroad in the village street. There was a light in Moy's shop, however, and looking through the open window I saw him sitting at a table with his adding machine before him. He was counting aloud in Chinese, his long, slim fingers playing skilfully over the wooden beads which slid back and forth on the framework with a soft, clicking sound, and as he bent over columns of figures the lamp light filled the hollows of his cheeks and temples with pits of shadow. In repose his face was as expressionless as that of a corpse. I felt my courage going as I looked at it. What chance had I of carrying through successfully this game of beggarman's bluff? How long could I hope to maintain the fiction of affluence before a man wise with the inherited experience of centuries of shopkeeping ancestors? I had a moment of panic, and before I realized what I was doing I had entered the shop and had asked for my bill.
Moy slip-slopped into his back room and returned with a large packet of old newspapers. He was a frugal soul and kept his accounts, as he ordered his life—with
Thank Heaven for righteous anger! Thank Heaven for anger which is only moderately righteous. I knew that I had bought lavishly, but I had kept a rough estimate of the amount of my purchases, and I also knew that Moy had added at least 10 per cent to his legitimate profit. He had reasoned, no doubt, that a man who bought on mere whim, without asking the price of anything, would settle his obligation as thoughtlessly as he had incurred it. And I would of course. This was necessary if I were to live up to native tradition in the grand style. But when I saw how costly the game had become, and how thoroughly Moy had entered into the spirit of it, too, I felt indignant; and instead of confessing my predicament as I meant to do, I ordered another case of tinned beef and a bag of rice and left the shop without further talk.
This righteous wrath was all very well, but now that I had asked for my bill, I would have to settle it. How was this to be done? If only I had my sea chest which Tino, supercargo of the Caleb S. Winship, had carried away with him when he left me at Rutiaro! My pocketbook was in it, containing all of my money, more than enough to cancel the debt with Moy. I had rather an anxious time during the next few days. I remember entertaining as usual, but in a faint-hearted way; sleeping badly, and between times, walking up and down Soul-Eaters' Island, trying to subdue my
All the village came over to Soul-Eaters' Island, for the anchorage at this end of the atoll lay just behind it. The schooner was recognized. It was the Potii Ravarava which visited the atoll about once a year. She entered the pass with the turn of the tide, lighting her way by the fire which was burning in a primitive galley, a tin-lined box half filled with sand. I could see her native skipper at the wheel, a couple of sailors preparing to take in sail, and two native women sitting on the poop, with a great pile of luggage behind them. One of these was Tepera, daughter of Puarei, chief of the atoll, who had been sent to the Protestant school at Papeete nearly a year ago. The other was Tuarava, her aunt, with whom she had been living there. The crowd on the beach waited in deep silence while the schooner anchored and the sails were being furled. I remember that I could hear very plainly the far-off rumbling of the surf on the windward side of the atoll and the hissing of frying fish, or whatever it was, a native boy was cooking at the galley fire. Then the small boat was lowered and the women brought ashore with their luggage. Tepera went at once to her father
We have just met the Potii Ravarava here at Hao. She is going to Rutiaro within a few weeks, so I am sending your sea chest by her. Sorry I left you in that God-forsaken hole; but I was tight that evening, and pretty mad at the way you upset my plans with your marble-playing foolishness. Next morning, when I sobered up, I felt like going back for you. But we had a fair wind, and I had my cargo to think of. The price of copra is on the down grade, and I've got to get back to Papeete with mine before the bottom falls out of the market. You said once you wanted to see all you could of life in the Paumotus. Well, I guess you'll have your chance at Rutiaro. If I was you I would come back on the Potii Ravarava. She only carries twenty-seven tons cargo, so she'll probably go direct to Papeete from there. I am also sending you an empty three-gallon demijohn. Fill this with
Yours,
Tino.
P. S.—Miti has a big bunch of letters for you, from your friend Nordhoff. I saw the packet. It looks as though it had been traveling some. Nordhoff, he says, is in Tahiti again. I'll probably see him there and will tell him to wait for you.
Give my regards to all the marble players.
Good old Tino! He did me nothing but good turns. Late that night when the rest of the villagers had crossed the pass I pried open the lid of the chest—having lost the key—and found my belongings just as I had left them—my camera; my binoculars and charts; and, most important of all, in the bottom of the chest, wrapped in a pair of trousers, my pocketbook. I didn't pay Moy until just before the departure of the schooner, and staged the final episode at an hour when his shop was filled with loungers. I came away with his receipted bill, one hundred and twenty francs, and the consciousness of having adequately safeguarded tradition.
We left Rutiaro the following day. I did not realize until the moment of leave-taking how painful the farewells would be. As soon as they were over I went on board, crawled into the little cabin and, despite the cockroaches and copra bugs, remained there until the schooner had left the pass and was well out to sea.
After our separation at Papeete, Nordhoff went on to the southwest. He wrote me from an island he called Ahu Ahu, and from there, apparently, he took passage to Rarotonga, the principal island of the Cook group. Long before the discovery of New Zealand Rarotonga was the goal of Polynesian mariners from the north and west—fearless explorers traveling in their double canoes across hundreds of leagues of ocean, guided by sun and stars, some of them arriving at their destination, many others, doubtless, perishing in search of it.
From Samoa—in the early centuries of our era—came the Karika family to reign in Rarotonga down to the present day; and Samoa is believed to have been the principal starting point of the voyagers which peopled the eastern Pacific. In the language of those old-time voyagers, tonga meant south, and they gave that name to the Friendly Islands. Farther to the west and south they came upon the Cook group—in those days, no doubt, the southernmost ends of the earth—and the high island of this group, the faint blot on the horizon which led the canoes to land, they called Rarotonga (Under the South).
