The palace of the governor of the Marquesas in the vale of Atuona—Monsieur L’Hermier des Plantes, Ghost Girl, Miss Tail, and Song of the Nightingale—Tapus in the South Seas—Strange conventions that regulate life—A South Seas Pankhurst—How women won their freedom.

IN Mapuhi’s store, on the counter, taken from the cabin of the County of Roxburgh, lay twenty-five pearls. They were of different values, two or three magnificent in size, in shape, and in luster, the fruit of Mapuhi’s tribe’s harvest in Takaroa Lagoon. He displayed them to me and others the night before I was to sail with Lying Bill for the Marquesas Islands. Aaron Mandel was about to buy them, and as the Parisian dealer and Mapuhi discussed their worth, Bill, McHenry, Kopcke, Nimau, and others added their opinions.

“If you paid for these pearls what they cost in suffering, and in proportion to the earnings of a diver in his lifetime, you would offer me ten times what you do,” said Mapuhi. “The white women who wear these poe can never know the dangers or the pain endured by our people. Two have aninia, vertigo, and one has been made permanently deaf this rahui.”

“I agree with you,” replied Mandel, “that nothing of money can balance what you Paumotuans go through to gather shells, but in many parts of the world divers of other races are doing the same. They don’t go as deep as you do, because their waters are shallower, but they fix the price for pearls. I have seen them from Ceylon to Australia, and I have to meet their competition when I take these pearls to Paris where the market is. Also, Mapuhi, the culture pearl is every year hurting our trade more and more, and some day may make pearls so cheap that you will get a third of what you do now. You remember the Taote of Pukapuka!”

“That was the devil’s magic, and it will not be again,” said Mapuhi. “Man who loves and serves the true God will never interfere with his secrets, but will accept what he offers for man’s struggles and torments. The Taote was tempted by Satan, and his sin was terribly punished.”

Mandel smiled.

“Yes the Taote got a rough deal,” he admitted. “But his pearls made another man’s fortune, and astonished all who saw them in Paris. Let me tell you! Last year I visited three culture fields, and they are doing wonderful things. The Japanese for many years only copied the methods of the Chinese. They forced the fresh water mussel and the abalone to coat with nacre substances they inserted within their folds, but they got no pearls of the best size, shape, or luster. Now, Kokichi Mikimoto has gone much further than anybody. I spent a week with him at his pearl farm in the bay of Ago in the Inland Sea of Japan. The bay is a dozen miles long and five wide, with an average depth of sixty feet, but it is remarkably free from currents and severe storms. Mikimoto is a scientist as was the Taote. He opens a three-year-old shell and lays a head of nacre on the outer, shell-secreting skin of the oyster. This skin is then dissected off the oyster and fitted about the bead like a sac. This sac is then transplanted into the tissues of another oyster in its shell, an astringent is sprinkled on the wound, and the second oyster is planted in the prepared bed at anywhere from twenty-five to eighty feet. It stays there from three to seven years, and then his girl diver brings it up. Mind you, he has laid down suitable rocks in certain shallow places, and when they are covered with oyster spat they are removed to deeper beds and set out in order. It is these which are dissected at three years of age, and the nuclei inserted in them. These beads are of all colors, mother-of-pearl or pink or blue coral, and the pearls are of the color, white or pink or blue, of the beads. The oysters often spit them out, the starfish and octopus ravage the beds, and the red current sometimes spoils everything for a year. They have similar farms in other parts of Japan, and in Australia and Ceylon, but Mikimoto has done most. He sells millions of pearls every year. Of course they are blisters and so not orient or perfect, because the bead has touched the shell while growing, and has not remained in the folds of the oyster. But I am afraid, for I was told a few months ago that Mikimoto and others were making perfect pearls. If they do they will ruin the market.”

“You can tell the difference between natural and culture pearls in any case?” I asked.

“Mais oui! If you cut open the grafted pearl you find the center a bead or bit of coral, but in the true pearl the center is a grain of sand, or a hollow formerly occupied by the tapeworm or parasite. Well, you won’t make any money cutting pearls open, so we use the ultra-violet ray. Most of Mikimoto’s pearls are about as big as French peas, and, as I say, lack sphericity because of attachment to the inner shells. But, mind you, his oysters are merely the avicule or wing-shelled kind, and small. Here are these Paumotu shells from six to eighteen inches across and the oysters in proportion. Think of what they might do, if they were put to work by science and—”

“They were once,” broke in Kopcke. “My girl’s father knows all about it.”

“I know much about it, too,” said Mandel; “and I have never known just what to believe. I only know that some one sold a string of pearls in Paris finer than any in the world, and they are now in New York.

“The Empress EugÉnie’s necklace came from here, and so did Queen Victoria’s five-thousand-pound pearl, but these were said to be finer.”

“For heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed. “Tell me what you do know of this mysterious Taote and his tragedy. Mapuhi has put the devil to work in it. I have been hearing talk about it since I landed in Tahiti.”

“Come down to my shack,” said Kopcke, “and I will get old Tepeva a Tepeva to tell you his part of it.”

“I will finish with Mapuhi,” Mandel said, “and will be along in ten minutes.”

That the fixing of a price for the twenty-five pearls was not to be concluded in public was evident, and so Kopcke, Lying Bill, and we others sauntered to Kopcke’s hut. Nowhere do whites despise one another as feelingly as in the South Seas. Their competition in business and in love is so intimate and so acute that there are no distances nor withholdings of emotion. The finesse and impersonal euchering of rivals practised on mainlands is not copied in this hotter and more primitive mart where adversaries are of ruder breed, and courtesy is considered weakness. As we strolled under the palms to Kopcke’s house, McHenry said to me, “This Taote, this doctor or magician they gab about, I knew better than anybody else, an’ he was a bloomin’ queer ’un. I kept a store at Penrhyn for years, and this fellow was around there studyin’ the lagoon. Everybody called him Doc, but whether he was a M.D. I don’t know. He had a tool-chest, though, like a bloody sawbones, and could fix a cut or saw off an arm fine. He had michaelscropes and all sorts o’ professor junk, an’ he was good-hearted, and had money enough, too.”

“I remember the fellow well,” Lying Bill interposed. “’E was a han’some man, big as Landers, and dark as Llewellyn. ’E ’ad gold ’air, but never wore a ’at, blow ’igh, blow low, an’ so ’is ’air was so bleedin’ sunburned, it was all colors. ’E was a furriner, an’ ’ad studied in Germany,—if ’e wasn’t a German,—though ’e was a reg’ler pollyglut and parlayed every lingo. ’E ’ad a ’ole chemist shop with ’im on Penrhyn. I used to see ’im treatin’ the lepers and studyin’ oysters night an’ day. At first, I thought he might be a buyer, an’ watched ’im, but he ’ad no time for tradin’. In the divin’ season ’e was always around the lagoons, an’ ’e’d look at every pearl and the shell it come out of. ’E was a myst’ry, ’e was, an’ made no friends with anybody. The natives called ’im Itataupoo Taote, ’Atless Doctor. ’E played a deep game, ’e did.”

At Kopcke’s shack he made us welcome. Lamps were lighted, and cigarettes and a black bottle of rum set on the counter.

“I’ll go and hunt up the old man to spin you the yarn,” said Kopcke, and disappeared in the darkness of the outside. Mandel came before he returned, and as the talk was still on the Taote he gathered up his thread of it.

“This magician’s name was Horace Sassoon, and he was of a rich and fine family in England,” said Mandel. “I knew much about him because I cashed his drafts more than once. He was a medical doctor, educated in Germany, France, and England, and he had been seven or eight years in India. While in Ceylon or the Arabian Gulf he investigated the pearl fisheries and got interested in the processes of mother-of-pearl secretion by oysters. I think he was a real savant, and that he had a strong interest in the treatment of lepers by the chaulmoogra oil and the X-ray. He told me that he wanted to endow a great institution in India, but that he was unable to raise the funds. Me, I am credulous, but I believe the institution was a beautiful woman who spent much money. He had an income sent from Paris to Tahiti, and the drafts, not large, came through my house. I would meet him, as you men did, in Papeete or in these atolls, or Penrhyn, wherever there was diving, but I never suspected his game, though three or four times he said to me, ‘I will have all the money I need some day if I am right in my theories.’ I lost track of him, and did not associate with him the big pearls that came to Paris until I saw the pearl Woronick bought, and heard Tepeva a Tepeva’s account. I won’t spoil it by repeating it, and anyhow, here he is himself!”

Kopcke entered with his girl and her father. The latter was a very big man, the wreck of a giant. He was sadly afflicted; he would take a step, and stop, and then his head would roll over on his shoulder. Each time he started to move, he went through convulsive tremors as if winding himself up for the next step—and I recognized the paralysis which seizes the diver who has dived too often and too deep.

“Maite rii, Tamahine! Go slow, daughter!” he was saying, as he seized a post and let himself down to the floor, where he squatted.

“He was about the best diver in the group, but the bends have got him,” said Kopcke.

“’E’s a Mormon,” Lying Bill blurted, “an’ ’e won’t touch the rum.” Bill helped himself, stood the bottle before him, and began to doze.

“My father,” said Kopcke, “here is a Marite from far across the sea, who wants to know of your adventure with the Taote who gave you the pearl.”

Tepeva a Tepeva shaded his eyes with his hand and peered at me. “Oia ia! It is well!” he stuttered. His eyes fell upon the bottle, and remained fastened upon it.

“Would not Tepeva a Tepeva wish to refresh himself?” I said quietly, and passed the bottle to the cripple. He took it, weighed it, removed the cork, smelt the contents, and poured out a shellful,—a third of a pint,—tossed it off, smacked his lips as if it were cocoanut-milk, and began to speak more freely.

“Ea, that ramu is good. I do not drink it as a Mormon but because I am weak. It is makivi, this thing I tell you. It is stranger than the stick of Moses turning into a sea-snake. It costs me dear, as you see, though it paid me well. I am as I am, a cracked canoe, because of it. But I have my house, and all the debts of my family are paid, and I owe Mapuhi a Mapuhi not a sou. It is good to be free. I was a diver at Penrhyn for the British when I met the foreigner. He was a Taote. He said that he was trying to cure the lepers. He had a wonderful medicine. He did not let them drink it, but put it into their arms through a pipe. But also he watched the diving. Doc, they called him, and he never covered his head. But no man said Itataupoo to him. He was no man to laugh at. He spat his words and was done, but he would mend a broken bone, or cure a coral cut or the wound of a swordfish. He looked through a tube with a glass in it at blood from the lepers, and at pearls and oysters. He had lamps that made a light like the blue sky. Through his tube the water from our wells was as a fish-pond. Hours and hours he watched the shells being opened, and every pearl he must see, and the shell from which it came. I thought he searched for a pearl to charm the leprosy. All through the rahui he stayed in Penrhyn. He went to Tahiti on the Pani. I was on the Pani, and much we talked about oysters and the different lagoons.

“I came to Takaroa, my home. Months afterward the Taote arrived here in a ten-ton cutter. He had but one sailor, a Tahitian, Terii. They lived in that house over there. I would not go into that house now for ten tons of shell. It is ihoiho. When the moon is dark a spirit dances there, the spirit of Mauraii. He was my cousin, and the Taote hired him to help the other man. One day the Taote began to buy provisions, a great quantity which were stored in the cutter with other big boxes, as if for a long voyage. They sailed away, Terii and Mauraii, too. ‘Nuku-Hiva will see me next,’ said the Taote to us all. That was a lie, but I did not know it then. They went to Pukapuka. It is a little atoll, toward the Marquesas, and far from any other island. Mauraii had dived there, and the Taote knew that. Five moons later the cutter sailed into this lagoon. Mauraii was with the Taote, but Terii was not. The Taote paid Mauraii, and left in the cutter with another sailor. For two years Mauraii lived without labor. For two years his jaws remained tight as the jaws of the pahua. He spoke well of the Taote, but he was afraid. When I asked him more about Terii, he would not talk. Terii had eaten poisonous fish, he said once. He had trodden on the nohu, he said another time. I knew Mauraii had not been to the Marquesas. He was a Mormon, Mauraii, and he prayed like a man with a secret.

“We forget soon, and it was four years when Patasy came in the Potii Taaha, his own cutter. He was of IrÉlani, and drank much ramu. The cutter was leaky, and Mauraii worked to calk the seams. Patasy gave him hardly any money, but food, and night rum. Mauraii, with rum in him, would now make many words to Patasy, and to me. He spoke of a secret that lay between him and the Taote. He spoke of an oath he had sworn on the book of Mormon and the picture of Birigahama Younga. He spoke of something at Pukapuka that was growing bigger and bigger. The Taote was in his native land, and would return soon, and they would both be very rich. Mauraii’s talk was like a cloudy day that does not let one see far. Sometimes I would ask him about Terii, who had gone with Mauraii, and who had not come back. That would still his big word-making. He would shake a little then, all over. He would say: ‘I must not talk, Tepeva a Tepeva; I must not talk.’ But with more rum he would talk. He was worried, though. He stopped going to the temple; he lived on Patasy’s cutter. Often I saw him lying on the deck, full of drink.

“One night he came to my house late. His heart was very heavy. He had been drinking with Patasy, and he had done something wrong. He cursed Patasy. He said that Patasy had forced him to do evil—that he, Mauraii, had taken an oath, and that now, this night, he had broken it. It would bring him harm. The Taote was coming back soon. Mauraii shook when he said that, shook just as he did when I would ask him what had become of the companion who had gone with him to Pukapuka and had never come back.

“E mea au! I am not the man to search the heart of a brother for what should be hidden. But having broken his oath and told his secret to Patasy, I thought it right he should tell it to me. But he would say no more. And he sailed away alone with Patasy.

“For many weeks we heard nothing more of Mauraii. Then from sailors who came from Tahiti we heard that he and Patasy had returned to Papeete in a month. Then we heard that Patasy had sold his cutter and had taken steamship away to his own country. He never came back.

“Mauraii stayed in Papeete. Every little while we heard about him. He had much money, and he was drinking all day in the Paris rum store, and dancing the nights with the Tahiti Magadalenas in the Cocoanut House.

“When Mauraii had spent all his money the French Government brought him back to Takaroa, and he was mad. Something had broken in his belly, where the thinking-parts are. He would sit all day, looking at the lagoon and saying nothing. Never did he say anything. Sometimes he would shake all over. And all the time his back was bent as if some one was coming from behind to strike him.

“It was a long time after this that the Taote returned, on the Moana. He came first to my house. He asked me where Mauraii was, and I told him Mauraii was here, but was maamaa, that he was possessed of the demon. He asked me if it was a talking demon, if it made Mauraii say everything there was in his head. I told him it was the other way. The poor man said nothing, but sat by the lagoon all day, and was fed and cared for by the women.

“‘Let us go to see Mauraii!’ he said. He was angry, and I was afraid, and I went with him. I knew where Mauraii would be, and I pointed him out. He was sitting in the shade of a purau tree, looking at the lagoon. The Taote went to him and spoke to him. Mauraii fell flat, and then he crawled about the sand, and shouted to me not to let the Taote kill him, too. This made him more angry, and he said that Mauraii was really maamaa, and that nothing could be done for him. Mauraii ran to his house when he had turned his back. After the Moana had gone on her way to Nuku-Hiva, the Taote asked me if I could go with him to another island. I did not want to go. If I had not gone, I would not be as I am, but then I would not have my house, and all the debts paid of my family.

“I said that I had work here. But he said he would be gone but a couple of weeks, and that he would give me ten taras a day, and that I would have no hard work. Mapuhi and Nohea were absent. No white elders were here to advise me. Finally I said I would go, though when I looked at Mauraii and saw what he was, I was afraid. He said we must take Mauraii with us. We had hard work to get Mauraii on the cutter. When we did, which was at night, we put him in the hold and closed the hatch and sailed out of the pass. It was my own cutter, but the Taote had provided food, and his big boxes were in the hold with Mauraii.

“Once outside the reef, the Taote said he would go almost due east, and that Pukapuka was our island. I said that Pukapuka had no people on it, and he said that was true. I said that Pukapuka was closed to the diving, and he said that was true. But we went on toward Pukapuka. When we slid the cover off the hatch to the hold, Mauraii came up, and when he saw we were at sea and that the Taote was so near him, he shivered like a diver who has had a struggle with a shark. I thought he would leap into the water, and often he looked at it with longing. But the Taote talked to him strongly, and put medicine in his arm.

“We steered and trimmed sail by turn. The wind was fair, and we reached Pukapuka in five days. We had a hard time to get the boxes ashore. There is no pass, and you cannot reach the lagoon from the sea. We had brought a small boat lashed on the deck, and this we carried to the lagoon. It took us a day to move it, and we made Mauraii help. The man had changed since we landed on Pukapuka. He was not wild, but taata ravea paari. He was cunning. He smiled to himself sometimes in an evil way. We were no sooner on the lagoon than the Taote ordered me and that madman to build a hut and to rest ourselves for a day.

“Pukapuka had not a man upon it. It is like a cocoanut-shell, round all about, and the lagoon deep, and full of yellow shell with yellow pearls. There are no poison fish in the water, as in some other islands. I thought of that, and of the man who had been here with Mauraii and had never come back. I was afraid. The Taote could make Mauraii sleep and sleep with one touch of a silver pipe on his arm. I was afraid.

“The island is loved by the birds; it was their time for nesting, and the air was filled with them. That was the only sound. The Taote wore no hat, though the sun upon the coral was as stones heated to cook fish. When we had rested a day, the Taote, who had been most of the hours upon the lagoon, spoke to me of our mission, and we three rowed a little distance until I judged we were in water of seventeen fathoms.

“‘It is long,’ said the Taote. ‘It is five years since I was here, but I am sure of the spot. There was a cocoanut-tree that hid the village if I rowed from that rock we put there on shore, due west, five umi. There is the cocoanut, and it hides the huts the divers live in when the lagoon is open.’

“You see how quiet this lagoon is? Well, that lagoon of Pukapuka was ten times more still. It made me shake as had Mauraii. But now he did not shake. He was all brightness, and his eyes were shining, though he said not a word.

“The Taote took the titea mata and looked into the water. He could see little; his eyes were not strong. I went into the water, took the titea mata, stuck my head into it and gazed down into the sea.

“‘Do you see shell, large shell?’ he asked quickly, like a man who knows what is in a place.

“‘I see shell,’ I said.

“‘Then dive and bring it up,’ he commanded.

“I said the prayer to Adam and to Birigahama Younga. I breathed long, and I went down. There was in my heart a fear of something strange. The bottom was at seventeen fathoms, a jungle of coral as big as the trees in Tahiti, with black caves and large flowers and sponges, and also many of the pahua, the great shell which closes like a trap and can drown a man. Dropping straightaway, I swam upon a ledge raised above the floor of the lagoon. There was a pair of shells, very large. But where there had been many, only this single pair remained. I moved along the ledge, and found that scores had been ripped from the same bed. A diver sees easily where shells have been.

“‘Robbed!’ I said to myself. ‘There has been a thief here.’ Pukapuka had been closed to diving for six years, and it was forbidden to remove a shell. I swam over the face of the ledge, and was sure I had the sole remaining pair of this bed. I rose to the surface with them.”

The Taote was hanging over the boat with his head in the titea mata, watching me as I came up. As I hung on the boat to breathe, I saw Mauraii regarding him with a hateful eye, and I shook my fist at the fool. The foreigner took the shell quickly, and opened it, pulled the oyster out into a bowl, and searched it. Then with a little cry he held up a pearl, a poe matauiui, big and like a ball, as shiny as an eye. Bigger it was than any pearl I have ever seen. It was perfect in shape, and with a skin like the gleam of the sun on the lagoon. What Mauraii had said of the Taote growing things to make him rich came to my mind, as I saw this wonder-pearl shining in the Taote’s hand. The foreigner for a moment was as mad as Mauraii, and, taking hold of that man’s hand, shook it and shook it.

“‘Ah, Mauraii,’ he shouted, ‘now we are paid for those weeks of hell here! You shall have enough to eat and drink always.’

“He laughed and clapped Mauraii on the shoulder, and the maamaa laughed foolishly, and began to dance in the boat. We had to pull him down, or he would have overturned it.

“‘There are more than a hundred pearls like that,’ said the Taote. ‘I am richer than King Mapuhi, ten times as rich, and I can make all I want. I made it. I worked and worked to find out, and Mauraii put the things in the shell. I am a te Tumu!’

“I did not like that. Te Tumu is the creator. It is wrong to boast like that. And where was Terii, who had gone with Mauraii from Takaroa to Pukapuka? He would share in no wealth. And the madman beside me—what happiness left for him?

“‘I teienei,’ said the Taote, as he rubbed the pearl. ‘Go down and bring up as many as you can. When we did the sowing, I worked in a diver’s dress. I have that machine in those boxes on the cutter. Maybe we should get it, for we will want more seed.’

“‘There are no more shells in that bed,’ I said. ‘This was the only one there.’

“‘No more shells there!’ he screamed. ‘You are mad like this fellow. We found a hundred and seven there, and we planted seed in each one. Each of them has a pearl as fine as this.’

“He tried to be gentle again, though he sweated. He tried to explain. He had discovered the secret of the pearl; he had planted something in each shell as one might a cocoanut-sprout in the earth. There was much I did not understand, for no man had ever tried such blasphemy. The God that made these lagoons had wrapped them in the unknown, and had made pearls the dispensation of His will.

“‘Whatever was done here by you,’ I said, ‘there are no more shells in that tiamaha. I searched it all about.’

“He tried to laugh, but failed, and he looked at Mauraii.

“‘A hundred and seven shells! It took us weeks,’ he said. ‘That was the number, Mauraii?’

“The man possessed of the devil nodded his head and really laughed. It was an evil laugh.

“‘A hundred and seven, and one—this one—makes a hundred and six,’ said he. He smiled, and I went cold. I knew that before he went mad, Mauraii did not know how to count. The devil was in him.

“The Taote breathed hard. ‘Tepeva a Tepeva,’ he said, ‘go down again. It is possible that this is not the bed. We placed a small anchor beside it. Look for that. I worked seventeen years for this day.’

“Again I went into the water, and to the bottom. I found the place where I had pried off the oyster with the great pearl. Digging in the sand and ooze, I found the anchor. I saw plainly the empty cups of the oysters that had been, and I counted them roughly and made them about a hundred. I stayed a full minute and a half, and I hated to go up. I did not like to meet that wise man looking at me in a terrible way when he should see me empty-handed. But I had to go. I was exhausted when I reached the sunlight, and until I had gained my breath and my blood was quiet, I did not turn to the Taote.

“‘No more shell?’ he said quietly. ‘You are lying! You are lying! You are trying to cheat me. Look out! Look out! Ask Mauraii what I did to—but the shell are there. I can see them with the glass. Come, we will get the diving-machine.’

“He cursed me, and said I was trying to steal his wealth. What he saw through the titea mata was the gleam of the pahua, the great shell the priests use for holy water. I said no more, and with Mauraii went to the beach. It was night when we had brought the machine to the boat, and we returned to the cutter for food. I shall not forget that night. The foreigner could not sleep, and he talked to me. He talked as if he had a fever. He said he had tried for years to find out what made pearls in oysters, and to do the work of God. While others had made small ones that clung to the shell, he alone had found the way to put in the shells large beginnings for the oysters to cover. He had chosen Pukapuka because it had a lagoon without a pass, and so free from currents, and because it was closed to diving and no one lived there. No one knew of it, he said—no one but himself and Mauraii.

“I thought of Patasy, of the Potii Taaha. Of what Mauraii had told me when in rum. Of his going away with Patasy and coming back to Tahiti, there to drink and dance in the Cocoanut House.

“But I said nothing, for I was afraid. Mauraii had slept ashore. In the morning we found him praying and singing by the lagoon. We went out in the boat, and set up the diving-machine, and the Taote told me to put on the dress.

“‘I and Mauraii will work the pump,’ he said. ‘You stay down ten minutes at least, and search the bottom all about there. Maybe we were mistaken in the exact spot.’ He spoke like a good friend, now.

“I had said nothing about the anchor, because I was afraid. I sank down to the bottom, and first looked that the air came freely and that I was not entangled. Then I walked about and saw that a diver had been there. The whole bank had been gathered. The one shell had escaped merely because the thief had so willed it. I sat down and waited for the ten minutes to go, and I wished I was in Takaroa. Pukapuka Lagoon had many sharks. In the years that had passed since the last diving season they had grown big. When I was still, they came by me, and through the glasses I saw their ugly faces staring at me. I frightened them away with the air from my wrist, or I clapped my hands in a diver’s way. I had my back to the rock bank. At last a signal came on the rope, and I had to let them pull me up.”

Tepeva a Tepeva’s voice was weak. He poured himself the last drink of rum. Kopcke had gone to attend to the loading and Lying Bill was snoring on the floor.

“Slowly they lifted me, but it seemed to me like a second.

“What look the Taote had, I do not know. I did not turn to him until my helmet was unscrewed, and I had taken off the coat. Without meeting his eyes, I said, ‘No shells.’

“‘No shells! My God!’ he said. ‘Are you blind? Did you not the first time bring up this? Mauraii knows well there are a hundred and six more. Is not that true, Mauraii?’ he said, coaxingly.

“The madman laughed. ‘A hundred and six more,’ he replied; ‘and to hell with Patasy.’

“This moment the eyes of the Taote met me. He was shivering, as Mauraii had shivered when he left Takaroa.

“‘Give me the helmet!’ he ordered. ‘Help me put it on. I will know. I will know!’

“He put the pearl in a purse, and the purse in a pocket of the diving-coat. A knife was in his belt. I fastened the coat and the belt and tied the strings at the wrist. I put the lead weights on his breast and back, and lowered him into the water. Before I screwed the helmet tight, I said to him: ‘Go slowly! Walk carefully! Don’t bend too low!’

“Mauraii fed the pump as I let out the line, and when I felt the weight of the line, I took the pump myself. Now, a man like me, who has dived with the machine for years, knows every motion of the line.

The Taote was not moving slowly and cautiously. He stopped, and for five minutes there was little motion.

“Aueo!” I thought. He has found the robbed bank, and the anchor. He knows the truth. He will come up now. What will I do? He will be terrible.

“Suddenly I felt a drag at the rope, swift and hard; not the steady pull of walking.

“He has fallen, tripped and fallen, and cannot get up! That was my thought.

“‘Mauraii,’ I said, ‘you man the pump alone. Go smoothly! If you fail, I will kill you!’

“I leaped in, and swam straight down. The foreigner was on the bottom, lying on his face. I raised his body, light as a shell in that depth. There was a great rip in the front of the coat. The air rushed from it, but there was no motion of his body. The knife in his hand had been used to destroy himself. He had seen the work of the thief and had cut open the coat. The devil of despair had done that with him.

“A diver thinks quickly. I could not bring him to the top unless Mauraii aided. I signaled by the rope. There was no reply. The air was not being pumped. It had stopped as I lifted him. Mauraii had left his duty. I had one chance. I might unscrew the heavy helmet, and cut the leads and carry him, with the aid of the line, to the surface. He might not be dead yet. I seized the helmet, cut the hose, and began to turn the metal helmet. As I did so, I saw a shadow over my head, and laid hold of my knife. It was not a shark. It was Mauraii. He was dancing and smiling, dancing and smiling, as in the Cocoanut House in Papeete. He slowly settled down in the water. He took hold of me as I twisted at the helmet, and he smiled at me, and danced on a ledge of coral. Below this, I saw one of those giant pahua. Aue! Marite! This pair was as long as I am, and as deep as my legs. The great animal in it had opened his doors to eat, and as Mauraii leaped about in his mad dancing from rock to rock, he stepped into the jaws of the pahua. Aue! They closed as the jaws of the turtle upon the fish, and held the fool as if he was buried. He was fast to the knees, and fell over upon me as I worked at the helmet, his head hanging down by my feet.

“My lungs were bursting, my heart beating my breast. I had been more than three minutes a hundred feet below the air. I had been using my strength. I pushed the fool away. Suddenly I felt my leg seized, and the grip of teeth upon my flesh. I sprang up, pulling at the rope to give me force, and calling on Adam for help.

“Minutes it was before I could crawl into the boat. I lay there many minutes before I could stand up. The blood was upon my leg, and the marks of teeth. They were not the teeth of a fish, but of a man. I prayed for guidance. The Taote was dead, and Mauraii, too. What could I do for them? Nothing! Yet I heard a whisper in my ear to go down. I slipped into the water and swam to the bottom. I never touched the sand. I saw the bodies of the Taote and Mauraii fought over by a dozen sharks. I had prayed, and I had a knife in my hand. Even a shark fears a bold man. I struck at them right and left and reached the ledge where the Taote lay. I slashed at the coat and cut away the pocket. The water was red with blood about me, but I shot up past the sharks with the purse, and reached the boat. I took the oars and rowed as fast as I could to shore. There I knelt and thanked Adam and Ietu Kirito for my life.

“I ran across the reef and swam to the cutter. I cut away the anchor and raised the sail and left the abode of the demon. Fakaina I reached in two days; and, with a Takaroa man who was there, I put the cutter about and sailed for home.

“What does the Book say? In the midst of life we are in death. I had stayed under too long in the lagoon of Pukapuka. Like a thunderbolt came on me the diver’s sickness—and I am as I am.”

Lying Bill had been awake for several minutes.

“You did mighty well,” he commented. “You saved the pearl and the Doc’s money for yourself. There’s three men et up by sharks. You sold the pearl to Woronick for twenty-five thousand francs.... And by the bloody star of Mars, you’ve drunk all the rum while I’ve been asleep! Come on, O’Brien! Let’s get the bloomin’ ’ell out of ’ere to the schooner! We’ve got to sail at sun-up for the Marquesas.”

Tepeva a Tepeva, the man stricken by the bends, was still squatting on the floor immersed in his pregnant memories when I shook his hand, and went to bid good-by to my friends of the atolls where life is harder but simpler and sweeter than elsewhere in the world. Mapuhi and Nohea rubbed my back, and commended me to God. The wind was fluttering wildly the fronds of the cocoanut-trees, and the surf was heavy as we rowed through the passage and moat and struck the breakers on the outer reef. From the sea for a few minutes the lanterns in the houses were like fireflies in the cane, but soon the darkness hid them, and I saw only the black shadow of the motus, and the gleam of the foaming crests of the waves in the faint starlight. I lay down on a mat by the steering-wheel of the Fetia Taiao, and dreamed of the Taote and the dancing Mauraii in the trap of the giant pahua.

I awoke with the cries of the sailors raising the mainsail, and the motion of the vessel through the water. We were off with a fair wind for the Land of the War Fleet.