 Chapter 9 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 maranda, and butterflies with wings of gold and blue of ring over it, meant to suggest, perhaps, that one's memories, however happy, or however seemingly enduring, are as infameral 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 Ruterio, or at Soul Eater's Island, by some peculiar virtue of their own, they stand out with the vividness of proportions of a 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 the length and the nature of my residence at a toll? He would be surprised merely that with so much leisure for observation there should be such poverty of recorded fact. I myself am surprised and a little appalled when I think how the weeks slip by, leaving me nothing to show for them. I became a spendthrift of time. I was under the delusion that my own, just share of it, had been immeasurably increased, that in some unaccountable way I had fallen heir to a legacy of hours and days which could never be exhausted. The delusion was of gradual growth, like the habit of reverie which fastens itself at last upon the most restless of wanderers among their tolls. In the beginning I was full of business. I remember with what earnestness of purpose I wrote on the first page of the notebook. Ruterio. Observations on life and character in the low archipelago. I had ambitious plans. I meant to go back and forth between my hermitage in the village island, notebook in hand, saying, Echatera? What is that? Neva aparo pomote? How do you say that in pomodian? And when I had learned the language and had completed my studies of flora and fauna, I was to be the bosswell of the atolls, curious, tireless, not to be rebuked by the wind rustling the fronds or of the palms, nor by the voice of the sea when the wind was low, saying shh, shh, on thirty miles of coral reef. But I was rebuked, or so it seemed to me, and now I fear the learned admonograph 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 pomodians, which reads, Before the starry threshold of Jove's court, my mansion is, where those immortal shapes of bright aerial spirits live, enshrerred, in regions mild of calm and serene air. The president of a 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 Eater's 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 seabird, 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. Aie, aie, dinamaye, 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 ghostly refrain, I translated its application, its meaning, to from the bird to the island where, perhaps, I would one day see it in my rambles. I regretted that it was so inaccessible, so remote and hidden from the world as though that were not more than half the reason for its untarnished beauty. It is a model of feeling that of sadness at the thought of loveliness hidden from appraising eyes, and I am inclined to think that its springs not so much from an unselfish desire to share it as from a vulgar longing to say to one's gregarious fellows, see what I have found? Can you show me anything to equal it in beauty, you dwellers in cities? Whatever its source in this case, I was glad that it passed quickly, no tears stained my pillow, even though I knew that Raterio could never be the goal of Sunday excursionist. But I was not quite easy in mind as I composed myself for sleep. I had made a poor beginning as a diarist. The first entry was fanciful and, furthermore, not my own. What original contribution to truth or beauty could I make as a result of the day's events? Finally I rose, lit my lamp, and rode underneath the comas quotation. The Plutomians are very fond of perfume. This is probably due to the fact that their islands, being scantily provided with flowers and sweet-smelling herbs, they take this means of satisfying their craving for frequent 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 facts. During the afternoon I had distributed some gifts among my guests, chiefly among the children. I had some bolts of ribbon and dress goods, some earrings and bracelets, thinly washed in gold, which I had bought on credit, of moiling the Chinaman, and had been saving them for just such an occasion as the feast at Soul Eater's Island. I also had a case of perfume which Moy had been very reluctant to part with. Perfume and toilet waters and fancy bottles with quaint legends printed on the labels. June Rose, which the makers admitted had as much body as higher-priced perfumes. Wild violet, like a faint breath from the forest floor. Kefaboké, the soul of the exquisite Orient, etc. This gift was greatly coveted. Pinga immediately took charge of the three bottles. I had given his daughters and packed them carefully in a Peru, together with a bottle of Bay rum presented to him by virtue of his office as Village Barber. Panga Tuki went among her grandchildren scolding and ranting until she had made a similar collection. And in a short time all the perfume was in the hands of a few of the older people. This seemed to me rather high-handed procedure, but it was not my place to interfere with parental and grand parental authority. And it was as well perhaps that the children should be restrained. Otherwise they would have saturated their clothing and their hair and the tol would have smelled heaven or very near it. 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 amical agreement which would have scandalized the white missionaries of those rival nominations, but a Rotario, Saints and Reformed Saints lived together peaceably enough. Being few in number they often joined forces for greater effect in the hominids. The meeting was held in the Reformed Church, a sightly structure built entirely of Nainu, the braided fawns of coconut palms, and the earthen floor was covered with mats of the same material. At one end of the room there was a raised platform and a deal table which served as a pulpit. The walls lengthwise were built to prop open outward, giving free circulation to the air, and charming views of the shaded floor of the island and the blue waters of the lagoon. The church was full of 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 post which supported the roof. Interest lagged during the intervals between the singing, and although Hori 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 the women were in white dresses, and before coming to church had made their most elaborate toilet of the week. But Hori was warming to his theme and demanded attention, at least from me, not having heard him preach before. He had removed his coat and was perspiring and exhorting in a way which would have pleased the most devout and gloomy of missionaries. He had a peculiar oratorical manner. His face foretold clearly the birth of an idea. One could read there the first vague impulse of the brain which gave rise to it. See it gathering lucidity, glimmering, like heat lightning on a summer evening, in his cloudy mind until it was given utterance in a voice of thunder, which rumbled away to silence as the light of creation died out of his eyes. Then he would stand motionless, gazing on vacancy, profoundly, unselfconscious, as though he were merely the passionless mouthpiece of some higher power. The abruptness of his outbursts and his ferocious aspect when delivering them were disconcerning, and it was even worse when at intervals his eyes met mine. Even though he were in the midst of a sentence, he would pause and his face would beam with a radiant smile, in striking contest through the foreboding scowl of the moment before. Remembering his mission, he would then proceed in his former manner. Without understanding his discourse one would have said that he was condemning all of his auditors, who had evidently been guilty of the most frightful sins. But this was not the case. His sentences were short, and in the periods of silence between them I had time to make a translation. O takama tane ai abela, Cain killed Abel. Why did he kill him? Because he was a bad man, a very bad man. Tatoa in Elroha. He was jealous of Abel, whom God loved, because he willingly brought him gifts from his plantation. Abel did not keep everything for himself. He said to God, Taiti vora na oi. Here is bread for you. He gave other things too, many things, and he was glad to give them. Or he 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 Hari 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. Rangitui, who went to the different churches in turn because of the hymnies, 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 Vane sat with her breast-bearer, suckling a three-month-old baby. Old men and women and young even, the children sang. Hari alone was silent, gazing with moody abstraction over the heads of the congregation as he pondered further the ethical points at issue in the cane-enable story. I had witnessed many scenes like this during the months spent in cruising among their tolls, on the Calab S. Winship, scenes to interest one again and again, 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 replaced their old beliefs and superstitions. It would be absurd to say how fundamental. For religious faith is of slow growth, and it was only yesterday, as time has counted, that the ship Duff, carrying the first missionaries who had ever visited the Southern Ocean, came to anchor at Tahiti. One of Hari's remarks called to mind an account I had read of the first meeting between Christian missionaries and the heathen they had come to save. It is to be found in the narrative of the Duff's Three Years Voyage in the South Pacific published in 1799 by the London Missionary Society. 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 Ahatu, where we saw several canoes putting off and paddling towards us with great speed. At the same time it fell calm, which, being in their favour, 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 cappering like frantic persons about our decks crying, deo, teo, in 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 them 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 behaviour, strong smell of coconut oil, together with the tricks of the RICs, lessened the favourable opinion we had formed of them. Neither could we see ought of the 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 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, about forty, being brought to order, the brethren proposed having divine service on the quarter-deck. Mr. Cover officiated. He perhaps was the first that ever mentioned with reverence the Saviour's name to these poor heathens. Such hymns were selected as the most harmonious tunes first, or the gloomy hills of darkness. Then blow ye trumpet bro, and at the conclusion praise God from whom all blessings flow. The whole service lasted about an hour and a quarter. How clear a picture one has of this 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 humour. Dio, Dio, friend, friend, the heathens cried, and the missionaries, to request him, for their kindly welcome, organised a prayer meeting an hour and a quarter in length, and sang, Or the gloomy hills of darkness. It was a prophecy that song. The heathens 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 Christianising process is that it has offset some of the evils resulting from the rest of the civilising process. This was not the opinion of Tino Supercargo of the Calabas Winship, however. I remember a conversation with I had with him on the subject, when Rotario itself lay within view but still far distant. For the sake of argument, I had made some willfully disparaging remark about traitors, and Tino had taken exception to it. You're wrong, you 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 don't suppose you would call it a genteel practice. Well, what stopped it? I'll tell you what stopped it. Tend beef. I was a new angle of vision to me. I said nothing but I thought I could detect a hint of a smile in these 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 tend beef, and they say the four Gospels. Can't be proved either way, of course, but suppose right now, every trading schooner in the Arpeggio was to lay a course for papyri. Suppose not one of them was to go back to the atolls for the next 25 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 all merrogue at Takararo to pay me the 800 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 Papadiv this time, I was talking to one of the Protestants. He told me that his church had 200 converts in French Oceania, while the Catholics had only around 600. I believe it was. I said that I knew how he could get that extra 600 into his own fold, and probably a good many more if he wanted to. All he had to do was to charter my schooner. Loader with Tahiti produced bananas, mangoes, oranges, breadfruit. He didn't take a single gallon of rum unless he wanted to. Then we would make a tour of the islands, holding church festivals with refreshments at every one. And at the end of the cruise, I would guarantee that there wouldn't be a Catholic left in all Pomonius. He didn't take to the planet at all, and of course he did have one weak point. If the brothers tried the same game, they would have had just the same success, and nobody could tell from one week to the next which were Protestants and which were Catholics. That's about what happened at Tocca Rio the last time I was down there. Population is supposed to be divided about half and half between the latter days, saints and the Catholics. There are no missionaries living on the island. They head churches in Papati, send their men around when they can see how things are going with their flocks. That is usually about once a year for each of them. Both don't often put in at Tocca Rero. 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 Cobra. I hadn't gone to any of them, but at Tocca Rero I felt the need of some religion. I'd spent the whole day chasing that Mercado I spoke about. The old rascal has owed me that 800 francs since 1910. 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 little ruffled up. It was just time for the meeting and I decided that I might as well go as to loaf around finding that old hypocrite while my Cobra was being loaded. The church was packed when I went in. There wasn't a Catholic in the village that evening. All of those who had been Catholics were taking part in the hegemony and singing the Protestant songs as well as the Latter-day Saints. No one seemed to pay much attention to the sermon, though. The young missionary didn't understand the language very well, and the preaching was hard for him. But he seemed to feel pretty good about the meeting, and when we left the next day he went down to the cabin to write a report of the progress his church had made at Taquerero. He must have had a lot to say, for he was at it all the morning. He didn't know that we'd pass data just after we got out of the pass. That made me feel good, for Louis Germain, her skipper, has been a rival of mine for years, and I had every kilo of dry copper there was on the island. I got the megaphone and was about to yell, Good luck to you, Louis! When I saw that he had a missionary board, too, a priest with a knee-length beard and a black coat. So I only waved my hand and Louis shook his fist and shouted something I couldn't make out. I was going to the westward, stood close in shore, and passed the village from the outside an hour later. The priest hadn't lost any time getting his congregation together. Since there was no copper to be bought, I suppose Louis told him he had to get a move on. There had been another religious landslide. I was sure of that from the singing, which I heard clear enough, the wind being offshore. Great singers, these Pomodians, and it doesn't make very much difference to them, rather the song is Happy Day toward Jerusalem the Golden. Of course I didn't say anything to my missionary, as the old saying is. What you don't know won't hurt you. This conversation with Tina was running through my mind as I strolled down the village island after this service. Tina, I decided was prejudiced. His was the typical trader's point of view. I had heard many other incidents which bore him out in these findings. But they came usually from men interested in exploiting the islands commercially. A rise exposition of the old biblical soaring? Was that merely the result of a prolonged tin beef crusade? Remembering a kind of sacrifice which was discussed very likely on this very island in the days of pure heathenden. Such a conclusion seemed fantastical. No, one must be fair to the missionaries. Perhaps they were overzealous at times, over sanguine, 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 Montsourve Farleys, an administrator of the Potomans, at Teniga. The rain of alcohol is over, he had said to the islanders. There are strange words coming from the lips of a Frenchman. There was to be no more rum nor gin nor wine. For any Pomodians, henceforth, any trader found selling it or any native drinking it, was to be severely punished. I continued my walk to the far end of the island, and selecting a shady spot sat down to rest. The pressure of a notebook in my hip pocket interrupted my examination of the problem. The missionary versus the trader as a civilizing influence. I was reminded that I had made no recent observations on the life and character of the Ponlians, and the recollection was annoying. Was I never to be able to pursue and indulge 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 interminable typewriters, the roar of gutted 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 addicts 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 will not write my learned monograph. But that inner voice which itself is a creature born of many words, an artificial thing how ever insistence its utterance spoke out loud and clear. You idler, you waster of your inheritance of energy, you throw back to barbarism right. But why, I replied. Tell me that, why? Sir, because it is your vocation, and have you no convictions? Your grandfather had them, and your great grandfather, and those missionaries of the Duff, you have been thinking about. Ah, the decay of convictions in this age, the lack of that old sublime belief in something, anything. Now then, I have come down to you through a long line of ancestors. And I don't mean to die through lack of exercise. You may not believe in me, but you've got to obey me. Right. I know that I should have no peace until I did. 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 and territory under French administration. It's a prohibition movement to become worldwide then. Is the rain of alcohol doomed in all lands? Exhausted by the mental effort but somewhat easier in conscience, I replaced a 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 than the fluted shell lying close by on the beach or the kapokapoka voices which formed a green enclosure around my resting place. Something whirled to the air over my head and fell with a slight splash in the water before me. I set gazing at it curiously, hardly moved. So slowly does one come out of the depths of dreamless reverie. Little waves poised 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 as loud as a blare of trumpets or a clash of cymbals before me lay a prettily fashioned bottle, half filled with seawater. And the label on it read, Kiva Bokeh, the soul of the exquisite Orient. Impossible, I thought. I am three miles from the village, and no one lives at this end of the island. Then I heard voices, or better one voice, which I recognize as that of Rangikoki. She was talking in a low monotone, her most effective manner, when reciting one of her intermodal stories of former days. Consciously I pushed aside the bushes and looked through. Rangikoki was sitting about twenty yards away in the midst of a company of five. Penga was one of them, Tiva and other, both fathers of families, and both much concerned. A few days earlier, at least their children should waste the perfume I had given them. Penga took a pull at a bottle which I identified as belonging to wild violet. He made a rye face as he did it. But he took another, and then another, before he set it down. The wind was toward me, and as the corks popped, or more accurately, as stoppers were lifted. I was forced to admit that June Rose had body. Impalpable, perhaps but authentic. I passed a few dreary reverbers, unnoticed, by going along the lagoon beach, keeping under the screen a cope of bombushes. Should I tell Parui 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 the little perfume among friends? All of which proves plainly enough, it seems to me. The following of keeping a notebook at any rate. The folly of jumping hastily to conclusions. Or perhaps more important than this, it gives further light on the vexed question. Does prohibition prohibit? I found no other observation on promoting rife and character under this date unless the word mamma faul scribbled on the margin of belief 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 the available data concerning it. This relationship was to do with the transfer of a child or children, from the original bloodbearance 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 15 or 20 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 reform church which they felt at liberty to use for secular as well as sacred purposes. For it was a native-built structure, with walls and roofs of thatch, like those of their own houses. The two other churches were never so used. They were frame-buildings, in their European or American style of church architecture, with formal furnishings and windows of colored glass. To have done any sort of work in either of them would have been regarded as a serious offense, certain to be followed by unmistakable evidence of divine displeasure. As Tuyna once told me, sores, illness, even death might result as a punishment for such desecration. I was thinking of this and other primitive reactions to eclistical furniture. And my hand was faltering toward my notebook pocket when, Horae'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, a kahia leaf, and a bowl of tea. I was Horae'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 in 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 once seen as superimposed upon another, on a moving picture screen, I saw an American village of twenty years ago, a village of broad sidewalks and quiet shaded streets bright with dandelions, taking ghostly form and transparency among the palms of Ritero. Two small boys walked, brisket long ringing handbells and shouting, dinner at the Presbyterian Church right away. The G.A.R. band of five two tenor drums and one bass played outside the church where the crowd was gathering and horses, attached to buggies and spring wagons, were pawing the earth around the hitching-posts. Then Mrs. McGregor appeared in the doorway, her kindly face beaming the warmest of welcomes. Come on in and sit down, folks. Everything's already. Members of the Lady's Relief Corps, mothers of large families, used to catering for large appetites, hurried back and forth with planters of roast turkey and chicken, roast beef, mashed potatoes of marvellous smoothness and flakiness, with everything in the way of food, which that hospitable, middle-western country provides. I heard a pleasant talk of homely things, smelled the appetizing odors, saw plates replenished again and again. Throughout the length of the table's old-fashioned gravy boats sailed from cover to cover. But I spared myself further contemplation of the scene, further shadowy participation in a feast, which cost the affluent but a quarter, and a bell-ringer nothing at all. The vision faded, but before it was quite gone. I heard a voice saying, Land sakes, you boys ain't eating a thing. Have some more of these dumplings. What's the matter with your appetite? Ain't you feeling well? It seemed a thousand years away that voice, and no doubt it was, and is, even further than that. Church dinners at Rotario were not such sumptuous affairs. They were not, in fact, an integral part of the community life. Insofar as I know, this was the only one ever held there, and was the result of Harry's peculiar notions of the hospitality's do 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 said, and his family had already eaten, he said. So I sat on a box, at the pulpit table, partaking in a solitary meal, and got through it as quickly as possible. I smiled inwardly at the thought of the inheritance of prestige, granted me without question. At Rotario merely because I was the sole representative there of a so-called superior race. No white wasters had preceded me to the atoll. This was fortunate in a way for it gave me something to live up to. The ideal Rotarian conception of the pa-pa-pa, white man. Harry was partially responsible for the fact that it was ideal. His tales of San Francisco, which to the Pomodian, means America, had been steadily growing and 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-pitcher 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 Pomodians at Focaba. Yes, I had something to live up to at Rotario. 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 a 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 the post. De Cario, a woman of barbaric beauty, was sitting nearby playing Conker the North on my ocarina. I taught her the air in an unguarded moment and had been regretting it ever since. Hunger her husband lay at her side, his strong fine limbs relaxed in sleep. I would have given all my gratuitous prestige as a popra to have exchanged legs or shoulders or girth of chest with him. It was at about this time, as I remember it, that my thoughts turned to the subject of feeding parents. Noivain was present, still, Oregon, nursing the three-month-old baby. It belonged, as I knew, to De Cario, who appeared to be quite capable of nourishing it herself. Why had she given it to Noivain? And why had hunger the father of the child consented to this seemingly unnatural gift? The transfer of parenthood had been made a month earlier, since which time De Cario and her husband had shown only a slight proprietary interest in their offspring. De Cario sometimes dandled it on her knees, as any woman might the child of someone else, but no one would have guessed that she was the mother of it. Noivain fed, clothed, and bathed it, and her husband, Noitain, was as fond of it as she herself. They kept the child at their house, and between them, made as much fuss over it as though it were their own flesh and blood. What could have been the origin of this strange practice of parenthood by proxy? It was a common one throughout eastern Polynesia. I had seen a good many instances of it in the Cook Islands, the Marquise, and the Society Group. Here was a subject worthy of an important chapter in the life and character monograph, and I decided I might as well begin my researches at once. De Cario reluctantly left off her playing and placed herself in a receptive mood. Why, I ask, had she given her child to Noivaini? Her reply was because Noivaini had asked for it. But see here, De Cario, I said, I should think that you and Hunga would want to keep your own baby. It is none of my business, of course. I ask you only because I would like to get some information on this feeding parent custom. Can't you feed it yourself? Is that the reason you gave it away? I blundered atrocity, and asking that question without meaning to. I touched her pride as a woman, as a mother. De Cario 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 Noivaini 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 a such a display of savage and tender internal passion. By that time, Noivaini had recovered from her astonishment and came to defence of her own. Her month of motherhood gave her claims to the child, apparently, and she tried to enforce them physically. De Cario stood her ground, her black eyes flaming, and holding the baby in one arm, pushed Noivaini 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 bidding at each other. The torrent of words did not flow smoothly. It came in hot, short bursts like salvos of machine-con fire. And curiously enough it was almost pure pymotian, not the hybrid pymotian tahedian commonly used in their temperate speech. It bristled with snarling nemes, with flint-like caves, from which fire could be struck in passionate argument. Other women took sides in the quarrel, and I poked an inquisitive pencil into a wasp nest the effect could hardly have been more disconcerning. Hunga was awakened by the angry voices and looked on with sleepy perplexity. Noitain grinned reassuringly, as much to say, Don't be upset. You know what women are. Finally Paré the chief, who had been an impassive spectator, bellowed out of command for silence. The tumult subsided at once, and the fury of the women whithed. Five minutes later everything was as had been before. Hunga was sleeping and Noitain polishing a pearl-shelled fish-hook. Noi Vahani had the baby in, Takayari, the Ocarina. Neither of them showed the least resentment, either toward me or toward each other. In intensity and briefness the gusts of passion which swept through the little church was precisely like the squalls of wind and rain which darkened the seas of the low archipelago in the midst of the hurricane season, which burst almost from a clear sky, and then a suddenly melt into pure sunlight again. When I left the village to return to Soleilir's Island, Takayari was still playing the old border ballad on my Ocarina. It had once been my favorite air for that instrument. I first heard it in northern France on a blustering winter evening when a brigade of English regiments was marching under heavy shell fire into one of the greatest battles of the war, to the music of pipes and drums. Humming the air now, although I still feel a tightening of the nerves, a quickening of the pulses, it is not because of the old set of associations. They have been buried forever, beneath a newre set. The village at Raterio comes into view, and I see Takayari clutching a baby against her naked breast, standing in the midst of a crowd of turbulent women. Should there be some other Polynesian scholar who wishes to pursue further an inquiry into a curious practice of child adoption? I would advise extreme caution, and it is told far on the southeast early 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 Ocarina. CHAPTER X 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 Solitars 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 wasteful 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 Solitars Island I had a further experience with Moiling, the Chinese storekeeper, which convinced me of very definite limitations in another direction. Sometime 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 copramaking 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 for ever of the arrival of the last trading scooter, 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 Moilin. Fish were abundant in the lagoon in a few minutes of fine sport each day more than supplied my wants, but I knew that fish was not acceptable to pallets long accustomed to little else. Furthermore, having accepted at the time of my arrival at Rotario the role of the generous, affluent, pa-pa, I had to carry it through. As previously related, although I had been left at Rotario unexpectedly, the inhabitants took it for granted that I had plenty of money. The possession of wealth in the form of bank notes is regarded there as one of the attributes of a white man, as necessary to his comfort and convenience and as much a part of him as arms and legs. Pride prevented my disillusioning them at first when I was in desperate need of a new wardrobe, but it got me into a devil of a hole with Moil, and I dug myself in more deeply every day. Having traded upon the native tradition of the mysterious affluence of all white men by opening up a credit account with the Chinaman, I had to sustain his confidence in my ability to cancel it at once if I chose, and feeling inwardly object, 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 done to me, but I escaped the humiliating experience only by making additional purchases on so vast a scale, according to island standards, that even Moi seemed to be odd for brief periods into a stupefied acceptance of the mysteriously affluent myth. I myself was odd when I thought of the size of my bill. Trade-good 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 Moistock of supplies was much larger than I had at first supposed. He had a warehouse adjoining his store, which was full of them, and so, with guests making constant demands upon my hospitality, I was forced to buy with the greater abandon as his confidence waned. But I returned from these encounters with a washed-out feeling, regretting that I had ever accepted Gael as an ally, and longing for relief from a state of affairs which I knew could not continue indefinitely. Relief came in historic 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. Huirari 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, Moiling's, tin of 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 at Moishop, 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 skillfully 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 asked for my bill. Moishlip slopped into his back room and returned with a large packet of old newspapers. He was a frugal soul and kept his accounts as he ordered his life, with an eye to avoiding unnecessary expense. The journals were painted over with Chinese characters, the items of my various purchases. He arranged the lists in order, sat down to his counting machine again, and presently gave me the grand total. The amount was something over four thousand francs. Thank heaven for righteous anger, thank heaven for anger which is only moderately righteous. I knew that I had bought lavishly, but I had kept a rough estimate of the amount of my purchases, and I also knew that Moy had added at least ten percent to his legitimate profit. He had reason no doubt that a man who bought on mere whim without asking the price of anything would settle his obligations as thoughtlessly as he had occurred 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 tin 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 Calabas Windship, had carried away with him when he left me at Raterio. My pocket-book was in it containing all my money, more than enough to cancel a 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, slipping badly, and between times, walking up and down Soul Eater's Island, trying to subdue my pride to a point of confession. Then, one afternoon, when I was sitting on the ocean beach, watching the surf piling up on the barrier reef, I became aware of a vessel hulled down on the horizon. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was like a far hello from a world which I had almost forgotten existed. All through the afternoon she beat steadily to winward, until at dusk she was about two miles distant. And I saw that she was one of the small schooners without auxiliary power, which were used by Papiti trading companies for collecting Cobra at the less profitable atolls. All the village came over to Soul Eater's Island, for the anchorage at this end of the atoll lay just behind it. The schooner was recognized. It was a Poti Ramavara, 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-line 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 large pile of luggage behind them. One of them was Tepera, daughter of Pauline chief of the atoll, who had been sent to Protestant school at Papiti nearly a year ago. The other was Tovara, 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 fall-off rumbling of the surf on the winward 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, when it once to her father and putting her head on his shoulder, began to cry softly. Not a word was spoken. Tovara and Porra, her sister, squatted on their heels close by, their arms around each other, running in the same softly audible way. The women then went in turn among all the relatives, having their little crying, while the rest of the village looked on in sympathetic silence. When they had finished a fire was lit on the beach, and everyone gathered around to hear the news and to examine the schooner's cargo, which was being put on shore. More trade goods for more laying, I thought. Carrying my debt, I couldn't summon any great amount of interest in the scene. I was about to return to my house when Hari came bustling up carrying my sea-chest. You like this? You said. What he meant was, is this yours? But for once he misused his English with splendid relevancy. I sat down weakly on the box holding a letter which he had thrust into my hand, no doubt of it. It was my box and the letter was addressed to me in Tino's familiar handwriting. It read in part as follows. We have just met with a Poti Rivera here at Hale. She is going to retiree-o within a few weeks, so I am sending your sea-chest by her. Sorry I left you in the 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 fair wind and I had my cargo to think up. The price of copra is on the downgrade, and I've got to get back to Papati, with mine before the bottom falls out of the market. You said once you wanted to see all you could of life in the Pomotos. Well, I guess you'll have your chance at Rotario. If I was you, I would come back on the P. Rivera. She only carries twenty-seven tons cargo, so she'll probably go direct to Papati from there. I'm also sending you an empty ten-gallon dimmy-john. Fill this with water before you leave. If you come back on the P. R. Amiti, her skipper is a good sailor, but all he knows about navigation you could write on a postage stamp. I met him once about twenty miles south of Fakimheia. He was cruising around looking for Antagotu, which was seventy miles to the northeast. Well, he can't miss Tahiti if he gets within a hundred miles of it, so you better take a chance and come back with him. But don't forget to carry your own supply of fresh water. Sometimes these little native boats get becombed, and it's no joke, being thirsty at sea. Yours, Dino. P. S. M. M. has a big bunch of letters for you. From your friend Nordo. I saw the packet. It looks as though it had been traveling some. Nordo, if he says, isn't Tahiti again. I'll probably see him there and will tell him to wait for you. Give my regards to all your marble players. Good old Tino. He did be 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 a 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 receded bill, one hundred and twenty francs, and the consciousness of having adequately safeguarded tradition. We left Rotario the following day. I did not realize until a moment of leap-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 cul-per-bugs, remained there until the schooner had left the pass and was well out to sea. After our separation at Papati, Nordolf went on to the southwest. He wrote me from an island he called Ahuahu, and from there apparently he took passage to Rorotanga, the principal island of the Cook group. Long before the discovery of New Zealand, Rorotanga 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 Karakana family to reign in Rorotanga 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, further to the west and south. They came upon the Cook group. In those days, no doubt, the southernmost ends of the earth. In the high island of this group, the faint blot on the horizon which led the canoes to land, they called Rorotanga, under the south. CHAPTER XI. His mother's people. The hurricane season ended in a fortnight of calm before the trade came up, from the southeast announcing its arrival with the three days gale that caught our schooner among the outer limits of the group. It was by no means a great storm, yet the constant fury of the wind, unbroken by lull or gust, and the lines of huge breaking seas running under a cloudless sky, impressed me more than anything I have experienced in ships. By day we lived in a world of blue and white, pale blue sky, sea of a dark, angry blue, across acres of white foam. To go on deck by night and watch the leaping ridges of salt water rear up to windward, formless, threatening, fringed, with one phosphorescence, was to revise any beliefs one might have regarding the friendliness of nature. On the evening of the second day we were laid to under a rag of foresail, riding the seas obliquely, a few points off the wind. The schooner took them like an eider-duck. It was so thick in the cabin that I slid back the hatch and squeezed through into the clean turmoil above. The mood of the Pacific was too impressive for pleasure, but I was glad at least of the fresh air and able to derive a species of odd enjoyment from what went on about me. It may have been fatigue or carelessness or inexperience, and anyway, the man at the wheel suddenly allowed the schooner to bear off. She was climbing the slope of a sea at the time. The crest of it caught her weatherside with a crash, and next instant a rush of solid water swept the decks. Thin and faint as the voices of sea birds above the roaring of the wind, the cries of native passengers drifted back, ay, ay! The hatch slid back abruptly, the skipper burst on deck, bristling, gesticulately, clad in a waist-cloth to deliver and address in passionate, mangain, insulting, and only partially audible. Under the swinging lamp in the cabin I found Terry, our singular and philosophic supercargo, whose calm no ordinary gale could disturb, bending over his books a bottle and a glass and rags at his elbow. A mat was spread on the floor and, on it, huddled under a quilt of bright patchwork, lay Apakura, his young native wife. Her feet were bound in a paroo, and the quilt pulled over her head, for the cockroaches were everywhere. I entered my stateroom to lie down. A large cockroach, insolent and richly perfumed, trotted along the springs of the upper berth and halted just above my face. The hands of the hand had no effect on him. I had reasons for not wishing to crush him in his tracks. One of his comrades began a tentative nibbling at my hair, something tickled my foot. I started convulsively. The sudden rolls of the schooner flung me against her side. It was useless to try to sleep. As I sat down beside him Terry closed his books and motioned me to fill a glass. A faint noise of shouting came from on deck. The engine room bell sounded a sudden and pre-emptatory signal. The hatch opened with a gust of spray. The head of the skipper appeared, dimly in the swaying light. I too, he shouted, I'm going to run into the lee and stand off and on until this blows over. The engine started and Terry and I went on deck for a glimpse of the land, looming close and vague in the starlight. Presently as we took our seats in the cabin, the schooner ceased her violent pitching and began to ride along easy swell. Terry rose, stepped to where his wife lay sleeping, picked up the slender bundle in the quilt and disappeared into his stateroom. Next moment he was beside me again, uncorking a fresh bottle of rum. She's had a bad time of it, he said, with a berth on the weather side. She was spilled on the floor half a dozen times before she gave up and came out here. I shouldn't have let her come along. I had my doubts of the weather. But it was a chance to see relative she's got scattered through the group. They're constantly visiting one another. Blood means a lot down here, where they recognize degrees of consignuity, absurdly far-fetched to our minds. First cousins are like brothers, second and third cousins, considered members of one's immediate family, and so on, through the descendants of remote ancestors. When you stop to think of it, this respect for ties of blood in the isolated communities of Polynesia rests on a solid base. I ask them a question concerning the end of these island people. Whether they will fade away and disappear like our own Narragansett and Seminole, without leaving their mark on the supplanting race or whether they will be absorbed gradually, developing in the process of absorption a new type. Darius sat down his glass. One thing is certain, he replied. If left to themselves they would soon be extinct. Wherever you go among the islands you will find couple after couple of full- blooded natives, young, strong, wholesome, and childless. No doubt the white man is partially to blame. But for myself I believe the race is worn out, with isolation and old age. They are justified in their dread of being childless. But an infusion of European blood, however small, works a miracle. You must have noticed this, to me a most striking and significant fact. It is the cross of white and brown that is repopulating the islands today. One can venture a glimpse into the future and see the process of absorption complete. The Polynesian is not fated to disappear without leaving a trace behind, and perhaps it will be more than a trace, for half-caste children cling strongly to the distaff side. The question of half-caste is an interesting one, particularly to men like me. But it is a waste of time to struggle against nature. In the end the solution is nearly always the same. Verona's children furnish the best example I have run across. You've never been to Remorertu, a fancy, it is not often visited nowadays. Probably you've never heard of Verona, and yet he was an extraordinary man, his life an almost unique study in extremes. Like everything real, the story has no beginning unless one were able to trace back the strain that gifted the man with his exceptional temperament. As for an end, that is still working itself out on Remorertu. It is, in fact, no story at all, but a bit of life itself. Unmarked by any dominating situation haphazard and conclusive, rimly logical. No one can know the whole of it. The play of motives, the decisions, the pure chance. But I worked with Verona for years and have patched his story together after fashion. Now and then when the mood struck him, he used to speak of himself, sometimes at night when we were working his schooner from island to island, sometimes by day as we lay smoking under the palms of a remote atoll, while the canoes of the divers dotted the lagoon. On those occasions I had glimpses of a man not to be judged by the standards of everyday life. A man actuated by motives as simple as they were incomprehensible to those about him. His death, if he is dead, but I will speak of that in its place. His real name was Warner, a big blue-eyed man, slow spoken, and a little dreamy in manner. With an immense blonde mustache and a serenity, nothing could disturb. I never knew him to hesitate in making a decision or to speak unless he had something to say. All decent men like him and the natives, who were better able than a white man to fathom his simplicity, took to him from the first. He had been miserably out of place in England, squeezed through Cambridge, which he detested, unhappily married, done out of a fortune by the defaulting brother-in-law whose last debt he paid and divorced just before he came out here. It is often observed that when an Englishman's feelings are hurt he travels. And, in this respect, Marana was not exceptional. One day a little more than a generation ago he stepped off the male boat at Papati, a rather typical English tourist, a fancy dressed in typical costumes from Bond Street, and accompanied by an extraordinary quantity of luggage. At the club he ran across Jackson of the atoll trading company. The old man liked him from the first, and they used to spend the evenings together, lingering over their glasses, talking a little in low tones. A fortnight later Marana left as quietly as he had come, upbound in one of Jackson's schooners, for a cruise through the Pomotas. It was the year of the hurricane at Motorgoni. Marana's boat, commanded by a native skipper, had drifted through the group, in a desolatory way, touching an island here and there to pick up a few tons of cobra, or a bit of shell. One can imagine the effects on a newcomer, in those early days among the atolls, long sunlit days when gentle breezes filled the sails of the vessel, scurrying the shores of the lagoons, waters of unearthly peace and loveliness, bordered by leagues of green. And the nights ashore when the moon rose at the end of the path of rippling silver, and the people gathered before their thatched houses to sing, but not long before Varana linearized, that he had found his anodyne. At home he had been a yachtsman of sorts. By the time they reached Motorgoni, the brown skipper was leaving a good part of the working of the schooner to his guest. They were diving in the lagoon that year. At the end of a long rui on the shell, a sort of closed season, scruperfully respected by the natives. Half a dozen schooners were anchored off the village, where every house overflowed with people from the surrounding islands, and by day their canoes blackened the water above the patches of shell. The hurricane gave ample warning of its approach. Varana told me as much as that. He had spent the night ashore with a trader whose old glass rose and fell spasmodically, sinking always a little lower, until it stood at a figure which set the trader off, white in cursing, to break open a fresh case of gin. None of the divers went out at daybreak. With the other people they stood in little frightened groups before the houses. The older men were already beginning to hack off the tops of the stout palms in which they planned to roost. By the time Varana came off in a canoe the schooners were double anchored. The wind was shifting uneasily in sharp gusts, and a tremendous surf was thundering on the outer beach. The native skipper, like the people ashore, knew perfectly well what was coming and, like most of his kind, his spirit broke in the face of a large emergency, before the feeling that the forces of nature were about to overwhelm him. Well, I've been through one hurricane. I can't say that I blame him much. Varana found him not exactly in a funk. But in a state of passive resignation, hoping vaguely that his two anchors would let him ride it out inside. The crew was clustered on the after-deck, exchanging scared whispers. Varana, who had the instinct of a deep water sailor, took in the situation at a glance and, next moment, he had taken command of the schooner. Without a word of protest the men reefed, got sail on her, heaved up one anchor, and cut the other cable. Varana had very little to say about the rest, how he edged out through the pass, and managed to claw off just as a cyclone struck Madaguri. But afterward the story went the rounds of every group. All the other schooners in Delgun, as well as most of the people ashore, were lost. How Varana weathered it without piling up his vessel on any one of half a dozen atolls is a sort of miracle. A week later, when he had sailed his battered schooner, the only survivor of the disaster at Montenanghi, into Papati harbor, he found himself famous by nightfall, for the native captain gave him entire credit for the achievement. Old Jackson's imagination was touched, or perhaps it was the destruction of so many rival schooners in the shell and cobra trade. At any rate, he acted on impulse for once in his life, sent for Varana, and offered him a remarkably good berth with a fat screw attached, but the one rear only smiled and shook his head. He had had a taste of the outer islands. It shakes one's faith and providence to realize that most men die without finding the place in life, for which they were designed. It was Old Jackson who told him of Rimaruto, probably during one of their almost silent evenings at the club. It was a mistake, Jackson thought, to believe that a man could shut himself off from the world. The mood would pass in time. But if Varana wished seriously to try it, he would find no better place than Rimaruto. There was some cobra to be had and a little shell in the lagoon. The people numbered about 200. A quiet, pleasant lot, not giving to wandering from their island. Varana had salvaged a few thousand pounds from the wreck of his affairs at home. Jackson helped him pick up a schooner at a bargain, and loaded her with what was needed. There was some difficulty about a crew, but his uncanny gift with the natives got him three men content to follow his fortunes. On the morning when he shook hands with the old man, stepped aboard his boat and sailed out of the harbor. Varana severed the last tie with the world he had known. I could tell you a good deal about his life on the island. I worked with him for nearly ten years. He began by renting a bit of land for his store in Koprashet. From the chief and setting himself to learn the language. The Polynesian is a shrewd judge of character. They saw that this man was just, kindly, fearless and to be trusted. Those who had traveled a little declared Varana a phenomenon, a white traitor, who respected women and never lay on his veranda in a stupor surrounded by empty bottles. He seemed to know instinctively the best way to take these people, with whom from the very first he found himself on terms of a mutual understanding. They regarded him with a mixture of liking and respect, not recorded us, perhaps, as often as we are apt to think. He worked with them, he played with them, and finally took a daughter of the island as his wife. Yet it was characteristic that he never permitted himself to run barefoot, and that even after twenty years of friendship the native-entering Varana's house took off his hat. I remember Tupana as a woman of thirty, tall, robust and grave, with delicate hands and masses of bright rippling hair. The years were kind to her. Even in middle life she did not lose a certain quiet charm. Make no mistake, they were happily mated. This man turned out by what Englishmen believed the highest civilization in the world, and a daughter of an island chief whose father had been a savage and an eater of men. She was not spoiled like so many traitors' wives. When they had been on the reef she walked home behind, carrying the torches and the fish. But he felt for her an affection deep as it was undemonstrative, a strong attachment, proven at the end in his own extreme and romantic way. During their early years of his life on Rimarutu, Varana had enough to do with his store, his occasional trips for supplies, and his work for the betterment of the island people. He found them living on fish and coconuts, depending for all their luxuries on a dwindling production of cobra. He showed them how to thin their palms, how to select nuts for new plantings, how to dry their cobra with a minimum of effort. The shell in the lagoon was nearly exhausted. He persuaded the chiefs of the two villages to forbid diving for a term of years. After experiments conducted with Tapuna's aid he set them in to catching flying fish, which swarmed in the waters about the island, and taught the women to split them, rub in salt, and dry them on lines in the sun. Rimarutu is high as a toll's goal, five or six yards above the sea in spots. He laid out beds of Pukrataro, and had pits dug on the high portions of the island, lined the bottoms with rock to keep the tarpots from the salt water, filled them with humus and top soil, scraped up in handfuls, and planted breadfruit, mango, and lime, brought from the high islands to the north. At long intervals, when in need of something that only civilization could supply, paint, rigging, or a new set of sails, he went north with a cargo of cobra and dried fish, and took on a brief charter with Jackson. On these trips he visited scores of islands, and came to know the people of a thousand miles of ocean. It was not until his son was born that Verana began to think seriously of money. His daughters had given him no concern. He explained to me once his particular philosophy as to their future. Perhaps he was right. With their happiness in mind he preferred to bring them up as island girls, without education or knowledge of the outside world, and no greater prospects than those of their full-blooded playmates, rather than give them the chances of the usual half-caste, half-educated and partially European-ized, whose most brilliant hope was marriage with a white man of the inferior sort, but the birth of Terry set the father to thinking. The child was about ten when I saw him first, a fine, strong boy, very fair for a half-caste, with his father's eyes a high carriage of the head, and skin touched with a faint bloom of the sun. Tupuna was immensely proud of him. I was a youngster then, and new to the islands, but I had heard of Verana before Jackson introduced me to him. It was at Jackson's place, on the upper Veranda, that he told me how he had leased fa-tu-hina. Someone had spoken of my work. I had operated diving machines. He needed a man familiar with him, for he had leased an atoll with some big-shell patches in the lagoon, and machines would be necessary to work the deeper portions. I was doing nothing at the time I liked what I had heard of Verana, and I liked the man better still. In an hour we had come to an understanding. I worked with him, off and on, from that time until the beginning of the war. Without caring in the least for wealth, Verana had set out to make himself rich. Long before I knew him he had decided the question of his son. Terry was to have the same chances that his father had had before him. Was to see both sides and choose for himself. Even Verana's friend spoke of his luck. To my mind his success was inevitable. Regarded with an almost superstitious affection by the people of widely scattered groups, he possessed channels of information closed forever to the ordinary man. It was in this way that he learned of the shell and fa-tu-hina lagoon. Perhaps he did not know that the native who approached him, one he'd being unadisted at all to speak casually of the matter and stroll away, had paddled across twelve miles of sea, with no other object than to bring the news to Verana. When the Gevrata was beached he was the first to learn of it. That affair alone brought him a neat fortune. And when men had fine pearls to sell they saw him before they went to the Jews. By the time his son was twelve Verana was a rich man. I was on Remaruta when he left to take the boy to England. Tapuna shed a few tears but there was no scene she knew he would return. I go to take our son to my own land, he told her. There will be six moons before I come. Five months later I was waiting with the schooner when he stepped off the meal-boat. That night as he lay on a mat on the after-deck, dressed in a paroo and a pair of slippers, he spoke of England briefly in the midst of our talk on Island Matters. Damn, census treadmill, he remarked. I can't think how I stood it for so many years. The ordinary man who had left home under a cloud of misfortune to return twenty years later, after wandering in distant lands with a fortune and a beautiful child, would have lingered not without a certain relish. But Verana was different. He grudged every moment spent in civilization and lived only for the day when he would again take the wheel of his schooner and watch the ridges of Tahiti sink beneath the horizon. The years passed rapidly and tranquilly on Remaruta. The days of Verana's activity were over. He was no longer young, though he kept his store and took the schooner out at long intervals for supplies. Then came the outbreak of the war. I was in Gallopoli when the letter reached me, written in the native language by Verana's old mate. It told a story fantastically unreal, incredible from the viewpoint of everyday life. And yet to me who knew him as to the people of his island, the end of Verana seemed a natural thing, in keeping with what had gone before. Topuna had fallen ill, the old man wrote, and had died suddenly and peacefully, as natives do. Verana stood beside a grave with no great display of grief. Returned to his house and spent three days putting his affairs in order. On the fourth day, he gave them made a thick envelope of documents, called together the people of the island, and bade each one of them farewell. When he turned to leave, they did not disperse. The women had begun to sob. They felt already the desolation of a final parting. It was the hour of sunset when the trade wind dies away, and the lagoon lies like a mirror. Under Nopolis and Skye. I can see an imagination, those simple and friendly islanders, standing in little groups before the settlement, raising no voice in protest, moving no hand in restraint. While the man they loved walked to the ocean beach, launched a tiny canoe in the surf, and paddled out to the west. The nearest land in that direction is distant, six hundred miles. When he had passed the breakers, they say Verana did not once turn his head. The watchers stood motionless while the Skye faded. Their eyes fixed on a dot that was his canoe. A dwindling dot swallowed up at last in the night. Tarry ceased to speak. He was sitting propped on the lounge, arms folded, legs stretched out, eyes staring at the table. Without seeming aware of what he did, he felt his glass raised up to his lips and drank. Presently he emerged from his revelry to light a pipe. In due time he went on, I had word from the lawyers in closing a copy of the will and informing me that I had been named executor with Old Jackson, who seemed to have discovered the secret of eternal life. There was also a letter from Verana written after Tupuna's death, a friendly and casual note, with a mere line at the end asking me to do what I could for his boy. The land Tupuna had brought him was to be divided equally among his daughters, all the rest was for Tarry, saving his parting gift to me. Only one condition was attached. Tarry must visit Remeruto before inheriting the property of his father. Once he had set foot on the island, he would be his own master free to choose his path in life. The boy was nineteen when the war broke out. He joined up at once as a cadet in the flying corps. During the second year I began to hear a lieutenant warner. He had shot down a German plane near Ziesbergen. He had been wounded. He had received the military cross. Once I saw his picture in this sphere. A handsome lad, very smart in the old uniform of the RFC. With a johnny cap over one eye. And ribbons on his breast. This was the little savage whose shrill cries I used to hear at dawn when he raced with his half-naked companions on the beach. At the end of the war he was Captain Tarry Warner, a celebrity in a small way. I felt a certain pride in him, of course. We had done our best to meet but something always happened to prevent my getting a glimpse of him. I ran across him as I was homeward bound, leaving San Francisco for the islands. I had already gone aboard and was standing by the rail watching the last of the luggage swing over the side in nets. When a motor drove up to discharge a party of men and women, festivals of the city, from their looks, one of them a lean tan boy, with an overcoat of a British officer over his civilian clothes, was saying good-bye to the others, shaking hands and smiling very attractively. A little later, when the lines were being cast off, I saw him close beside me at the rail. A girl in blue was standing on the dock, waving up at him, good-bye, Tarry, she called. I looked closely. There could be no doubt. It was the son of Verana. We had long talks on the voyage south. The land had not forgotten me, the memory of the old life of the island, of his mother, of his father, would always be fresh in his mind. But he regarded those days as a distant and beautiful episode, now forever closed. He was going to visit Remaruto for the last time, to bid farewell to those who remembered him. He had not forgotten the friends of his boyhood. There were many little presents in his boxes. And he told me that the schooner reported sound as on the day of her launching would be his gift to Verana's old mate. Afterward he would return to San Francisco where opportunities had been offered him. He had brought letters to America and had been well received. The schooner was in port when we arrived. Verana's mate met us on the dock. There were tears in the old man's eyes as he took the boy's hands in his own, and murmured in a trembling voice, Oh, Tarry, de ye. The tourists descending the gang-plank looked with interest at the spectacle of Captain Warner, almost embracing an old barefoot Kanaka, dressed in dungarees and a faded shirt, wrinkled brown face working with emotion. As Tarry shook hands with the crew, some of them boys with whom he had played in childhood, I noticed that a brazer-two of the native came to his lips. Twelve years had not been sufficient to blot out all memory of his mother's tongue. We had a long passage south, beating against a trade. Verana had installed a engine in the schooner, but time is cheaper than petrol in this part of the world. Tarry delighted in handling the boat. There was salt water in his blood, and his father had seen to his training in navigation and the ways of the sea. With each new day I perceived symptoms of a change in the boy. White suits and canvas slippers gave way to pajamas in bare feet. Finally the pajamas were replaced by a peru, taken from the trade room stock. The summers at home had not been wasted. I used to watch him at the wheel working the schooner to windward an eye on the canvas aloft, staring with the easy certain movements of a seaman-born. He was in love with the schooner before we had been out a week. And he had reason, frisco built for the last of the pelogic ceiling. Verana's boat was the fastest thing of her tonnage in the South Seas. More than once in our talks Tarry seemed to forget the plans he had confided to me. She needed a new foresail. This set of this one did not please him. He was going to have her copper renewed in places. She was getting dingy below. The cabin needed a touch of paint. At times speaking of these things he stopped short in the midst of a sentence and changed the talk to other subjects. The language came back to him surprisingly. He was able to understand and make himself understood before we raised the palms of Rimeruto. The mate took her through the pass. It was late afternoon, cool and cloudless, with the gentle sea nuzzling at the reef. The island was like the memory of a dream, fresh green palms, snowy beaches, cat's paws ruffling the lagoon in long blue streaks. So beautiful that the sight of it made one's heart ache and the breath catch in one's throat. A dozen canoes put out to meet us from the first settlement. There were greetings from friends and relatives and braces and tears. Tarry lay silent, prompt on his elbows and staring ahead. As we slipped across the lagoon, the island people spoke in tones so low that I could hear the crisp sound of the schooner's bow as parting the landlocked water. The other village lay beyond the beach ahead of us. Verana's village, where Tarry had been born. A place of dreams and a mystery of the evening light. It was not difficult to guess at the boy's thoughts. The moment was one of those which make up the memories of a lifetime. Every man has known them rapture, pain, the enjoyment of supreme beauty, the flavor of exotic and unrepeatable experience. But not every man is permitted to taste such contrasts as this boy had known in twenty-four years of life. I was a little envious. I think of the rarity of that poignant homecoming. On the first evening, when we had greeted the people of the village, Tarry was led away by his old aunt, to Puna's sister. Just before bedtime I saw them at his mother's grave, a lonely shrine, roofed over an island fashion, where the light of a lamp shone on stunted bushes of fangapini. My eccentricities were not forgotten. They had spread my mat under the palms before Verana's house, and toward midnight Tarry came quietly and lay down close by. I was wakeful in a reverie, living over the old days with my friend, wandering with the usual idle and sombered out, if we were destined to meet again. Low over the palm tops, a planet glimmered like a shaded lamp. The Milky Way arched overhead through a sky powdered with fixed stars, remote suns, about which revolved mariades of worlds like ours. I rebelled at the thought that the strong soul of Verana should be snuffed out. Tarry said nothing for a long time. I thought he had dropped off to sleep, but suddenly I heard his voice. I have the strangest feeling tonight, he said, thoughtfully. If my father were here, I could believe that I had never been away, that everything since I left England school, my friends, the war, was no more than a dream. I can't explain it to you, but somehow this island seems the most real thing in the world. I've been talking with my aunt. I'd almost forgotten her name, you know. And I managed to understand a good bit of what she had to say. There is no doubt she believes it herself. My father comes to her every now and then, she says, for a talk on family matters. Last night he told her we would come to-day, and that I would stop here to take his old place among the people. It's themes they are good enough to want me to stay. I almost wish I could. The drums were going at daybreak. The feast in Tarry's honour was the greatest the island had known since heathen days. The entire population was on hand. The beach black with canoes, dozens of good humoured babies on mats under the trees with small brothers and sisters stationed to fan the flies away. The people sat in long rows in the shade. Strings of shell about their necks. Their heads wreathed in hibiscus and sweet fern. Tarry was placed between the chief of the other village and Tejina, the chief's daughter. A full-blooded, remadrude-to-girl of sixteen barefoot, dressed in a white frock with gold pendants in her ears and a thick shining braid of hair. There is an uncommon charm about the women of that island. A stamp of refinement. A delicacy of frame and feature. Remarked as long ago as the days of Spanish voyaging in the Pacific. Blood counts for something in Polynesia, and one needed only a glance at Tejina to know that the best blood of the island flowed through her veins. Her ancestor, if tradition may be credited, was in the long canoe with Penipi when the god pulled Remaruto up from the bottom of the sea. I liked those people, and in spite of the night's depression, I managed to enjoy the fun. I even danced a bit. Finally, I saw that the dancers were taking their seats. Voices were lowered, heads were turned. Tejina was dancing alone to the rhythm of a hundred clapping hands. In twenty years of the islands I have never seen a girl step more dangerly. Little by little she moved towards Terri, until she stood directly before him. Inviting him to dance. Hands fluttering, swaying with an unconscious grace smiling into his eyes. Every head turned. There were smiles, good humor, chuckles, nudges. They were proud of this girl and anxious that the son of Verana should dance with her. They had not long to wait. The next moment Terri had leapt to his feet and was dancing, with more enthusiasm than skill to a long burst of cheers and clapping. When the canoes put off at nightfall I noticed that Tejina did not leave. She had stopped to visit her uncle, the parson of the village church. I saw Terri with her often during the days that followed, fishing in lagoon, swimming in the cove, lying on mats in the moonlight where groups of young people were telling their intermerable stories of the past. She seemed a little shy to me and no longer exchanged competences in the hour which preceded sleep. One evening, smoking and strolling along after dinner, I passed the parson's house and became aware of the vague figure of Terri, walking to and fro impatiently beside the veranda. He stopped. I heard the rattle of a coral pebble on the roof. A moment later, Tejina glided like a phantom around the corner of the house and they went off arm in arm along the path to the sea. I thought to myself that the land was not doing badly after his twelve years away from the island, but the blood was in him, of course. There was instinct in the tossing of the pebble and the unhesitating way he had led the girl toward the outer beach. The haunt of dreadful presences, a place no ordinary islander would visit after dark. I fancied him sitting there. The rumble of the surf in his ears, watching the lines of breakers, grew up under the moon. With Tejina beside him, admiring and afraid, when his eye was not on her, she would glance right and left, along the beach and back toward the bush, half expecting to see some monstrous thing crouched and watching with fiery eyes. As for the boy, one could only guess at the troubled flow of his thoughts, stirred by cross currents of ancestry and experience. In her own environment Tejina was a girl to make any man look twice. For him, with his mother's blood and the memories of his childhood, she must have possessed a powerful appeal. The touch of her hand, her voice soft and low-pitched, murmuring the words of a half-pergotten tongue, her dike eyes shining in the moonlight, the scent of the strange blossoms in her hair. It was the test, the final conflict, for on I had foreseen. I had my own opinion of the result, and yet the other life pulled hard. The days passed in pleasant island fashion. The loading of the schooner went on. There was no mention of a change in plans. The chief came to take his daughter home, and when she had gone, Teri spoke to me, not too convincingly, of his return to civilization. My trip to Rimaruda was a matter of pleasure alone. I was already planning to take this birth, and was not sorry when Teri announced one morning that we would sail north that afternoon. One seems perpetually saying good-bye down here. These islands are havens of a brief call, of sad farewells, of lingering and regretful memory. Our parting from the people of Rimaruda was more than usually painful. They had hoped to the last that Teri would leave some words, some promise, but he remained silent, though I could see that the leaf-taking was not without effect. Finally, the last canoe put off for sure. The anchor came up, the motor started, and Teri steered across the lagoon for the pass. The sails were still furrowed, for there was a light head wind. I watched his face as he stood in silence at the wheel. There was a look in his eyes which made me sorry for the boy. We crossed the lagoon, glided past green islets, and drew a breast of the other village. The people lined the shore, fluttering handkerchiefs, shouting good wishes and furveils. Beyond the settlement the pass led out, blue and deep between sunken piers of coral where the surf thundered in patches of white. All once the old mate sang out and pointed, a dot was on the water, ahead of us, a swimmer moving out from land to cut us off. The son of Arana turned the wheel, the schooner swung in shore. I heard a quick command and felt the speed of the engine slacking. Teri was staring ahead with a strange intensity, instinct or premonition was at work. I looked again as we drew near. A cloud of dark air floated behind the swimmer's head. It was a woman, Tahenia. Teri sprang to the rail. A moment later she had been lifted over the side and was standing beside him in the cockpit, dripping, trembling, a little with cold and fear, doing her best to smile. The mate was pulling at Teri's arm and pointing back toward the village. A wellboat had put out from shore and was heading for us at top speed of the rowers. It was the chief himself, I believe, who stood in the stern and whose shouts were beginning to reach our ears. At that moment Teri proved he was his father's son. He glanced back once and then without the smallest interval of hesitation. His arm went about the wet shoulder of Tahenia. Full speed ahead he ordered in a cool voice. Tarry poured rum in my glass and tilted the last of the bottle into his own. The schooner was ticking it easily with her engine at half speed. Riding a gentle swell, the ship's bell rang twice, paused and rang again. A sharp and mellow sound. It was long past midnight. If you ever get down to Rumirutu, said Tarry, as he rose to go on deck, you'll find Teri there. He bids fair to leave the island even less than Verona did.