 CHAPTER XIV. It is not easy to analyze the magic which cousins every traveller into believing that he is the first to see Tahiti with clear eyes. One feels that it is made up of nature in a mood of unearthly loveliness, of a sense of ancient and unalterable life, of a realization that strange beliefs persist under a semblance of Christianity, of the lure of a race whose confidence the white man can never fully gain, the male steamers, the wireless, the traitors, the scattering of French officials, these things are a mere play of shadows on the surface. Even the churches, I was tempted to say, but the church plays more than a shadowy part in the life of the native whose religion, at the present day, is a singular blending of Christian doctrine and Old Heathen belief. Tahiti reads his Bible, he has no other book, and sings loudly every Sunday in church, but the dead are still things of horror in his mind. Sorcerers masquerading as doctors still carry on a brisk trade, and Tao Tao, the great-headed, is still a living presence in the valley of Panoru. When the people of the Society Islands accepted Christianity a century ago, they did so with reservations, of which the missionaries, perhaps, were not aware, here and there, as at Fattaway Aon Buria, there was a burning of idols, but a great mass of material, old gods and heathen weapons, was stored in secure hiding-places among the hills. Today after three generations of increasing European influence, hundreds of natives know of these caves and repair to them for purposes of their own. Yet a white man might spend his life on Tahiti without a glimpse of a senate-bound oral rule or a slender ironwood spear. My friend Eri Ma is typical. The widow of a Yankee skipper, the owner of a neat wooden villa in Papati, where she appears regularly on her way to church, in shoes, stockings, and a black silk gown. She finds it necessary, from time to time, to cast off the unnatural manners of Europe, and live as she was meant to live, to be herself an elderly and delightful savage. When the mood comes she closes the villa in Papati, gathers the willing members of her family, and repairs to her native house, far off on the peninsula of Tahiyapuru. The house of Arama stands on a river bank, shaded by a pair of mango trees, dark green and immemorally old. The roof is thatched, with braided prawns of coconut, breezes play through the lofty single room. Bear of furniture and floored with mat spread on white coral gravel, leveled and packed. Past the veranda on which the family sleeps through the warm hours of the day, the river flows out gently to the sea. Abroad still water, deep and glassy clear. Peopleed with darting shoals of fish, mullet, young pampano and natto, the trot of the south seas. Opposite the river-mouth the reef is broken by a pass, through which the steady lines of comers sweep in to crash and tumble on the bar. Morning and afternoon the breakers are alive with naked children, shouting and glistening brown in the sunlight as they ride the waves. Inland, the valley marking the river's course is lost in a maze of broken and fantastic peaks. Seaward, bordering the green and blue of the lagoon, the snowy line of the reef stretches off endlessly, and beyond a three-league expanse of bright sea, the headlands of Tahiti, Nui, rise in vast swelling curves up and up to the perpetual clouds which fail the heights. Under a bright sun at midday, when the palm-tops toss to the trade which paints the lagoon, in the deep passes and over the patches of sandy bottom, with ruffled sapphire and emerald, and sets the white caps to dancing beyond the reef, or in the calm of night, with the moon hanging low over the pinnacles of basalt. When the polished surface of the lagoon is broken by the plunge and swirl of heavy fish, and native songs rising and falling in savage cadences, float out across the water, it is a place not easily forgotten. It was still dark when we rose, Maury and I. The brothers of Maury had returned from the reef, and the ovens behind the cookhouse were smoking. For in these places the hour of the day's first meal is set by the return of the fishermen. I took one shuddering plunge into the river, dressed myself in a shirt, a waist cloth, and a pair of hobnailed boots, and squatted with the rest of the consume of fresh caught mackerel, and a section of breadfruit, dipped in a common bowl of sauce. Maury sucked his fingers and stood up, calling to the dogs. Erema glanced at me over the back of a large fish she was gnawing, holding it with both hands. Go, you two, she said. You stay, replied Maury, as she turned to take the path to the mountains. The oceanic tongue possesses no other words of parting. We followed the river across the flatlands of the coast. Dawn was flushing in the east. The profile of lofty ridges, fern clad and incredibly serrated, grew sharp against the sky. The miners were awakening. From the thick foliage of orange and mango trees came their extraordinary morning chorus, a thousand voices whistling, screaming, and chattering that it was time the assembly broke up for the foraging of another day. In one place, where a turn of the path brought us suddenly to the edge of a still reach of water, a pair of native ducks, Ennis specularcosa, rose vertically on beating wings and sped off over the palm tops. A little further on, where volcanic boulders began to appear through the alluvial soil, and the river leaped and foamed over the first rapids, a family of Tahitian jungle fowl, led by a splendid burnish cock, sprang out of the grass and streamed away in easy rapid flight towards the hills. The dogs bound forward and stopped, whining as they watched the wild chickens dwindle to speeding dots. The groves of coconut palms and open pasture land were behind us now. The valley was narrowing, hemmed in by thousand-foot cliffs to which a tangle of vegetation clung. The river became a torrent, thrilling, and waste-deep, plunging over cataracts roaring down dark rapids under a roof of matted trees. Giant hibiscus a yard through, too remote to tempt the axe-wub the canoe-builder, candle-nut, baring tonia, and mape. The island chestnut with bowls like fluted columns of a temple. The trail wound back and forth across the river, over the trunks of fallen trees, around masses of rock, tumbled from the cliffs above, mounting higher and higher into the heart of the island. Once as we stopped to rest I looked back and caught a glimpse of the sea, a wedge of blue, far behind us and below. The dogs had begun to range ahead for they knew that any moment we might start a sounder of wild pig. I was growing tired, it was not easy to follow Maury as his own gait. He walked with the rapid, springing tread of a mountain-man. When he stooped to clear a low, branching limb, or loped off a section of creeper with an easy swing of his machete, I admired the play of muscles on his back, rippling powerfully under the smooth brown skin. Silken and unblemmaged. Unless it be by scars. The skin of these people is not like ours but softer and closer in texture, seeming like marble to glimmer with reflected light. The gorge grew narrower, we rounded a buttress of jointed basalt and came suddenly into the light and open of a lonely valley. A quarter of a mile wide and twice as long, set high above the sea and hammed in by untrodden ridges, it lay here uninhabited and forgotten, in a silence broken only by the roar of savage cataracts and the far-off bellowing of wild bulls. Yet man had been here. Among the base of the cliffs we found a terraced stone of his dwellings, the blocks of volcanic rock pried apart by the roots of huge, old trees. Malray was squatting on his heels beside me, contemplating in silence these relics of an older time. Finally he turned his head. "'Those stones are very old,' he remarked. "'They have been here always, since the beginning. Men placed them here and men slept on them, but not the men of my people. My thoughts dwelt on the old idle tales I had heard of the lizard men, of the dark-skinned Aborigines. The Maanahome said to have been in possession of the land when the eyes of Polynesian voyagers first rested on cloudy Orophena. There were other tales, too, of a later day, of a tribe of men dwelling in the valleys, neither tasting fish nor setting foot on the beach except when, at certain intervals, they were prevented to come down to worship by the sea. Even today it needs no effort of the imagination to see two distinct types among the island people. Men and women of the kind one considers typically Polynesian. Tall, clean-limbed, and light-brown with clear dark eyes, straight or waving hair, and heads not differing greatly from the heads of Europeans. Another kind of—Nigroid or Malanesian. Cast, short, squat, and many shades darker in complexion. Thick-lipped and apish, with muddy eyes, kinky hair, and flattened, underdeveloped heads. And, strangely enough, after more than a century of missions and levelling foreign influence, the dark and awkward people seem still to fill the humbler walks of life. They are the servants and dependents—the feeders of pigs, the carriers of wooden water. Great stature, physical beauty, and light complexion are still the hallmarks of aristocratic birth. Many of the islands a hundred years ago, old Ellis, the often quoted closest observer of them all, remarked, it is a singular fact in the physiology of the inhabitants of this part of the world, that the chiefs and persons of hereditary rank and influence of the islands are almost without exception, as much superior to the peasantry or common people in stateliness, dignified deportment and physical strength, as they are in rank and circumstances, although they are not elected to their station on account of their personal endowments, but derive the rank and elevation from their ancestry. This is the case with most of the groups of the Pacific, but particularly so in Tahiti and the adjacent isles. The father of the late king was six feet four inches high. Pomari was six feet two, the present king of Ratatina is equally tall. Their limbs are generally well formed and the whole figure is proportioned to their height, which renders the difference between the rulers and their subjects so striking that Bougainville and some others have supposed they were a distinct race. The descendants of a superior people, who at a remote period had conquered the Aborigines and perpetuated their supremacy. There's a curious inconsistency in the matter of complexion. For in the old days a dark skin was considered the sign of a strong warlike and masterly man. Ellis records an extract from an old song. If dark be the complexion of the mother, the sun will sound the conch sail. And yet, on the same page he observes that the majority of the reigning family in Ratatina are not darker than the inhabitants of some parts of southern Europe. While Moray and I rested among the ruins of the ancient settlement, the dogs had been more usefully engaged. My musings were disturbed by a sudden burst of squeals punctuated by exciting yelpings. Moray sprang to his feet long knife in hand. It was only a small pig, a sixty-pounder, but he was bursting fat. Stuffed with viaples, fallen from the great tree under which he had been feeding. The dogs had him by the ears when he arrived. A thrust of the machete put an end to his short and idyllic life. I hung him from a branch and skinned him while Moray went off in search of fe. Presently he returned, carrying on his shoulder a stout pole of hibiscus, from either end of which swung a bunch of mountain plantains, like huge, thick bananas, the size of quart bottles and bright, yellowish red. There was a clump of palms nearby, another sign, perhaps, of man's former occupation, the relics of unnumbered vegetable generations. We had coconuts to drink, pork and fe were at hand, and plenty of freshwater crayfish, to be had in the river. In the islands the obtaining of food is always the signal for a meal. Moray beckoned to me and led the way to the river, where he readjusted his waistcloth to leave a kind of apron hanging in front and plunged up to his armpits in the still water. With the apron spread as a trap for the darting crayfish, he moved slowly along the grassy and overhanging bank of the stream, stopping every moment or two to hand a struggling victim up to me. This little freshwater lobster is one of the most delicious shellfish in the world, of the same dimensions as the French Equivas, and not unlike it in flavor. In fifteen minutes we had enough, and the work preparing our meal began. I gathered wood and started to fire against the face of rock. Moray cut a section of giant bamboo, half filled it with water, threw in the crayfish and stood it beside the fire to boil. Our meal was genuinely primitive. I had cigarettes, matches, and a paper of salt stowed in the tukum up our maru. Accepting our knives we had nothing else that the rudest of savages might not have possessed. Turning up the earth with his machete my companion scraped out a shallow trench. Moray oven. He set a ring of stones about the edge, lined the inside with pebbles, and filled the hole with coals from our campfire. While the coals glowed, heating the earth and stones, he cut off a loin and hind quarter of pork, wrapped the meat carefully in plantain leaves, and selected half a dozen of the riper plantians for our meal. Finally when the oven was thoroughly hot, he scraped away the coals from the middle, right in the leaf-raff pork, surrounded by a ring of plantians, pushed in hot stones close to the food, and covered the hole with a thick layer of plantain leaves. We ate the crayfish, boiled to a bright scarlet, while the balance of our meal was cooking. I added salt to the boiled down liqueur in the bottom of the bamboo, and dipped in this natural sauce. The first course wetted our appetites for the tender meat and juicy plantions which soon came from the oven. As we laid smoking after our meal I could see that Maurice had something in his mind, and was debating whether or not to speak. Finally he began cautiously and with an air of skeptical restraint at first, but with more and more assuredness as he saw that I listened seriously to his story. "'The old people, say,' he remarked, pointing to the head of the valley where the cliffs narrowed to a deep crack through which the river rushed, that far up in this same valley beyond the upper gorge you see, a spirit dwells, one of the heathen spirits which are as old as the land. You and I may not believe in these things, but it is good when the evenings are long to listen to the stories of the old men. The name of the spirit is Tefatu. Some call him Veraino, saying that he dogs the footsteps of the living and prays upon the souls of the newly dead. But that is not true. For many times in the memory of my fathers he has been known to aid those in perplexity or distress. The old men believe that if a traveller, lost in these mountains at nightfall, calls on Tefatu for his succor, the spirit will appear before him in the likeness of a pale moving fire, and lead him in safety down to the sea. Once inside of the sea the man must cry out in a loud voice. You have aided me, Tefatu, and I am content. Stop here, and I will go on my way. It is not good to neglect these words of parting. Sometimes he is seen at night flying from rich ridge of the mountain, a great glowing head trailing a thin body of fire. Long ago during the childhood of my grandmother, Tefatu left this land for a space of years. Men said that he had flown to Hawaii, but now he has returned beyond a doubt. High up among the cliffs I found the cave in which he sleep by day. These eyes of mine have seen the old lord lying there among the whiteened heads of men. I looked and turned away quickly, for my stomach was cold with fear. I cannot tell you clearly, Maury went on in answer to my obvious question. For I was greatly afraid. It seemed to me that he was a figure of wood longer and thinner than a man, black with age covered with carved patterns and bound in places with close wrappings of nappy. The fine senate my people have forgotten how to make. The place was full of bones scores of men had been slain and their bodies offered there. As was the custom of our old kings. Once not many years ago a wise man came here from the islands of Hawaii. An old man bearded and wearing spectacles. It was his work to write down the names of our ancestors, and he spoke our tongue, though haltingly and with a strange twist. He lived with us for a time and we grew fond of him. For he was a simple man who made us laugh with his jokes and was kind to the children. One evening I told him how I had found the place of Tefatu. As I spoke his eyes grew bright behind their windows of glass, and when I had done he begged me, in great excitement, to lead him to the cave, offering a hundred of your dollars if I could prove that I had spoken true words. I was younger then and in need of money, for I was courting a girl. We went together into the mountains, but as we grew nearer the place something within me made me hesitate and I grew afraid. In the end I deceived that man who was my friend, telling him that I could not find the way. He was indeed a wise man. Another would have mocked me for a liar and a teller of idle tales. But he only smiled, looking at me kindly. He knew that my words were true and that I feared to betray the sleeping place of the old lord. Mare rose to his feet with the sigh of a man who had eaten well and is deprived of his rightful siesta. He shouldered his ponderous load of fey which I could scarcely rise from the ground and led the way toward the sea while I followed, bearing the remnants of the pig. It was noon when we reached the flat lands of the coast. A quarter of a mile above the house of Arima we stopped to watch a large canoe loaded with a mound of sain, gliding up the river, followed by a fleet of smaller craft. An old woman stood in the bow directing the proceedings with shrill volubility. She was the proprietor of the net, a village character at once kindly antirenical, widow of one chief and mother of another. As her canoe grew abreast of us she gave the command to halt and spread the net. The river at this point is almost without current, very still and clear. Maree and I sat on the high bank, too tired to do more than play the part of spectators. They grounded the big canoe just below where we sat, putting one end of the sainess shore and paddling slowly across the river while the net was laid out in a deep, sagging curve downstream. One after another the smaller canoes were beached and the people half naked and carrying spears ran along the bank to take to the water a few hundred yards above. The river was alive with them, splashing and shouting as they drove the fish toward the trap. Next moment the bright shoals began to appear beneath us. The sunlight glinting on burnished sides as they darted this way and that by hundreds seeking a way of escape. A run of mud flashed downstream, saw the net turned and were headed back toward the sea. A series of cries went up, ay, ay, ay! As fifty or sixty of the beautiful, silvery fish leaped the line of floats and dashed away to safety. The old headwoman, dressed in a mother-hubbard of respect to a black and a rather handsome hat, was swimming easily in three fathoms of water. Nothing escaped her watchful eye. Ay, arah! she shouted angrily. The best fish are getting away. Hurry, you lazy ones! Splice the water below the net, or we will not have a mullet left. Remember that when the haul is over, he who has not worked shall have no fish. As the line of beaters drew near, the men in the big canoe paddled upstream and across behind them, throwing out net as they went, until a frightened fish and a score of swimmers were encircled. The two ends of the sane were now close together on the bank, and half a dozen men began to haul in with the will, their efforts causing the circle to narrow slowly and steadily. Looking down from the high banks, one could see children of ten or twelve, stark naked and carrying tiny spears in their hands, swimming like frogs of fathom deep in the water, pursuing the darting fish. Now and then a youngster would come to the surface with a shrill cry of triumph, holding aloft the toy spear on which was transfixed a six-inch fish. The people of the islands as a rule, are neither fast nor showy swimmers. One can see prettier swimming any summer afternoon on the Long Island shore, but the Polynesian is at home in the water in a way the white man can never match. I watched an old woman, all of seventy and wearing a black blouse, girded tightly to her waist with the Peru treading water at the lower end of the net, where the fish were beginning to concentrate. She was as much at her ease as though she had been lying on her veranda exchanging gossip with a neighbor. Each time she thought the head woman's eyes were turned away, she reached over the net, seized the fish and stuffed it into her blouse, until a flapping bulge hung down over her Peru. But old Tenamera's eyes were sharp. Enough, she cried. Half laughing, and half in anger. ARI TERA VENEY Perhaps she thought to get a string of fish, too, or that worthless son-a-law of hers. At length the same lay in two great piles on the beach, and only a bulging pocket filled with a pulsating mass of silver remained in the river. Under the direction of Tenamera, the fish were divided into little piles, strung on bits of Fibiscus bark, and a portion among the people, according to the size of their families and the amount of help they had given in the hall. For herself she reserved a considerable share, for her household was large and, as the owner of the net, she was entitled to a full half, more than she loaded into the big canoe. It was early afternoon when we laid down our burdens in the cook-house and stripped for a swim. The others were awakening from their siesta a flock of brown children, all vaguely related to the family of Arima, followed us to the river, carrying miniature surfboards. Next moment they were in the water, splicing and shouting as they paddled downstream toward where the surf broke on the bar. Take a now, the pretty sister of Amore, passed us with a rush and leaped feet first from the high bank. She rose to the surface thirty yards away, shouting a challenge to catch her before she could reach the opposite shore. Her brother and I dove together, raced across the river, and had nearly overtaken the girl when she went under like a grebe. I was no match for her at this game, under water she could swim as fast as I, and was a hundred times more at home. I gave up the pursuit and landed for a sunning among the warm rocks of the point. Out where the seas reared for the landward rush the black heads of children appeared and disappeared. I could hear the joyous screams of others flattened on their boards and racing toward me, buried in flying spray. The old woman I had seen helping herself to fish was coming down the river, paddling an incredibly small canoe, laden with an enormous bunch of bananas and four kerosene tins of water. She lived a mile down the coast and, like many of her neighbors, braved the surf daily to supply her house with fresh water from the river. The gunnel of her canoe seemed to clear the water by no more than a couple of inches. I watched with some anxiety thinking of the feelings of an American grandmother in the same situation. She ceased to paddle at the river mouth and watched her chance. While the fray all dug out rows and fell in the wash of a half-dozen big seas, then, in a momentary lull, she dug her paddle into the water. I sat up to watch, a boy standing in the shadows nearby shuddered in encouragement. At first I thought that she had chosen her moment well. The canoe passed the white water, dropped a little wave without swapping, and was seemingly out of danger. But suddenly a treacherous sea sprang up from nowhere, rearing a tossing crest. It was too late to retreat, certain disaster lay ahead. Stoically, without a sign of dismay, the paddler held her craft bow in. The canoe rose wildly against the foaming wall, seemed to hang for an instant almost vertically, and then canoe, cargo, and old woman disappeared in the froth. The boy screamed in ecstasy as he galloped to the shallows to lend a hand. The other children ceased to play, and soon the canoe and its recovered cargo were brought ashore. They emptied the dugout and filled the tins with fresh water. I heard the old woman laugh shrilly as she rung her clothes on the beach. Presently, coached by a dozen amused spectators, she made a second attempt and passed the surf without a wedding. When I saw her last she was paddling off steadily to the west. I was dozing among the rocks when a ringing whistle startled me, and I looked up to see a bird, like a large sandpiper, a light on the beach, and began to feed, running briskly after the receding waves or springing into the air for a short flight when threatened by a rush of water. It was a wandering tattler, and no bird was ever better named. Solitary in its habits except in the breeding season when it resorts to northern lands, though remote that its nest and eggs are still, I believe, unknown. It travels south at the approach of winter, making lonely passages across some of the widest stretches of ocean in the world, to Hawaii, to the Galapagos, to the Macaicis, and probably to the remote southern islands of Polynesia. What obscure sense enables the migrating bird to follow its course far out of sight of land. In France I have flown side-by-side with wild geese, heading steadily southward above the sea of clouds. It seemed to me that, like the pilot of an airplane, they might guide themselves in a general way by the sun, the stars, or with the look of the land below, an idea borne out by the fact that geese become lost and confused in a fog. But in considering a bird like the carrier pigeon or the tattler, all such theorizing comes to an end. No general sense of north and south could guide the tattler to the lonely landfalls of the South Pacific. His wanderings, like the migration of the Golden Plubber, or the instinct of the sheer water, which sends him unerringly on the darkest night of storm, to his individual burrow in the cliffs, must be classed among the inexplicable mysteries of nature. On a road which passes close to the house of Arima, I found Tehino in conversation with the driver of a Chinese cart. She was bargaining for a watermelon. The Chinaman stood out for three francs. She offered two. Enough of talking, she said firmly, the melon is the best you have but it is green. I will give you two francs. A Torah tohtah muttered the proprietor of the melon indifferently. Toata means a franc, but is obviously a corruption of quarter. For the dollar-past current here, long before the money of France. Look at my clothes pleaded the deceitful girl, changing her tactic suddenly. I am a poor woman who could not afford to pay the prices you expect from the chief. Come, dare to needle, give me the melon for two francs. The Chinaman shrugged his shoulders and glanced at me. The glint in his narrow eye might have meant, ah, these women, what's the use? He sighed for a moment while Tehino looked at him pleadingly. He was silent. Take the melon, he said, and give me two francs. That must be on my way. But do not think you have deceived me, cunning woman. I know that you are not poor. For only yesterday your brother sold the cobra from your land. Found a sign of embarrassment, the girl opened her hand and held up a hundred franc note. Ah, you are rich! remarked the Chinaman, as he undid an oil-cloth wallet, and stripped the change from a substantial roll of bills. I know it. Are you not ashamed to practice a deceit? But Tehino only tucked the melon under her arm with a triumphant smile. It is a curious study to watch the contact of Chinese and Polynesian races separated by the most profound of gulfs, yet possessing the meeting ground of a common love of bargaining. All through the French islands you will find Chinaman scattered singularly on little groups, through the windward and leeward societies, the marquise, among the distant atolls of the Pompidou, and the remote Gimbales, in Tupé, Reterre, and Lonely Rameterra. They are keepers of small stores, for the most part, where you may see them interrupted at their eternal task of copramaking to exchange a box of matches for a single coconut, or to haggle for a quarter of an hour over a matter of five sows. Patient, painstaking, and unobtrusive, existing in inconceivable squalor without the common pleasures which enable most of us to tolerate our lives. They seem to be impelled by motives far more profound than the longing for material gain. By a species of idealism equally incomprehensible to the native and to the visitor of European race. It is not beyond possibility that in the course of a few more generations it will be the native islander who lingers here and there, isolated in communities principally Chinese. For the islanders superb physically are the least prolific of men, while the weedy little Tinito who brings his own women with him, or succeeds with his own peculiar knack in obtaining women from a population which regards him with amused contempt, surrounds himself with children in as short a time as nature allows. I have sometimes thought that the secret of the Chinaman's dog and self-denying labors might lie here, traceable to his cult of ancestor worship. To become a revered ancestor one must have children, and in order to bring up properly a large family of children one must spend one's life in unceasing toil. I doubt that Europeans in large numbers will ever be tempted to make the islands their home. The life is too alien. The change too great. As things are, the relation of Polynesian and Chinese amounts to a subtle contest for the land, a struggle of which both parties are aware. The native, incapable of anstract thought, feels and resents it vaguely to the Chinaman, whose days are spent in meditation, undisturbed by the automatic labors of his body. The issue is no doubt clear-cut. The native is by far the more attractive of the two, clean, kindly, selfish, jolly, childish, well-bred, and pleasing to the eye, but the Chinaman possesses the less attractive qualities which make for the survival of a race, the industry, the unselfishness, the capacity to live for an idea, and in the end, if only by force of numbers he will win. Looking into the future, one can see the eastern islands populated by Chinese, as our own islands of Hawaii have been populated with immigrants from Japan. They are dying anyway and they won't work. The commercial gentleman will tell you, here is rich Caneland, needing only labor to produce bountifully. And the world needs sugar. Perhaps this view is correct for myself. I feel that the question is debatable. There are certain parts of the world, like our American mountains, deserts, and lonely stretches of coast, which seem planned for the spiritual refreshment of mankind, places from which one carries away a new serenity and the sense of a yearning for beauty satisfied. Ever since the days of Cook, the islands of the South Sea, have charmed the white man, explorers, naturalist traders, and the rough crews of wailing vessels. The strange beauty of these little islands, insignificant so far as commercial exploitation is concerned, seems worthy of preservation. And the native paddling his outlandish canoe or lounging in picturesque attitudes before his house is indispensable to the scene. If the day comes when his canoe lies rotting on the beach, and his house is tenanted by industrious Chinese, though the same jagged peaks rise against the sky in the same seas, thunders lazily along the reef. When the anchor drops and the call comes to go ashore, I, for one, shall hesitate. In the Cook group, six hundred miles west of Tahiti, the prospect is less depressing, for the British have adopted a policy of exclusion and made it impossible for the native to sell his land. The Cook Islander, reinforced here and there with a dash of white blood and, undiscouraged by a competition he is not fitted to meet, seems to be holding his own. The reason is clear. The native has been little tampered with, left in possession of his land, and protected rigidly against epidemics like the influenza of 1918, which ravaged the island populations wherever infected vessels were permitted to touch. Desert disease, exploitation of the land, and coolly immigration. These are the destroying forces from which the native must be preserved if a shadow of the old charm is to linger for the enjoyment of future generations of travelers. Following Tahino toward the house, I thought to myself how wonderfully the island charm had been preserved here on the peninsula of Tapiru. We were within fifty miles of Papati, where businesses carried on, and steamers called, and perspiring tourists walked briskly about the streets. Yet here, in this lonely settlement by the lagoon, civilization seemed half a world away. When I walked abroad, the sight of a white man brought the people to their doors, and bands of children followed me, staring and bright-eyed with interest. On the veranda children surrounded us while the girl cut and distributed thin slices of her melon. There was a fascination in watching these youngsters brought up without clothes and without restraint, in an environment nearly as friendly as that of the original human pair. Once they were weaned from their mother's breast, which often does not occur until they have reached the age of two and a half or three, the children of the islands are left practically to shift for themselves. There is food in the house, a place to sleep, and a scrap of clothing if the weather be cool. That is the extent of parental responsibility. The child eats when it pleases, sleeps when and where it will amuse itself with no other resources than its own. As it grows older, certain light duties are expected of it. Gathering fruit, lending a hand with fishing, cleaning the ground about the house, but the command to work is casually giving and as casually obeyed. Punishment is scarcely known. Yet under a system which would ruin forever an American or English child, the brown youngster flourishes with astonishingly little friction. Sweet-tempered, cheerful, never bored, and seldom quarrelsome, the small boy tugs at the net or gathers bait for the fisherman, seemingly without a thought of drudgery, the small girl, tense or smaller sister in the spirit of playing with a doll. Perhaps the restless and aggressive spirit which makes discipline necessary in bringing up our own children is the very quality that has made the white-race master of the world. Perhaps the more hostile surroundings of civilization have made necessary the enforcement of prohibitory laws. I filled my pipe and lay smoking on a mat, with an eye on the youngsters at their play. For the time being a little girl at the most attractive period of childhood was the center of interest. One of her front teeth was loose, she had tied a bit of bark to it and was summoning up courage for a determined pull. A boy still up behind her reached over her shoulder and gave the merciful jerk. Next moment he was dancing around her, waving the strip of bark to which the tooth was still attached. The owner of the tooth began to sob, holding a hand over her mouth. Birder lamentations ceased when the larger boy shouted seriously, Give her the tooth and let her speak to the rat. The small girl trotted to the edge of the boy, where I heard her repeat a brief invocation before she flung the tooth into a thicket of hibiscus. I knew what she was saying, for I had made inquiries concerning this child's custom. Probably as old as it is quaint. It is a sort of exchange. The baby tooth is thrown among the bushes, and the rat is invoked to replace it with one as white and durable as his own. The child says, Thy tooth, thy tooth, O rat, give the man, The tooth, the tooth, of the man, I give to the rat. No doubt the games of children everywhere are very much the same. In the islands at any rate, an American child would soon find itself at home. The boys walk on stilts, play tag, blind men's bluff, prisoner's base, and a game called peripania. Like what we call pee-wee, when I was a youngster in California, almost exactly as those things are done at home. The girls play cat's cradle, hopscotch, jackstones, and jack-straws, often joining in the rougher games of their brothers. One curious game evidently modern and perhaps originated by the children of missionaries is called para paura tahi, the game of the wild beast. The boys and girls, who pretend to be sheep, stand in line one behind the other, clinging together under the protection of the mother, you, at the head of the line. Presently, the wild beast appears, demanding a victim to eat. You are the wild beast, the sheep asks. Yes, he replies. And I want a male sheep. He then waits while the sheep, and whispers in audible to him, decide on which boy, for the beast has his choice of sexes, shall be sacrificed. When the decision is made, the mother at the head of the line says, you want a male sheep? At that, all the others chant in unison. Then take off your hat and take off your clothes and strike the hot iron. The last word is the signal for the victim to make a dash for safety. If he can get behind the mother before the wild beast catches him, the performance is repeated, until the beast succeeds in catching another boy or girl, who then becomes the pua tahini. The twelve-year-old daughter of Marie, or Emria, was the great grandmother, not an uncommon thing in this land, of rapid generations, had been talking for several days of piercing her ears in order to install a pair of earrings to which she had fallen air. This evening she had finally mustered courage, for the ordeal. I watched her hesitatingly approach, and saw her hand, de marteau, the necessary instruments, a cork, a pair of scissors, and a brace of sharp orange thorns, from which the green bark had been carefully stripped. Whatever the color, women's endurance, in the name of vanity, is proverbial. The child made no outcry as the thorn passed through the lobe of her ear, sank into the cork, and was snipped off, inside and out, close to the skin. The remaining section to be removed a fort night later, when the small wound had healed, as tahinotu, smiled at me and flourished the scissors to which clung a drop of blood. I heard a shrill call from the cork-house, Harry-me-tama, it was supper-time. Some of the children in answer to the call, straggled toward where Emria squatted beside her oven. Others, already stuffed with odds and ends of fruit, went on with their play, Marie beckoned to me as he passed. The meal was a casual affair. One helped oneself, without ceremony, squatting to exchange conversation between bites, or walked away food in hand. There were pork, cold fish, baked taro, and sections of cream-colored breadfruit, ripe and delicately cooked. The sun had set when we finished, and as the sky gave promise of a clear night, I spread a mat on the river bank. Bedtime in these places comes when drowsiness sets in. As I fell asleep the clouds veiling the highlands of Tahiti Nui were still luminous in the afterglow. It was midnight when I woke. In the house, faintly illuminated by the light of a turned-down lamp, the family of Hermia slept. The air was warm and scented with the perfume of exotic flowers. The river was like a dark mirror, reflecting the stars. Even the Pacific seemed to sleep, breathing gently in the sigh of little waves, dallying with the bar. Presently I became aware of subdued voices, Arama and Tamata, the chief's mother. Receited on the rocks below me, fishing with long rods of bamboo for the fia, which runs in with the night tide, they were recalling the past as old ladies will. The women of Tahiti remarked, Tirmura, are not what they were when I was young. Nowadays you may travel for morning to night without seeing a really beautiful girl. These are true words, Cidermia. I, if you had seen my eldest daughter who died when she was fifteen, she was lovely as the it ain't. The white turn which hovers above the treetops. Her eyes were brown and laughing, her hair fell in ringlets to her knees, her teeth were small white pearls, and her laughter like the sound of cool water running in a shady place. Alas, my Vihinta! She was our firstborn. My husband loved her as he loved none of the others. The strange, dreamy child. I used to watch her when she thought herself alone. Sometimes I know not why the tears came to my eyes as I saw her gazing into the sky, while she chanted under her breath the little old song children sing to the turn. Oh, I tell you, saving above the still forest. Where shall you fly to night? Downwind across the sea, to Tehrar, the low island. As she grew older, a wasting illness fell on her. The doctors could do nothing to stop her coughing. My husband even took her to the white doctor in Papati. It was on his recommendation that we took her to sea. We were in Mangaver, far off the Gimber Islands, when I saw that the end was near. My husband was not blind. He headed back for Tahiti at once, giving up the rest of his trip. Benihita was never more beautiful than on the last morning of her life. Jake's flushed and eyes shining soft and clear as the first star of evening. We were nearly home off Mita, the little island which lies between Tahiti and Anna. She died in my arms and I covered her with the bright patchwork, Tehrar. Her own hands had sewn. Our child is dead, I told the captain. Her father, as I came on deck, he said nothing. But put a hand on my shoulder and pointed towards the mast-head, where I saw a small white turn hovering above us. I cannot tell you how. But I knew at once the soul of my daughter was in that pretty bird. It flew with us all day, and at evening, as we entered the harbor of Papiti, it turned back and disappeared in the night. For many years thereafter each time a husband passed Maitia, homeward bound, the white bird was waiting for him at the place where my daughter had died. The voices of the old women murmured on, recalling the joys and sorrows of other days. Suddenly, in a mango tree behind the house, a rooster crowed, answered far and near by others of his kind, as the last drawn-out cry died in silence of the night. I yielded to an overpowering drowsiness and fell asleep. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of Fairlands of the South Seas This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti, mikevendetti.com. Fairlands of the South Seas by James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff. The evening was very warm and still, the sea rumbled faintly on the marief half a mile offshore. And behind us, above the vague heights of the interior, a full moon was rising. The palms were asleep after their daily tussle with the draids, fronds drooping and motionless in silhouette against the sky. We had spread mats on the grass close to the beach. Tanoudou, lay beside me, chin-prompt in her hands. She had been bathing and her dark hair still damp, hung in a cloud about her face. Her grandmother, Erema, the woman of Maute, sat facing us, cross-legged in the position of her people. Now and then a fish leaped into the lagoon, once far down on the beach a ripe nut thudded to the earth. If you too like, said old Erema, I will tell you the story of my ancestor, the Lizard Woman. The girl smiled and raised her head in the little gesture which corresponds to our nod. That is a good tale, she declared, and true, for I am named after that Lizard Woman who died so many years ago. The woman of Maupiti lit a match to a dry leaf of black tobacco over the flame. When she had twisted it in a strip of pandous and inhaled deeply of the smoke, she spoke once more. Her voice was flexible and soft with a sweet huskiness, an instrument to render the music of the old island tongue. Its cadences measured her rapid, falling arising with the ebb and flow of the tide. In the old days, Eremina began, so long ago that his name is now forgotten, there was a king of Papaneu, a just man successful in war and beloved by his people. His wife was a daughter of Bora Bora, the most beautiful woman of that island. She was the delight of his heart. And they had many children. When she fell ill and died, a great sadness came over the king. He could do nothing but brood over his loneliness. In his dreams he saw the face of his wife. Life was hateful to him. Even his children shouting and playing about the house grew hateful in his eyes. A day came at last when he could endure the sight of them no longer, and a plan to be rid of them took form in his mind. There had been a storm and he knew that the waves would be running high at a place where there was a break in the reef. Come, he said to the woman of his household, bring my children to swim. It will hearten me to see them sporting in the surf. But when they came to that beach and the women saw the great waves thundering in through the pass, they were afraid, for even a strong swimmer could not live in such a sea. Then the king, whose hope was that his children might drown, made them forget their fears. One after another the young boys and girls went into the sea and were swept out by the undertow, fearless and shouting. The waves broke over them and at times they disappeared. The women began to cover their faces for they thought, he's pretty children so dear to us, are as good as dead. Then the watchers saw a strange thing, a true thing, told by my grandfather, who had learned it from the lips of his ancestors. Beyond the breaking of the surf the children began to sport in the water, diving and leaping higher and higher into the air. Their skins grew black and glistened in the sunlight, their arms turned to fins, and their feet became like the tails of fish. The gods of those days had taken pity on their innocence, and had made them the first dolphins. The playful children of the sea. And the king was glad, for he saw his children would not die. And he knew that they could no longer come to his house to bring back bitter memories. As the years went on the daughters of many chiefs were brought to the king, but no woman found favour in his eyes. His heart was always heavy, and no man saw him laugh. Sometimes he walked alone in the mountains where men do not go even to-day. For he feared nothing, neither the raving spirits of the dead, nor the lizard-people, who in those days lived in the interior of the island. Fifty generations of men have lived and died since our ancestors came to this island. They found the lizard-people already in possession of the land. Ta-ah, ta-mu, they called them, half human, half lizard, able to climb among the cliffs where no man could follow. The human warriors were more powerful in battle, and as time went on the lizard-folk were driven into the fastness of the mountains. Now the last of them is dead. But if you doubt that they once lived, go into the hills, and you will see the remains of their plantian gardens high above cliffs no human creature could scale. My own people are traveling the same path, soon the last of us will also be dead, and the white man will glance at the scattered stones of our merriest to make sure that once upon a time we lived. But I was telling you of the king. One day as he wandered alone in the mountains, a lizard-woman was lying in the fern of the trail. The head woman of her people, skilled in magic and able to read the future. The king was a tall man, very strong and handsome. As he passed without looking down she seized his foot gently. At that he looked down, and his heart swelled with love of her. He dwelt with her in the mountains, and when at last he came down to the sea, his people had given him up for dead. In due time a son was born to the lizard-woman, a strong and beautiful boy. The image of the king, his father, she reared him alone in the mountains and grew to love him better than her life. But when she looked into the future her tears fell. When the child was twelve years old she led him to the mouth of her valley and talked along with him, telling him what he was to do before she turned away and went back to her own place, weeping. Taking thought of her words the boy went alone to the village of the king. His dress was the skin of lizards. When he came to that place he said to those about, take me to the king, my father. But when they repeated his words the king said, it is false, I have no wife and no child. Then the child sent back work, asking the king if he had forgotten walking one day in the mountains many years before. With that the king remembered his love for the lizard-woman, and bade his men bring the boy to him. And when he saw the strong, fearless child and heard his people exclaim at the beauty of the boy the wondrous likeness to himself his heart softened, and he said, This is indeed my son. The years passed and the heart of the lizard-woman, sad and alone in the mountains, grew ever more hungry for her son, until at length her life became intolerable without sight of him. She stole down from the hills by night and went softly about the village, weeping and lamenting because her son was not to be seen. The people trembled at sight of her in the moonlight and at the sound of her weeping and the king feared her, for he knew that she was powerful in magic and thought that she had come to take her son away. In his fear he took canoe with the young man, and they went down the wind to Tehira, the low island, where he thought to be safe from her. The lizard-woman, by her magic, knew where they had gone. She looked into the future and saw only sadness and death for herself. What must be cannot be avoided. She leaped into the sea and swam first to Britain, where she had lands and where the bones of her ancestors lay in the marie. When she came to that shore she knew that her death was near and that she would die by the hand of her own son. Close by the beach she stopped to weep, and the place of her weeping is still called Tainu Edi, the little falling of tears. Further on her path she stopped again. To weep, still more bitterly, and to this day the name of that place is Tainu Rehi, the great falling of tears. When she had been to her marie she plunged again into the ocean and swam to Tentrura. In all the islands there was no swimmer like her. Because of his mother her son was named Amona, swimmer in the sea. The king and the king's son saw Tiniatu. Coming far off for Tiniatu was the name of that lizard-woman and they felt such fear that they climbed to the top of a tall palm. Then knowing the manner of her death she came out of the water weeping all the while and began to climb the palm tree. The two men trembled with fear of her. They threw down coconuts, hoping to strike her so that she would fall to the earth. But though she was bruised and her eyes blinded with tears she climbed on until she was just beneath them, clinging to the trunk where the first fronds began to branch. She stopped to rest for a moment, and as she clung to the palm allowing her body to relax her son hurled a heavy nut which struck her on the breast. She made no outcry but her hands let go, their hold, and she fell far down to the earth. But the men still trembled, and were afraid to come down out of the tree, for she struck in a swampy place and was long in dying. All afternoon she lay there, weeping and lamenting until its sunset the spirit left her body. When she was dead they took her to her territory and buried her in her moray. After that the two men returned to Papua New, and when the king died the son of a lizard woman reigned long in his dead. These are true words for the blood of swimmer in the sea born of the lizard woman flows in my veins. Old Ariama ceased to speak. From the coconut shell at her side she took a lumpful of black native tobacco and began to tear off a leaf for a fresh cigarette. Her granddaughter turned on one side, head resting on a folded forearm and looked at me. Hi. These are true words, she said. For is my name not the same as that of the lizard woman? During a thousand years, perhaps more, Maetikito Ma'i, since the beginning the woman of our family have been called Teheteru. You yourself, though we call you Teri, have a real name among us, Amona, after her son. These names belong to us, though other family does well to use them. The flair of a match illuminated for an instant the wrinkled and awkwardly face of Ariama. As she tossed the glowing stick aside the moonlet smoothed away the lines. I was aware only of her black eyes, wonderfully alive and young. Tell him of Poya, she suggested, and the dead ones in robes of flame. I, said the girl, that is a strange tale and it came about because of a name. She sat up shaking her black hair over her shoulders. The woman who saw these things, she went on, was another of our ancestors. She was called Poya, a name her grandfather had given. She lived in Tainu, Idi. In Batia, where Teheteru first stopped to weep. One day in mid-afternoon Poya was sitting in the house beside her mother, busy with weaving of a mat. All at once a darkness closed in before her eyes and she felt the spirit struggling to leap from her body. It was like the pangs of death, but at last her spirit was free and with its eyes she saw her body lying as if in sleep and perceived that there were strangers in the house, two women and a man. The women were very lovely with flowers in their hair and robes of scarlet, which seemed to flicker like fire. They were Viharatuna and Viharatuna ancestors dead many years before, who love Poya dearly. The man was likewise dressed in flaming scarlet and he wore a tall headdress of red feathers. He was Tannatua, another Poya's ancestors. The three had come from the Maori to seek Poya and they spoke her to her kindly saying, come with us, daughter. And though she felt shame when she looked down at her dull dress and disordered hair, she followed where they led. They took her to a Maori of Tuinui Rāhi and where Poya saw a huge woman waiting for them. The right side of that woman was white and the left side black. When she saw them coming she fell on her knees and began to weep for joy. It is you, Poya, she cried, then welcome. As Poya stood there marvelling the stone of the Maori open before her like the door of a great house. An Viharatua, An Viharatuna said to her, go in. The door gave on a chamber of stone. The floor was of stone and the ceiling and walls. They passed through another door into a second empty room of stone and thence into a third and there Poya chanced to look down at herself. She had become lovely as the others. Her hair was dressed with her flowers and a robe of scarlet, seeming to flicker like fire. When she was looking at herself, no longer ashamed, the two women said to her, you must stay here, for you belong to us. We are angry with your grandfather because he called you Poya. That is not all of your name. Your true name is Tetanuni Pohia Terai Maina. That name belongs to us and you must have it. For you are our descendant and we love you. She did not know that this was her honane. She thought it was only Poya. In spite of their kindness she was frightened and told them that she wished to go home. They took her to the door of her house and left her there. And she found herself lying with the half of a mat in her fingers. Her mother, who was sitting beside her, only said, but Poya in fear and wonder at what she had seen, said nothing to her mother, not even when the two went to bathe. The next day in mid-afternoon Pohia felt the darkness close in before her eyes, the pangs of death as her spirit struggled and that last escaped from the body. But this time she found herself gloriously clothed and beautiful at once. All went as before until they came to the third chamber of the moray. But there were leaves spread on the floor of that place, as if for a feast. But the only food was purple flowers. The other sat down and began to eat, and Pohia attempted to do likewise, but the taste of the flowers was bitter in her mouth. Again the two women said, You belong to us. You must not be called Pohia. But Tetoni, Pohia, Tari, Matatinaia. And they coaxed her to stay with them. But she wept and said that she could not bear to be separated from her husband whom she loved. As before they were kind to her, and took her to her house, where she awoke as if from sleep, and said nothing. It was the same the next day, but this time when they came to the third chamber of the moray, Behina Natua and Behina Natua said, Now you must no longer think of returning. You are ours and we wish you to stay here with us. Pohia wept at their words. For she began to think of the man she loved. I must go, she said. If I had no husband I would gladly remain with you here. At last, when her tears had fallen for a long time the three dwellers in the moray took her home. They baited her for well, reluctantly, saying that next day she must come to them for good. This time Pohia awoke in great fear, and she told the story to her mother when they went to bathe together. Her mother went straight to the grandfather to tell him what she had seen, and ask him if her true name was Pohia. As he had said years before. Then the old man said that he had done wrong, for the name was not only Pohia, but Tetanoia Pohia Teri Matarina, a name which belonged to Fahan Natua and Tanitua, and Viva Tatatua. And these three came no more to get Pohia. They were content, for they loved her, and wanted her to have her their name. As she finished her story, Tihina Tua lay down once more, resting her head on her grandmother's knee. My thoughts were wandering far away across a great ocean and a continent, to the quiet streets of New Bedford, set with old houses in which descendants of the whalers live out their ordered lives. In all probability the girl beside me, Polynesian to the core, and glorying in a long line of ancestors who outlandish names fell musically from her lips, had cousins who lived on those quiet streets. For she was the granddaughter of a New Bedford Whidian captain, the husband of Arima, a Puritan who ate once too often, of the fey, and lingered on the islands to turn traitor and rear a family of half-caste children, and finally to die. The story is an old one repeated over and over again in every group. The white cross, the half-whites' children at the parting of the ways, they're turning aside from the stony path of the father's race to the pleasant ways of the mother, and so in the end the strain of white, further diluted with each succeeding generation, shows itself in nothing more than a name, seldom used and often times forgotten. It is nature at work, and she is not always cruel. Is it the same with names in your land, Arima was asking? Are certain names kept in a family throughout the years? It is somewhat the same, I told her, though we do not prize names so highly. My father and grandfather and his father were all named Charles, which you called Terri. Among my people, she said, the possession of a name means much. As far back as our stories go, there has been a man named Maury in each generation of my father's family. Some of these Maury's are strange men. There was Maury Terebona, you know, who fished with a bait of coconut for the spirits of men drowned in the sea, and another was Maury Matatofa, who stole a famous shark, the adopted child of a man of federipity. That was a good shark. It lived in the lagoon, harming no one, and every day the man and his wife called it to them with certain secret words. But Maury coveted the shark, and he prepared an underwater cave in the coral before his house. Then when the cave was ready he hid in the bushes on the shore of the lagoon while the man was calling his shark, and in this way Maury learned the secret words of summons. When the man and his wife had gone, Maury called out the words. The shark appeared close and sure, and followed him to the cave, where it stayed well content. And that night he taught it new words. Next day the man and his wife called for the shark, and when it did not come they suspected that Maury had enticed it away. After that they went to the house of Maury and accused him of the theft, but he said, Give the call, if you think I have stolen your shark. I have a shark, but it's not yours. They called, but the shark did not come, for he had taught it new words. Then Maury called and the shark came at once, so he said, See, it must be my shark, for it obeys me, and not you. As he turned away to return to Farapiti Hiti. The other man said, I think it is my shark, but if it will obey you and no other, you may have it. Some days later a party of fishermen came to Maury's cave where the shark lived. They baited a great hook and threw it into the water, and as it sank into the cave they chanted a magic chant. Then the shark seized the bait, and as they hauled him out, they laughed with joy and chanted, Imato ma re pa ru ma ho, ie ie ie ie ie ie ie. The chant is something about a good hook and a good line, but the other words are dead. What they mean no man knows today. That night there was a feasting in the houses of the fishermen. But next morning when Maury went down to the sea and called his shark, nothing came. Though he stayed by the lagoon calling from morning till the sun had set, after that he learned that his shark had been killed and eaten, and from that day none of Maury's undertakings prospered. Finally he pined away and died. The Hina Natu stirred and sat up, eye shining in the moonlight. The subject of sharks has for these people a fascination we do not understand. The significance tinged with the supernatural. They did evil to kill that shark, she said. For all sharks are not bad. I remember the tale my mother told me of Veretora, the long-haired, Pomotian woman, wife of Maury Oma'ae. Her god was the shark. It was many years ago when the vessels of the white men were few in these islands. Maury shipped on a schooner going to New Zealand, taking his wife with him, as was permitted in those days. That woman was not like us. She understood ships and had no fear of the sea. As for swimming, there were few like her. When she came here the woman marvelled at her hair. It reached to her ankles and she wore it coiled about her head in two great braids, thick as a man's arm. The captain of that schooner was always drinking. Most of the time he lay stupefied in his bed. As they sailed to the south the sea grew worse and worse, but the captain was too drunk to take notice. The men of the crew were in great fear. They had no confidence in the mate and the seas were like mountain ridges all about them. The morning came, when Veretora said to Maury, before night fall, this gulner will be at the bottom of the sea. Let us make ready. Rub yourself well with coconut oil and I will braid my hair and fasten it tightly about my head. Toward midday they were standing together by the shrouds when Veretora said quick, leap into the rigging. That woman knew the ways of the sea. Next moment a great wave broke over the schooner. The decks gave way and most of the people who were below died, the death of rats at once. But Veretora and her husband leaped into the sea before the vessel went down. A day and a night they were swimming. There were times when Maury would have lost courage if Veretora had not cheered him. Put your hands on my shoulders, she said, and rest. Remember that I am a woman of the low islands. We are as much at home in the sea as on land. All the while she was praying to the shark who was her god. The storm was abated soon after the schooner went down. Next day the sea was blue and very calm. Presently when the sun was high, Veretora said to her husband, I think my god will soon come to us. Put your head beneath the water and tell me what you see. With a hand on her shoulder he did as she had told him. Gazing long into the depth below, finally he raised his head, dripping, and when he had taken breath he spoke, I see nothing, he said. Not, but to Mity Harini, the blue salt water. She prayed a little to her god and told him to look again. And the third time he raised his head, with fear and wonder on his face. Something is rising in the sea beneath us, he said, as his breath came fast, a great shark, large as a ship and bright red like the mountain and plantain. My stomach is sick with fear. Now I am content, said the Pomodian woman, for that great red shark is my god. Have no fear. Either he will eat us and so end our misery or he will carry us safely to shore. Next moment the shark rose beside them. Like the hull of a ship floating bottom up, the fin on his back stood tall as a man. When Veretora and her husband swam to where he waited them, and with the last of their strength they climbed up on his rough side and seated themselves one on each side of the fin, to which they clung. For three days and three nights they sat on the back of the shark while he swam steadily to the northeast. They might have died of thirst, but when there were squalls of rain, Veretora unbounded her hair and sucked the water from one long braid. While Maureed drank from the other, at last in the first gray of dawn they saw land. Mangania, I think you call it. The shark took them close to the reef. They sprang into the sea and the little waves carried them ashore without a scratch. As they lay resting on the reef the shark swam to and fro, close in as though awaiting some word from them. When she saw this, Veretora stood up and cried out in a loud voice. We are content. We owe our lives to thee. Now go, and we shall stay here. At those words the shark god turned away and sank into the sea. To the day of her death Veretora never saw him again. After that she and her husband walked into the village, where the people of Maratinha made them welcome, and after a few years they got passage on a schooner back to Maureed's own land. The soft voice of the girl died away. I heard only the murmur of the la reef. Masses of cloud were gathering about the peaks, above our heads. The moon was sailing a clearer sky, radiant and serene. The world was all silver and gray and black. The quiet lagoon, the shadowy land, the palms like inky lace against the moonlight. Tau stiffed the lowly on and stretched out on the mat, with the abrupt and careless manner of a child. Her grandmother tossed away a burnt-down cigarette. It is late, said the woman of Mapati, and we must rise at daybreak. Now let us sleep. End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Of Faring Lands of the South Seas This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti, mikevendetti.com. Faring Lands of the South Seas by James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff. Chapter 16 Anchored off the Reef On the third day of the homeward voyage the wind died away, and in the middle of the afternoon it felt dead calm, when we were less than a mile distant from the toll of Pinaki. With the exception of a small group of Papati traders, I don't suppose there are a dozen white men who have ever heard of the place, and those who have seen it, or set foot upon it, must be fewer still. It lies towards the eastern extremity of the low archipelago, and is one of the four smaller tolls all within a radius of thirty miles of one another. On charts of that segment of the eastern Pacific these four islands are barely discernible, and Pinaki, the last of them, appears but a little larger than the dot of the eye, in, White Sunday, its English name. The current carried us slowly along the north-westerly side of the island. It was intensely hot. Teria, nephew of my tea, the skipper was sluicing the blistered deck, but the water streamed out of the scuppers, and in a moment the planking was as dry and as hot to the touch as before. He soon left off and took refuge in the whaleboat, which he covered with a piece of canvas. I crawled in with him, but the suffocating shade was less endureable than the full glare of the sun. Tane, the other sailor, a man of fifty was below. He had remained there most of the time since our departure from Routario, sleeping on a greasy mat, indifferent to the cockroaches, the place was alive with them by night, or the coperbugs, which were a nuisance in all hours. The stench from the little cabin filled almost to the ceiling with unsacred cocoa-bra was terrible, and it was not much better on the deck. I took shelter beside me tea. Who was sitting in the meager shade of the main sail? Presently pointing casually toward the shore, he said, You see him? What he do there? I saw the man plainly enough, now that he was pointed out to me, standing with his arms folded, leaning lightly against a tree. I was limited to a hasty glance through my binoculars, for he was looking toward us. But I saw that he was unmistakably white, although his skin seemed as dark as that of a native. He was barefoot, naked to the waist, and for another garment wore a pair of trousers chopped off at the knees. I too wondered about what a white man could be doing on an uninhabited island. Mati knew no more of the atoll than it was, or had been, uninhabited. It be long, he said, to the natives of Nokotakri, which lay nine miles to the northwest. We could see this other atoll as we rode to the light swell, a splotch of blue haze and nails breath wide, vanishing and reappearing against the clear line of the horizon. In two hours' time the current had carried us to the lee side of the island. It ran swiftly there, but in a more northerly direction, so that we were forced out of the mainstream of it. And drifted gradually into quiet water near the shore. An anchor was carried to the reef and we brought up to within thirty yards of it. With another anchor out forward, this schooner was safely berthed for the night. I went ashore with the two sailors for a fresh supply of drinking coconuts. But I gave no help in collecting them. A fire was going on the Lagoon Beach, and there I found the solitary resten, frying some fish before a small hut, built in a native fashion. He might have been of any age between thirty-five and forty-five, was powerfully built, with a body as finely proportioned as a Polynesian's. His voice was pleasant and his manner cordial, as he gave me welcome. But a pair of the coldest blue eyes I have ever seen made me doubt the sincerity of it. I felt a need of making apologies for the intrusion, adding lamely. I haven't seen a white man in three months, and our skipper speaks very little English. I was about to look you up, he said. I can't say that I'm lonely here. I managed to get along without much companionship. But to be frank, I'm hungry for tobacco. There's none left at Norataka V.A.K., and I've been sucking an empty pipe since last November. You haven't a fill in your pouch by chance. I would have given something for his relish of the first pipe-fold, or the fifth, for that matter. Finally, he said, I imagine you are in for several days of pinaki. You have noticed the sky? Not a sign of wind. I can't offer you much in the way of food. But the fishing is good, and if you care to, you are welcome to stop ashore. I accepted the invitation gladly. But as I walked back to the schooner for a few belongings and some more tobacco, I questioned the propriety of my decision. My prospective host was an Englishman by his accent, although like my friend Critchton at Tenso, he was evidently long away from home. He struck me as being a good deal of the Critchton type. Although he differed greatly from him outwardly, I remembered that Critchton, too, had been pleasant and friendly. Once the ice was broken between us, but the prospect of an early parting and the certitude of our never meeting again, had been the basis for the friendship, in so far as he was concerned. This other Englishman was not living on an uninhabited atoll because of a liking for companionship. I was debating the matter of a return to shore when Tain crawled out of this cabin to make preparations for supper, and as he was a sufferer of elf and titus, the sight of his immense swollen limbs and his greasy, sweating body decided me. Pappati was far distant, and I would have enough of Tain before we reached the end of this journey. Supper was ready by the time I reached the hut. It consisted of fish, deliciously broiled coconuts, and hard biscuit. Over it I gave my host an account of my stay at Routerinio, and the unsuccessful experiment in solitude. Yes, he said. They are a rather too sociable of these natives. The people of Nakatakavaki used to bother me a good deal when I first came here. I thought nine miles of open sea would keep them away, but they often came over in sailing canoes a dozen or two at a time when the wind favored, and they would stay until it shifted back into the southeast. I didn't encourage them. In fact, I made it quite plain that I preferred to be alone. The island is theirs, of course, and I can't prevent them from coming during the copamaking season. But they no longer come at other times. Nine months out of the year I have the place to myself. But they are damnitably inquisitive. I don't like canakas in the aggregate, although I have one or two good friends among them. The dying fire lit us to bed about midnight. I lay awake for a long time after my host was sleeping. We had talked for three hours, chiefly about the islands. In fact, all that he told me of himself was that he was fond of fishing. There was not a hint of breeze the next day, nor the next, nor the day after that. The sea was almost as calm as the lagoon, and the poi reverer lay motionless in anchor, as though frozen in a sheet of clear ice. Mitty and the two sailors remained on board most of the time, sleeping during the heat of the day under a piece of canvas rigged over the main beam, and at night fishing over the side in dreamy contentment. If they came ashore at all, it was only for a few moments, and they never crossed to the lagoon beach. During these three days I remained the Englishman's guest, and although I was out of patience with myself for my curiosity, it grew in spite of me. What under the sun was the man doing here? Evidently he had not come to an atoll, as my friend Christian had, to do his writing and thinking undisturbed. Christian had books of practical interest in planting, and a cultural interest in Polynesian dialects. He would muse for hours over a word in one dialect which might or might not bear a remote resemblance to some other word in usage a thousand miles away. The study fascinated him. As he once told me, it gave his imagination room to work in. I have no doubt that he made up for himself stories of their early Polynesian migrations vastly better than any romances he might have read. This other Englishman had no books, not so much as a scrap of writing paper. At least I saw none in his house, which was as bare as it was clean. There was a sleeping man in one corner, a chest and some fishing gear against the wall, picks and shovels in a corner, a few old clothes hanging from nails driven into the supports and absolutely nothing else. How did he put in his time? Fishing was a healthy interest, but it was not enough to keep a man sane for a period of seven years. He let that bit of information slip in one conversation I had with him. He was not a tack-a-turn chap. After our first evening, he talked quite freely about his early adventures. He had spent three years in northern Australia prospecting for gold, and he gave me an intensely interesting account of the aborigines there, of their marvellous skill at following a trail no matter over what sort of country. I had heard that these people were biologically different from the rest of humankind and that their blood would not cross with white blood. This was not the case, he said. He had known white men animal enough to take the Australian blacks for wives, and had seen the children which they had had by them. From Australia he had gone to New Guinea, still prospecting for gold, although at times he sought relief from the disappointment of it by making expeditions with the natives in search of bird-of-paradise feathers. But gold was the word that rang through all his talk. Several times it was on the tip of my tongue to say, but there is no gold at Pinaki. I was able to resist the temptation remembering his remark about the damnable inquisitive innocence of people of Nata Tanake Naki. Then, on the morning of my third day on the island, an incident occurred which made the situation clear. CHAPTER XVII THE Englishman's Story I rose at dawn, but my host was out before me. He had left two fish cleaned and ready for cooking on a plate outside the door. Having breakfasted, I started on a walk around the atoll, which I estimated I could accomplish in about an hour. I expected to meet the Englishman somewhere on the way, and I did find him on the opposite side of the lagoon. The shore was steep too, there. He had a steel-tipped rod in his hand and was diving off a ledge of rock, remaining below for as long as a full minute. He waved when he saw me, but kept on with his work. In about a quarter of an hour he came over to where I was standing. Tiresome work, he said. I need a blow. Then you see, I've been doing a bit of digging here. I had walked along the lagoon beach and had not noticed before the series of trenches higher up the land. I should think he had been digging. I inspected the ditches under his guidance. There were three, at least a quarter of a mile in length each, and from three to four feet deep. These ran in parallel lines and were about four paces apart. Fifteen to twenty shorter trenches cut through them at right angles. The sun was well above the horizon. We lit our pipes and sat down in the shade. After a few moments of silence he said, I suppose you know what I'm doing here. If you have been in Papati, you must have heard. There's no secret about it, at least not any longer. I said that I had left Papati shortly after my arrival. I had spent several idled-outnoons on the veranda of the Bougainville Club, but in the talk which went around there I don't remember having heard of Pinaki. So much the better, he said. Yes, seven years is a long time, and I'm not keen about feeding gossip. But when I first came down here there was a clacking of tongue from one end of the group to the other. I believe I have since earned the reputation of being rather queer. I thought you must know. The fact is I'm looking for treasure. Would you care to hear the story? Very much, I said, if it won't bore you to tell it. On the contrary, it will be something of a relief. Seven years of digging with nothing to show for it must strike an outsider as a mad business. Sometimes I'm half persuaded that I am a complete fool to go on with the search. But you can't possibly know the fascination of it. It seems like only yesterday that I came here. As you see for yourself it's not much of an island. And to know that there is treasure of more than three million pounds buried somewhere in this tiny circle of scrub and palm. But do you know what I ask? I'm as sure of it as that I am smoking your tobacco. That is, I am sure it was buried here, whether it has been removed since, I can't say, of course. The natives of Natarankaveki, remember a white man whom they called Luta, who came here over twenty years ago and remained for something over a month, one of the four men who stole a gold and brought it to Paniki, was a man named Luke Barrett. And it may have been he who came back, although he was supposed to have been killed in Australia forty years ago. It is the uncertainty that makes it such killing work at times. But when I think of giving it up you would have to live with the thought of treasure for seven years and to dream at night of finding it before you could understand. He rose suddenly. If you don't mind a short walk I will show you something rather interesting. We went along the lagoon beach for several hundred yards, then crossed toward the ocean side. Near the center of the island we came upon an immense block of coral broken from the reef and carried there by some great storm of the past. Cut deeply into the face of the rock I saw a curious design. I ask what it meant. Man, if I knew that, I believe it's the key and I can't master it. But we may as well sit down and be comfortable. If you would really care to hear the story from the beginning it will take the better part of an hour. I'll not give you all the details but when I'm finished you will be in a position to judge for yourself whether or not I was mad in coming here. Have you ever read Walker's book, Undiscovered Treasure? Doesn't matter except that you have missed a very entertaining volume. It is a pity that old work is out of print. Nothing in it but bare facts about all sorts of treasures supposed to have been buried here and there about the world. You might think it would be dry but I've found it better company than any romance I've ever read, however that has nothing to do with this story except in an indirect way. I first read the book as a boy and it started me on my travels. To me the facts about the Paniki treasure are as interesting as any of Walker's. He of course knew nothing about it for it had not been stolen when his book was published. Four men had a hand in the business of a Spaniard named Alvarez, an Irishman named Kilren, and two others of uncertain nationality, Luke Barrett, whom I spoke of a moment ago and Archer Brown. They were a thieving, murdering lot by all accounts, adventurers of the worst sort, and in hope of plunder I suppose had joined the Peruvian army during the war with Chile in 1859 to 60. Their hopes were realized beyond their expectations. They got wind of some gold buried under the floor of a church. And the strange thing was that the gold was there and they found it. It was in thirty kilo ingots, contained in seven chests, the whole lot worth in a neighborhood of three and a half million pounds. How they managed to get away with it I don't know, but I have investigated the business pretty thoroughly and I have every reason to believe that they did. They buried it again in a vicinity of Pesco, and then set out in search of a vessel. Alvarez was the only one of the four that had any education. They had all followed the sea at one time or another, but he alone knew how to navigate. The others could hardly write their own names. At Panama they signed on as members of the crew of a small schooner. And as soon as they had put to sea, knocked the captain and the other two sailors in the head and chucked them overboard, they returned to Pesco, loaded the gold, and started for the Pomodians. This was the autumn of 1859. In the December following they landed at Pinaki, where they buried the treasure. The island was uninhabited then as now, and they crossed to Nukatakevaki to learn the name of it. The natives were shy, but they persuaded one man to approach, and when they had the information they wanted, shot him and rode out to their boat. If you should go to Nukatakevaki, you will find two old men there who still remember the incident. Then they went to Australia, scuttled the vessel not far from Cookstown, and went ashore with the story of Shipwreck. They had some of the gold with them, not much in proportion to the amount of the treasure, but enough to keep four ordinary men in comfort for the rest of their lives. It soon went, and the four were next heard of at the Palmer Goldfields. Alvarez and Barrett were both supposed to have been killed there in a fight with some blacks. Brown and Kilurine had not mended their ways to any extent, and both were finally jerked up for manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude. Brown died in prison, but Kilurine served out his term and finally died in Sidney Hospital in 1912. Most of these facts, if they are facts, I had from Kilurine himself the night before he died. I met him in a curious way, or better, the meeting came as the result of a curious combination of circumstances. You have made any have noticed a scar on my side? I had noticed a broad gash puckered at the edges, where the flesh had healed, tapering to a point in the middle of his back. It was not much of a wound he went on, but it gave me a deal of trouble at the time. I got into New Guinea in 1911, when I was prospecting for gold in the back country. I was a long way from a settlement, and one day a nigger took it into his head to stick me with a spear. I suppose he wanted my gun and ammunition, for I had little else excepting my placer outfit. I let him have one bullet from a colt just before he was about to dive into the bush, and for all I know he may be lying there to this day. I have that little frizzy-headed native to thank for my knowledge of the Pinocchi treasure. Sometimes I'm sorry that I killed him, but at other times I feel that shooting was altogether too easy a death for the man, really responsible for bringing me here. I was in a bad way from the wound, infection set in, and I had to nurse myself somehow to get down to a place where I could have medical attention. I managed it, but the ten days journey was a nightmare. I had was nothing but skin and bone when I left the hospital, and New Guinea not being a likely place for a convalescent. The doctor recommended me go to Australia. I had a small bag of dust the result of a year and a half of heartbreaking work in the mountains. Most of it went for the hospital bill, and when I reached Sydney I had very little left. I was compelled to put up at the cheapest kind of a boarding house, although the woman who kept it was quite a decent sort. Her house was in a poor quarter of the town and her patrons mostly longshoremen and teamsters. It was a wretched life for her, but she had two children to support and was making the best of a bad job. I admired her pluck and did what I could in a small way to help her out. One evening I was waiting for supper in the kitchen when someone wrapped. Before I could go to the door it opened, and an old man came stumbling in, asking for something to eat. I thought he was drunk and was about to hustle him back the way he came when I noticed that he was wet, though it was a cold, rainy night, and really suffering from exposure and lack of food. I made him remove his coat. He had nothing on under it, but not without a great deal of trouble, and he insisted on drying it across his knees. He was a little wheezing-dape of an Irishman about five foot three and four in height, with deep-set blue eyes, bushy eyebrows, a heavy discolored mustache, and a thick shock of white hair. All together the most frightful looking little dwork that ever escaped out of a picture-book. He was tattooed all over the arms and chest, hands across the sea, the Union Jack, a naked woman, several other designs common in waterfront tattooing parlors. His body was as shriveled as a withered apple, but his little bloodshot eyes blazed like bits of live coal. Except for the fire in them he might have been a hundred years old and, as a matter of fact, he wasn't a great way from it, eighty-seven, he told me, and that is about all he did tell me. He gorged some food and was all forgetting away at once. But it had sent into rain very hard and I persuaded him to wait until the worst of it was over. He was very suspicious at first. I believe he expected me to call a policeman. Later he thought a little and became even talkative in a surly way when I told him, with the landlady's consent, that he might stay the night if he had no place else to go. Wouldn't hear of it, though. He said he had a job as night watchman at Rush Cutters Bay. That might or might not have been true at any rate. I went with him to the car-line. The boarding house was a good mile from Rush Cutters Bay and gave him a couple of shillings as a loan, I said. He could return at some time. Just before I left him he asked me for my name and address mumbling something about doing me a bit of good one of these days. He was insistent so I gave it to him but not at all willingly. He had frightened Mrs. Sharp the landlady just by the way looked at her. And I didn't want him coming back. He didn't come back. That was in May 1912 and I heard nothing more of him until September. I was still at the boarding house getting slowly better but not yet good for anything. I kept out of doors as much as possible, took long walks in the country and along the waterfront, looking at ships. When I came in one evening Mrs. Sharp told me that an attendant from the Sydney Hospital had called twice during the day. An old man named Kiloryn, a patient at the hospital, wanted to see me. The name meant nothing to me and I couldn't imagine who the man could be. The attendant called again later in the evening. Kiloryn was about to die, he said, and wouldn't give them any peace until I was brought to see him. It was getting on toward midnight when we reached the hospital. The old man was in one of the public wards, recognized him at once although he had shriveled away to nothing at all. It was impossible to forget his eyes once you had seen them. He was dying, no doubt of it, but I could see that he wasn't going to die until he was ready. Sonam, close here, he said. I'm glad you came. You did me a good turn once and I haven't forgotten it. Few good turns have had in my life. Not so many as what I can remember the lot. The night nurse had approached quietly, was standing on the other side of the bed, all at once he saw her. Hey, you! he said, grease off out of this. Stand over there on the other side of the room where I can watch you. When she had gone, he rose from his pillow and looked cautiously around the room. The beds on either side of him were empty. There was a patient in the one across the aisle, but he was sleeping. Kiloryn watched him for a moment to make sure of this. Then he motioned me with his finger to come still closer. A lesson, he said. I've cut more throats in my time than you might think. Sounds a bit stagy, doesn't it? But these were his exact words. Nothing remarkable about them, of course. Throat cutting is still a very thriving business. I waited for him to go on. He again looked up and down the room and then asked me to hand him the coat which was lying across the foot of the bed. It was the same coat he had been wearing in May when he came to the boarding house. I then brought me in here, he said. I took my clothes and I've had some trouble getting this back. The attendant had told me as much. The old man had raised a very devil of a row until it was found. He asked me to rip open the lining of the right sleeve and to give him the paper I would find there. It was a soiled, greasy sheet of full scrap, pasted on a piece of cloth. Once, he went on, he gave me two shillings for car fare to Rush Cutters Bay. Probably wasn't any hardship for you, but never mind about that. You said I could pay you back if I had a mind to. Well, I'm going to pay it back with a bit of interest. Going to give you this paper. It's as good as three million pound notes of the Bank of England. I thought, of course, that he was completely off his chump, and the fear that I would think so was uppermost in his mind. He kept repeating that he was old and worn out, but that his mind was clear. Don't you think I'm bomby? He said. I know what I'm talking about as well as I know I'm going to die before morning. He gave me a circumstantial account of the whole affair. I have outlined it briefly. There were many other interesting facts, but it is not worthwhile to speak of them here. As he talked, the conviction grew upon me that he was perfectly sane and was telling the truth. He went over the chart with me. It had been made by Alvarez the scholar of the party, he said. There had been a good deal of quarreling and fighting, later for the possession of it. Before I left him, he made me promise that I would go to Panaki. He wouldn't rest easy in his grave, he said, unless he knew that I was looking for the treasure. It's there and it will always be there, if you're bloody fool enough to think I'm queer. It ain't likely I'd lie to you on my death bed. Rest easy in his grave. There was an odd glimpse into his mind. He wasn't worrying about the crimes, and there was enough of them according to his own confession. It was the thought of the gold lying forever forgotten, which worried him. He could rest quietly if he knew before he died that someone else was fighting and throat-cutting over it. I asked him why he hadn't gone backboard himself. He told me that of the fifty-three years since it had been buried, he had spent forty in prison and the rest of the time he was trying to earn or steal the money to buy a schooner. I told him that I would come back to see him the following day. Ah, you needn't bother, he said. I'm finished. And it was true, he died three hours later. Tried to forget the incident, but it was one of those things which refused to be forgotten. It was always in the back of my head. I decided to check up Kilron's story where I could, many queries in Peru and found that the gold had actually been stolen. The dates and circumstances coincided with his account. A friend in the customs at Quarktown confirmed for me the story of four shipwreck sailors who landed in February 1860 from a ship called the Balsun Bird. I had a small piece of property on the outskirts of Cookstown which I had bought years ago. With the money realized from the sailor-wit, I took passage for Tahitia on my way to Panache. That voyage was the longest one I have ever made. By that time the thought of those seven chests of gold all in thirty kilo ingots was with me twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four. Yes, even at night. I slept very little, and when I did, it was to dream of hunting for the treasure, of finding it. I became suspicious of a villainous-looking old man who was travelling third class. I thought he might be brown or look barret. Perhaps they were not dead after all. At Pepe T. I told no one of my purpose there, with the exception of one government official. If the treasure should be found, the French government would have acclaimed a certain percentage of uncoying gold. And I meant to be aboveboard in my dealings with it. This official was sworn to secrecy, but the business leaked out eventually and created a great deal of excitement. I was immensely annoyed, of course, for I had guarded the secret as well as old Kiloran ever had. However, I had in my pocket all the necessary papers, drawn up accurately, witnessed, signed, and sealed. I went on with my preparations and finally, in February 1913, I was put ashore from a small cutter, not four hundred yards from where we were sitting. I started to search before the cutter was two miles on the return voyage. For two months I slept in the open, had no time to build a house, and ate ten food which I had brought with me. Kiloran's chart was of but little use. It made reference to trees which had long since rotted away, or had been cut down by the natives of Nara-Taka-Kavagi. The marks which I found corresponded precisely with those on the chart, but several of the most important ones were missing. The treasure hunter rose. Well, he said, there's the end of a story. You know the rest of it. But I don't know the rest at all, I said. You have left out the most interesting part. Tell me something of your life here. You've seen three days of it. It has gone on for seven years in the same way. You were diving just now in the lagoon. Do you think the gold may have been buried there, or that the land is falling away? My dear fellow, I'll not worry you with an account of what I think. It's rather warm here. Shall we go back to the house? I was hoping for a week of calm and when we went to bed, that evening, there was reason to believe we might have it. A few hours later, however, I was awakened by the Englishman. It's going to be a bit of a blow presently, he said. Your skipper has just sent for you. He wants to get away at once. The stars had been blotted out, the wind was sloving off the palms, and waves slapping briskly on the lagoon beach. Our farewell was a brief one. When shall you come to Tahiti, I ask? Not until I've found what I'm looking for. Well, I said, I hope that will be soon. But if he holds fast to reach resolve, my belief is that it will be never.