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ATOLLS

OF THE SUN

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/atollsofsunwithmOOobriuoft

Photo from L. Gauthier

Nature's mirror showed him why he could not leave

ATOLLS

OF THE SUN

FREDERICK O'BRIEN

Author of "Mystic Isles of the South Seas," "Whjte Stusows
IN THE South Seas," etc.

WITH MANY

ILLUSTRATIONS

FROM

PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

TORONTO

McClelland & stewart

1922

^>'

PEINTBD IN U. 8. A.

To G-

FOREWORD

"Atolls of the Sun" is a book of experiences, impres-
sions, and dreams in the strange and lonely islands of
the South Seas. It does not aim to be literal, or se-
quential, though everything in it is the result of my
wanderings in the far and mysterious recesses of the
Pacific Ocean.

I am not a scientist or scholar, and can relate only
what I saw and heard, felt and imagined, in my dwell-
ing with savage and singular races among the wonder-
ful lagoons of the coral atolls, and poignant valleys
of disregarded islands.

If I can make my reader see and feel the sad and
beautiful guises of life in them, and the secrets of a
few unusual souls, I shall be satisfied. The thrills of
adventure upon the sea and in the shadowy glens, the
odors of rare and sweet flowers, the memories of lov-
able humans, are here written to keep them alive in my
heart, and to share them with my friends.

Life is not real. It is an illusion, a screen upon
which each one writes the reactions upon himself of his
sensory knowledge. The individual is the moving
camera, and what he calls life is his projection of the
panorama about him — not more actual than the figures
and storms upon the cinema screen. In this book I
have put the film that passed through my mind in wild
places, and among natural people.

FOREWORD

It is useless to look to find in the South Seas what
I have found. It is there, glowing and true, and yet,
as each beholder conjures a different vision of the
human spectacle about him, each can see the islands
of romance only by the lens life has fitted upon his soul.

To seek a replica of experience or scenes is to spoil
a possession.

If this book has interest, one may read and laugh,
be entertained or repelled with thanks that one can sit
at ease, and watch this picture made on another's mind
in long journeys and in many days and nights of hazard
and delight.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

Leaving Tahiti — The sunset over Moorea — Bound for
the Paumotu Atolls — The Schooner Marara, Flying
Fish — Captain Jean INIoet and others aboard —
Sighting and Landing on Niau .... 3

CHAPTER II

Meeting with Tommy Eustace, the trader — Strange soil
of the atoll — A bath in the lagoon — Momuni, the
thirsty bread baker — OfF for Anaa ... 23

CHAPTER III

Perilous navigation — Curious green sky — Arrival at
Anaa — Religion and the movies — Character of Pau-
motuans ........ 40

CHAPTER IV

The copra market — Dangerous passage to shore at
Kaukura — Our boat overturns in the pass — I nar-
rowly escape death — ^Josephite Missionaries — The
deadly nohu — The himene at night ... 58

CHAPTER V

Captain Moet tells of Mapuhi, the great Paumotuan —
Kopcke tells about women — Virginie's jealousy —
An affrighting waterspout — The wrecked ship —
Landing at Takaroa ...... 80

CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI

Diffidence of Takaroans — Hiram Mervin's description of
the cyclone — Teamo's wonderful swim — Mormon
missionaries from America — I take a bath . . 96

CHAPTER Vn

Breakfast with elders — The great Mapuhi enters — He
tells of San Francisco — Of prizefighters and Police
gazettes — I reside with Nohea — Robber crabs — The
cats that warred and caught fish .... 114

CHAPTER VIH

I meet a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary, and a des-
cendant of a mutineer of the Bounty — They tell me
the story of Pitcairn island — An epic of isolation 135

CHAPTER IX

The fish in the lagoon and sea — Giant clams and fish
that poison — Hunting the devil-fish — Catching
bonito — Snarling turtles — Trepang and sea cu-
cumbers— The mammoth manta .... 157

CHAPTER X

Traders and divers assembling for the diving — A story
told by Llewellyn at night — The mystery of Easter
Island — Strangest spot in the world — Curious stat-
ues and houses — Borrowed wives — Arrival of Eng-
lish girl — Tragedy of the Meke Meke festival . 175

CHAPTER XI

Pearl hunting in the lagoon — Previous methods wasteful
— Mapuhi shows me the wonders of the lagoon —
Marvelous stories of sharks — Woman who lost her
arm — Shark of Samoa — Deacon who rode a shark
a half hour — Eels are terrible menace . . .211

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XII

History of the pearl hunger — Noted jewels of past — I
go with Nohea to the diving — Beautiful floor of the
lagoon — Nohea dives many times — Escapes shark
narrowly — Descends 148 feet — No pearls reward us
— Mandel tells of culture pearls .... 230

CHAPTER XIII

Story of the wondrous pearls planted in the lagoon of
Pukapuka — Tepeva a Tepeva, the crippled diver,
tells it — How a European scientist improved on na-
ture— Tragedy of Patasy and Maurii — The robbed
coral bank — Death under the sea .... 249

CHAPTER XIV

Tlie palace of the governor of the Marquesas in the vale
of Atuona — Monsieur L'Hermicr des Plantes, Ghost
Girl, Miss Tail, and Song of the Nightingale —
Tapus in the South Seas — Strange conventions that
regulate life— A South Seas Pankhurst — How
women won their freedom ..... 271

CHAPTER XV

The dismal abode of tlie Peyrals — Stark-white daughter
of Peyral — Only white maiden in the Marquesas — I
hunt wild bulls — Pe^-ral's friendliness — I visit his
house — He strikes me and threatens to kill me — I
go armed — Explanation of the bizarre tragic comedy 294

CHAPTER XVI

In the valley of Vaitahu — With Vanquished Often and
Seventh Man He Is So Angry He Wallows in the
Mire — Worship of beauty in the South Seas — Like
the ancient Greeks — Care of the body — Prepara-
tions for a belle's debut — Massage as a cure for ills 319

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XVII

Skilled tattooers of Marquesas Islands a generation ago
— Entire bodies covered with intricate tattooed
designs — The foreigner who had himself tattooed
to win the favor of a Marquesan beauty — ^The magic
that removed the markings when he was recalled to
his former life in England ..... 336

CHAPTER XVIII

A fantastic but dying language — The Polynesian or
Maori Tongue — Making of the first lexicons —
Words taken from other languages — Decay of vo-
cabularies with decrease of population — Humors and
whimsicalities of the dictionary as arranged by for-
eigners . . . . . . . . 364

CHAPTER XIX

Tragic Mademoiselle Narbonne — Whom shall she marry?
— Dinner at the home of Wilhelm Lutz — The Taua,
the sorcerer — Lemoal says Narbonne is a leper — I
visit the Taua — The prophecy . . . . 384?

CHAPTER XX

Holy Week — How the rum was saved during the storm
— An Easter Sunday "Celebration" — The Governor,
Commissaire Bauda and I have a discussion — Paul
Vernier, the Protestant Pastor, and his church —
How the girls of the Valley imperilled the immortal
souls of the first missionaries — Jimmy Kekela, his
family — A watch from Abraham Lincoln . .414

CHAPTER XXI

Paul Gauguin, the famous French-Peruvian Artist — A
Rebel against the society that rejected him while he
lived, and now cherishes his paintings . . . 439

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXII

Monsieur I'Inspecteur des Etablisscments Fran9ais de
I'Oceanie — How the school house was inspected — I
receive my conge — The runaway pigs — Mademoi-
selle Narbonnc goes Avith Lutz to Papeete to be mar-
ried— Pere Simeon, about whom Robert Louis Steven-
son wrote ........ 460

CHAPTER XXIII

IMcHenry gets a caning — The fear of the dead — A visit

to the grave of Mapuhi — En voyage . . . 482

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Nature's mirror showed him why he could not leave Frontispiece

Map

The atoll of Niau .......

The anchorage at Tahauku. Atuona lies just around

the first headland to the right
A Paumotu atoll after a blow
A squall approaching Anaa .
Picking up the atoll of Anaa from the deck of the

schooner Flying Fish .....
Canoes and cutters at atoll of Anaa, Paumotu Islands
The road from the beach .....
An American Josephite missionary and his wife, and their

church ....
Typical and primitive native hut, Paumotu Archipelago
Copra drying ....
Atoll of Hikucra after the cyclone
The wrecked County of Roxburgh
Mormon elders baptizing in the lagoon
Over the reef in a canoe
Robber-crab ascending tree at night. One of the few

photographs taken of the marauder in action
Where the Bounty was beached and burned
The church on Pitcairn Island
The shores of Pitcairn Island
Spearing fish
A canoe on the lagoon .
Ready for the fishing .
Spearing fish in the lagoon .
The Captain and two sailors of the El Dorado
Beach dancers at Tahiti , . . .

FACING
PAQE

17
32
33

48
49
64

65
80
81
96
97
112
113

128
129
144
145
160
161
161
176
177
192

ILLUSTRATIONS

rACINQ
PAGE

After the bath in the pool . . . . • .193

Old cocoanut trees ....... 208

The dark valley of Taaoa 209

Launch towing canoes to diving grounds in lagoon . 224)

Divers voyaging in Paumotu atolls .... 225

Ghost Girl 256

A double canoe . . . . . . • . 25 <

A young palm in Atuona ...... 272

Atuona valley and the peak of Temetiu . • . 273

Malicious Gossip, Le Brunnec, and his wife. At Peace . 304!

Exploding Eggs and his chums packing copra . . 304*
Frederick O'Brien and Dr. Malcolm Douglas at home in

Tahiti 305

Some friends in my valley . . . . ' . . 320

Wash-day in the stream by my cabin .... 321

Te Ipu, an old Marquesan chief, showing tattooing . 336

The famous tattooed leg of Queen Vaikehu . . . 337

Tattooing at the present day ..... 352

Easter Islander in head-dress and with dancing-wand . 353

My tattooed Marquesan friend ..... 353

The author with his friends at council .... 368
House of governor of Paumotu Islands. Atoll of

Fakarava ........ 369

Nakohu, Exploding Eggs ...... 384

Haabuani, the sole sculptor of Hiva-Oa . . . 385

The coral road and the traders' stores .... 416

Scene on beach a few miles west of Papeete . . . 417

Tahiatini, Many Daughters, the little leper lass . . 432

Francois Grelet, the Swiss, of Oomoa .... 433

Brunneck, the boxer and diver ..... 464

A village maid in Tahiti ...... 465

A Samoan maiden of high caste ..... 465

Throwing spears at a cocoanut on a stake . . . 480

The raised-up atoll of Makatea ..... 481

Paumotuans on a heap of brain coral .... 496

Did these two eat Chocolat.'' ...... 496

The stonehenge men in the South Seas .... 497

ATOLLS OF THE SUN

CHAPTER I

Leaving Tahiti — The sunset over Moorea — Bound for the Pauraotu
Atolls — The Schooner Marara, Flying Fish — Captain Jean Moet and
others aboard — Sighting and Landing on Niau.

« Ik -TOUS partons! We air off— off !" shouted
/ %/ Capitaine Moet, gaily, as the Marara, the
-*- ^ schooner Fli/iug Fish, sHpped through the nar-
row, treacherous pass of the barrier reef of Papeete
Harbor. "Mon ami, you weel by 'n' by say dam Moet
for take you to ze lies Dangereuses. You air goin'
to ze worse chniate in ze sacre mundo. Eet ees hot
and ze win' blow many time like 'urricane. An' you
nevaire wash, because ze wataire ees salt como
se o-c-ean."

We had waited for a wafting breeze all afternoon,
the brown crew alert to raise the anchor at every zephyr,
but it was almost dark when we were clear of the reef
and, with all sails raised, fair on our voyage to the
mysterious atolls of the Paumotu Archipelago. Often
1 had planned that pilgrimage in my long stay in
Tahiti. At the Cercle Bougainville, the business club,
where the pearl and shell traders and the copra buyers
drank their rum and Doctor Funks, I had heard many
stories of a nature in these Paumotus strangely dif-
ferent of aspect from all other parts of the world, of

4 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

a native people who had amazing knowledge of the
secrets of the sea and its inhabitants, and of white
dwellers altered by residence there to a pattern very
contrary from other whites. For scores of years these
traders and sailors or their forerunners had played all
the tricks of commerce on the Paumotuans, and they
laughed reminiscently over them; yet they hinted of
demons there, of ghosts that soared and whistled, and
of dancers they had seen transfixed in the air. What
was true or untrue I had not known; nor had they, I
believed.

Llewellyn, the Welsh-Tahitian gentleman, after
four or five glasses of Pernoud, would ask, "Do you
know why the Paumotus are unearthly?" and would
answer in the same liquorish breath, "Because they
have n't any earth about them. They 're all white
bones."

Woronick, the Parisian expert in pearls, referred
often to the wonderful jewel he had bought in Takaroa
from a Paumotuan, and the fortune he had made on
it.

"That pearl was made by God and fish and man,
and how it was grown and Tepeva a Tepeva got it, is
a something to learn; unique. It is bizarre, effrayant.
I will not recite it here, for you must go to Takaroa
to hear it."

And Lying Bill and McPTenry, in a score of vivid
phrases, told of the cyclones that had swept entire
populations into the sea, felled the trees of scores of
years' growth, and left the bare atoll as when first it
emerged from the depths.

"I knew a Dane who rode over Anaa on a tree like a

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 5

bloody 'orse on the turf," said Lying Bill to me, with
a frightening bang of his tumbler on the table." 'E was
caught by the top of a big wave, an' away 'e drove from
one side of the bleedin' island to the other, and come
right side up. A bit 'urt in the 'ead, 'e was, but able
to take 'is bloomin' oath on what 'appened."

I had not depended on these raconteurs for a vicari-
ous understanding of the Paumotus ; for I had read and
noted all that I could find in books and calendars about
them, but yet I had felt that these unlettered actors
in the real dramas laid there gave me a valid picture.
My hopes were fixed in finding in spirit what they saw
only materially.

Moet stood by the wheel until we cleared the waters
where the lofty bulk of the island confused the
winds, and I, when the actions of the sailors in shift-
ing the sails with his repeated orders had lost newness,
looked with some anguish at that sweet land I was leav-
ing. It had meant so much to me.

A poetic mood only could paint the swiftly changing
panorama as the schooner on its seaward tacks moved
slowly under the faint vesper breeze; the mood of a
diarist could tell how "the sun setting behind Moorea in
a brilliant saffron sky, splashed with small golden and
mauve-colored clouds, threw boldly forward in a clear-
cut, opaque purple mass that fantastically pinnacled
island, near the summit of whose highest peak there
glittered, star-like, a speck of light — the sky seen
through a hole pierced in the mountain. How in the
sea, smooth as a mirror, within the reef, and here and
there to seaward, blue ruffled by a catspaw, away to the
horizon was reflected the saffron hue from above; how

6 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

against purple Moorea a cocoa-crowned islet in the
harbor appeared olive-green — a gem set in the yellow
water. How the sunlight left the vivid green shore of
palm-fringed Tahiti, and stole upward till only the
highest ridges and precipices were illuminated with
strange pink and violet tints springing straight from
the mysterious depth of dark-blue shadow. How from
the loftiest crags there floated a long streamer cloud —
the cloud-banner of Tyndal. Then, as the sun sank
lower and lower, the saffron of the sky paled to the tur-
quoise-blue of a brief tropical twilight, the cloud-ban-
ner melted and vanished, and the whole color deepened
and went out in the sudden darkness of the night."

If one must say farewell to Tahiti, let it be in the
evening, in the tender hues of the sunset, the effacing
shadows of the sinking orb in sympathy with the day's
tasks done ; the screen of night being drawn amid flam-
ing, dying lights across a workaday world, the dream
pictures of the Supreme Artist appearing and fainting
in the purpling heavens. I was leaving people and
scenes that had taught me a new path in life, or, at
least, had hung lamps to guide my feet in an apprecia-
tion of values before unknown to me.

I came back to the deck of the schooner with Moet's
call for a steersman, and his invitation to go below for
food and drink. I refused despite his "Sapristi! Eef
you no eat by 'n' by you cannot drink!" and when he
disappeared down the companion-ladder I climbed to
the roof of the low cabin. The moon was now high—
a plate of glowing gold in an indigo ceiling. The swell-
ing sea rocked the vessel and now and then hfted her
sharp prow out of the water and struck it a blow of

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 7

friendship as it rejoined it. I unrolled a straw mat,
and, placing it well aft so that the jibing boom would
not touch me, lay upon my back, and visioned the pro-
digious world I was seeking. The very names given
by discoverers were suggestive of extravagant adven-
ture. The Half-drowned Islands, the Low Archi-
pelago, the Dangerous Isles, the Pernicious Islands,
were the titles of the early mariners. For three hundred
years the Paumotus had been dimly known on the
charts as set in the most perilous sea in all the round of
the globe. I had read that they were more hazardous
than any other shores, as they were more singular in
form. They had excited the wonder of learned men
and laymen by even the scant depiction of their astound-
ing appearance. For decades after the eyes of a Euro-
pean glimpsed them they were thought by many book-
ish men to be as fabulous as Atlantis or Micomicon;
too chimerical to exist, though witches then were a
surety, and hell a burning reality.

I fell asleep, and as during the night the wind shifted
and with it the schooner veered, I had but a precarious
hold upon the mat and was several times stood on my
feet in the narrow passageway. The dream jinn seized
these shiftings and twistings, the shouts of the mate
in charge, the chants of the sailors at work, the whistle
of the wind through the cordage, and wove them into
fantasies, — ecstasies or nightmares, — and thus warded
off my waking.

. But the sun, roused from his slumber beneath the dip
of the sphere, could be put off with no fine frenzies.
When even half above the dipping horizon his beams
opened my eyes as if a furnace door had been flung

8 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

wide, and I turned over to see my hard couch occu-
pied by others. Beside me was McHenry, next to him
Moet, and furthest, the one white woman aboard, the
captain's wife. We yawned in unison; and, with a
quick, accustomed movement, she dropped below. The
day had begun on the schooner.

The Marara was once a French gunboat of these seas
when cannons were needed to prevent dishonor to the
tricolor by failure to obey French discipline, while
France was making good colonists or corpses of all
peoples hereabout. She was the very pattern of the
rakish craft in which the blackbirders and pirates sailed
this ocean for generations — built for speed, for enter-
ing threatening passes, for stealing silently away under
giant sweeps, and for handling by a small number of
strong and fearless men. The bitts on the poop were
still marked by the gun emplacements, and the rail
about the stern was but two feet high.

Now her owners were a company of Tahiti Euro-
peans who, trusting largely to the seamanship and busi-
ness shrewdness of her master, despatched her every
few weeks or -months on voyages about the French is-
lands within a thousand miles or so to sell the natives
all they would buy, and to get from them at the least
cost the copra, shells, and pearls which were virtually
the sole products of these islands.

The cabin was one room, stuffy and hot, and mal-
odorous of decades of cargo. A small table in the
center for dining was alone free from shelves and boxes
holding merchandise, which was displayed as in a coun-
try store. Besides all kinds of articles salable to a
primitive people, there were foods in barrels, boxes.

^^^^

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 9

tins, and glass, for whites and for educated native
palates.

Jean ^loet, the conmiander of the Marara, was of the
type of French sailor encountered in the JNlediterranean,
and especially about ^larseilles and Spanish ports.
He had a slight person, with hair and moustache black
as the stones of Papenoo beach — nervous, excitable,
moving incessantly, gesturing with every word.
Twenty-eight of his forty years had been passed in
ships. He had visited the He du Diahlc, and had seen
Dreyfus there; he chattered of New York, Senegal,
Yokohama, Cayenne, was full of French ocean oaths,
!)reaking into Kiighsh or Spanish to enlighten me or
press a point, singing a Parisian nmsic-hall chan^on-
cttc, or a Spanish cannoncita. His language was a
curious hodge-podge bespeaking the wanderings of the
man and liis intensely mercurial temperament.

His wife, who sailed with him on all voyages since
their marriage five years before, was his opposite — large-
boned and heav>% like a Millet peasant, looking at her
brilliant husband as a wistful cow at her master, but
not fearing to caution him against extravagance in
stimulant or money. Her life had begun in Tahiti,
and she had always been there until the dashing son of
the Midi had lifted her from the house of her father —
a petty official — to the deck of the Flying Fish. She
was a housekeeper and accountant.

She paid especial attention to the shelves of pain-
killers, cough cures, perunas, bitters and medical dis-
coveries from America, which, in islands where all al-
coholic liquors were forbidden to the aborigines, sold
readily to all who sickened for them. Moet was affec-

10 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

tionate but stern toward Virginie, the wife, and talked
to her as does a kind but wise master to a trained seal.

For breakfast, the captain, Madame Moet, McHenry,
and I had canned sardines, canned hash from Chicago,
California olives, canned pineapple from Hawaii, and
red wine from Bordeaux.

Virginie explained in Tahitian French that Jean had
forgotten to get aboard stores of fresh food. He had
been at the Cercle Bougainville until we had gone
aboard, she said caustically. Jean put his arm about
her fat waist.

''Mais, dar-leeng," he said, sootliingly, "tais-toi!"
And then to me, "We are camarades, ma femme y mi,
companeros buenos. Ma wife she wash ze linge. That
good, eh? Amerique ze woman got boss hand now.
Diable! C'est rottan! Hambre, ze wife ees for ze
cuisine, and ze babee."

He pressed her middle, and advised her to clear up
the table while we went on deck for a smoke.

He became confidential with me after a pousse cafe
or two.

"We faire ze chose economique, Virginie y mi," he
said. "Maybee som' day we weesh avoir leetle farm
en France. En verite, mon ami, I forget ze \jegetable
an' ze meat because I beat McHenry at ecarte in ze
Cercle Bougainville, jus' avant we go 'way from Pa-
peete. I nevaire play ze carte on ze schoonaire!
Jamais de la vie!"

The captain had aboard a brown pup, a mongrel he
had found in the Marquesas Islands. He had named
him Chocolat, and passed hours each day in teaching
him tricks — to lie down and sit up at command, to

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 11

stand and to bark. The dog liked to run over the
roof of the cabin and to crouch upon the low rail at tlie
stern. As any roll or pitch of the vessel might toss
him into the ocean, I feared for his longevity, but
Chocolat — pronounced by Moet "Shockolah" — was able
to fall inboard whenever the motion jeopardized his
safety.

"Eh, jjetit cMen," Jean Moet would cry, when Choc-
olat skated down the inclined deck into the scuppers,
or hung for a moment indecisively on the rail, "you
by 'n' by goin'-a be eat by ze rcqiiin. Ze big shark
getta you, perrillo, an' you forget all my teach you, mi
querido!"

He whipped Chocolat many times a day, when the
puppy let down from "attention" before told, or when
he attacked his food before a certain whistled note.

"What will you do with him when his education is
complete?" I asked Moet.

"When he ees educate, heiii? He will be like ze sair-
cuss animal. One year old, maybe, he make turnover,
fight ze hoxe, drink wine, an', pucdescr, he talk leetle.
Zen I sell heem some tourist, some crazee Amencain who
zink he do for heem like me. I sharge five hunder
franc."

^IcHenry, who kicked Chocolat whenever he had an
opportunity unseen, ridiculed INIoet's dream of gain.

"You will like hell !" said McHenry. "When you Ve
got the dirty little bastard sayin', 'Good momin',' nice
an' proper, he '11 sneak ashore in some boat-load o'
truck, an' some Paumotuan '11 hotpot him. Wait till
he 's fat! You know what they '11 do for fresh meat."

"Non, nonf' answered the captain, angrily. "I am

12 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

not afraid of zat. I teach heem I keel heem he go in
boat, but maybe you take heem an' sell heem on ze
quiet, McHenry."

The small, cold eyes of McHenry gleamed, and a
queer smile twisted his mouth.

"Well, keep him from under my feet!" he warned,
and laughed at some thought now fully formed in his
mind. I could see it squirming in his small brain.

McHenry was as rollicking a rascal as I knew in all
the South Seas. He was bitter and yet had a flavor of
real humor at odd times. Without schooling except that
of a wharf -rat in Liverpool, New York, and San Fran-
cisco, he had come into these latitudes twenty years be-
fore. Cunning yet drunken, cruel but now and again
doing a kindness out of sheer animal spirits or a desire
to show off, he had many enemies, and yet he had a few
friends. When the itching for money or the desire to
feel power over those about him urged him, as most of
the time, he proved himself the ripest and rottenest prod-
uct of his early and present environment. He had had
desperate fights to keep from being a decaying beach-
comber, a parasite without the law ; but a certain Scotch
caution, a love of making and amassing profits, and, as
I learned later, a firm and towering native wife, had
kept him at least out of jail and in the groove of trading.

Boasting was his chief weakness. He would go far
to find the chance to ease his latent sense of inferiority
to an audience that did not know fully his poverty of
character and attainment. After years of ups and
downs he had now quarreled with his recent employers,
and was going to pitch his trade tent on some Paumotu
atoll where copra and pearl-shell might be found. He

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 13

thought that he might stay a while in Takaroa, one of
our ports, because the diving season was about to open
there. He and I being the only ones whose language
was English, we were much together, but I always half
despised myself for not speaking my mind to him.
Still, those lonely places make a man compromise as
much as do cities. What one might fear most would
be having no one to talk with.

We lived on deck, all four of us, the Moets, McHenry,
and I, along with a half-caste mate, sleeping always on
the roof of the cabin, and taking our meals off it, except
in rain. In that moist case we bundled on the floor of
the cabin. There was no ceremony. The cook brought
the food through the cabin, and we handed up and down
the dishes through the after scuttle, helping ourselves at
will to the wine and rum which were in clay bottles on
the roof. McHenry and I were the only passengers,
and the crew of six Tahitians was ample for all tasks.
They were Piri a Tuahine, the boat-steerer ; Peretia a
Huitofa, Moe a Nahe, Roometua a Terehe, Piha a
Teina, and Huahine, with Tamataura, the cook.

The whole forward deck of the schooner was crowded
with native men, women, and children, the families of
church leaders who were returning to their Paumotu
homes after attending a religious festival in Tahiti.
They lay huddled at night, sleeping silently in the moon-
light and under the stars. All day, and until eight
or nine o'clock, they conversed and ate, and worked with
their hands, plaiting hats of pandanus, sugar-cane, bam-
boo, and other materials. White laborers massed in
such discomfort would have quarreled, squabbled for
place, and eased their annoyance in loud words, but the

14 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Polynesian, of all races, loves his fellow and keeps his
temper.

These were the first Paumotuan people I had seen in-
timately, and I listened to them and asked them ques-
tions. A deacon who at night removed a black coat and
slept in a white-flowered blue loin-cloth, the pareu of all
the Polynesians, gazed at the heavens for hours. He
knew many of the stars.

"Our old people," he said, "believed that the gods
were always making new worlds in distant sky places
beyond the Milky Way, the Maoroaheita. When a new
world was made by the strong hands of the gods, the
Atua, it went like a great bird to the place fixed for it.
That star, Rehua/' — he pointed toward Sirius, — "was
first placed by the Atua near the Tauha, the Southern
Cross, but afterwards they changed it, and sent it to
where it is now."

I looked at the glowing cross, and remembered the
emotion its first sight had stirred in me. I was tossing
on the royal yard of a bark bound for Brazil, up a hun-
dred feet and more from deck, when, raising my head
from the sail I had made fast, there burst upon me the
wonderful form and brilliance of the constellation which
five thousand years ago entranced the Old World but
which is hidden from it now.

The deacon again raised his hand and indicated the
spot where Rehua had shone before the divine mind had
changed. It was the Coal-sack, the black vacancy in
the Magellan Clouds, so conspicuous below the cross
when all the rest of the sky is cloudless and clear. The
Maori mind had wisely settled upon that vast space in
the stellar system in which not even an atom of stellar

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 15

dust sheds a single flicker of luminosity as the point
from which the gods had plucked Rehua. I had no such
lucid reason for this amazing, celestial void as the half-
naked deacon on the deck of the Marara.

We had a poor wind for two days, and I looked long
hours in the water, so close to the deck, at the manifesta-
tions of organic and vegetable vitality. All life of the
ocean, I knew, depended ultimately on minute plants.
The great fish and mammals fed on plant forms which
were distributed throughout the seas. These grew in
the waters themselves or were cast into them along their
shores or by the thousands of rivers which eventually
feed the ocean. The flora of all the earth, seeds, nuts,
beans, leaves, kernels, swam or sank in the majority ele-
ment, and aided in the nourishment of the creatures
there. They had, also, taken root on shores foreign to
their birth, and had, from inmiigrants, become esteemed
natives of many lands. They had increased man's
knowledge, too, as the sea-beans found on the shores of
Scotland led to the discovery of that puzzle of all cur-
rents, the Gulf Stream. After all was said, the land
was insignificant compared to the water — little more
than a fourth of the surface of the globe, and in mass
as puny. The average elevation of the land was less
than a fifth of a mile, while the average depth of the
sea was two miles, or thirty times the mass of the land.
If the solid earth were smoothed down to a level, it would
be entirely covered a mile deep by the water. I felt
very close to the sea, and fearful of its might. I envied
the natives their assurance, or, at least, stolidity.

The days were intensely hot. When the sails were
furled or flapped idly, and the Marara lay almost still,

16 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

listening for even a whisper of wind, I suffered keenly.
The second noon our common exasperation broke out
in the inflammable Moet.

The captain shouted to Huahine, a sailor, to cover
his head with a hat. The man was a giant, weighing
more than two hundred and fifty pounds, but Moet ad-
dressed him as he would a child.

"Sapristir he yelled, "Taupoo! Maamaa! Your
hat, you fool!"

''Diablo! amigo," he said, testily. "Zose nateev air
babee. I have ze men paralyze by ze sun in ze Mar-
queses. In ze viento, when ze win' blow, no dan-gair,
but when no blow — sacre! ze sun melts ze brain off-off."

Captain Moet was dramatic. Whatever he said he
acted with face, hands and arms, feet, and even his whole
body. He made a gesture that caused me to touch my
own hat, to consider its resistance to the sun, to feel
an anticipation of harm. Suddenly he took the arm of
the sailor at the wheel, Piha a Teina, a Tahitian, and,
releasing the spokes from his hands, himself began to
steer.

"Go there in the lee of the mainsail," he said in Tahi-
tian, "and tell the American about your terrible adven-
ture when you almost died of thirst!"

"Look at him!" said Moet to me. "He is old before
his time. The sun did that."

Piha a Teina stood beside me, shy, slow to begin his
epic. He was shriveled and withered, pitifully marked
by some experience unusal even to these Maori masters
of this sea. I gave him a cigarette, and, lighting it, he
began ;

"I am Piha a Teina," he said. "I was hving in the

fee

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 17

island of Marutea in the Paumotus when this thing hap-
pened. I set out one day in a cutter for Manga Reva.
That island was seven hundred miles away, and we were
sent, Pere Ani, my friend, and I, to bring back copra.
The cutter was small, not so large as a ship's boat. We
had food for eight or nine days, and as the wind was as
we wanted it, blowing steadily toward Manga Reva, we
felt sure we would arrive there in that time. But we
lost the stars. They would not show themselves, and
soon we did not know which way to steer. This schooner
has a compass, but we could not tell the direction by the
sun as we had not the aveia. We became uneasy and
then afraid. Still we kept on by guess and hope, be-
lieving the wind could not have changed its mind since
we started. On the tenth day we ate the last bite of
our food. We had not stinted ourselves until the eighth
day, and then we felt sure the next day or the next
would bring the land.

"But on the eleventh day we saw nothing but the sea.
I had a pearl hook and with it we caught honito. We
ate them raw. They made us thirsty, and we drank all
our water. It did not rain for many days, and we drank
the salt water. When it rained we had nothing in which
to catch and keep the fresh water. We could only suck
the wet sail which we had taken down because we had
become too weak to handle it if the gale had caught us
with it up. We drifted and drifted with the current.
The sun beat upon us and we were burned like the bread-
fruit in the oven. I could not touch my breast in the
daytime it was so hot. The time went on as slowly as
the cocoanut-tree grows from the nut we plant. We left
in the month you call October. Days and nights we

18 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

floated without using the tiller except to keep the cutter
before the wind when it blew hard. We had been asleep
maybe a day or two when a storm came. We did not
wake up, but it cast us on the island of Rapa-iti. Pere
Ani never woke up, but I am here. The sun killed
him."

"How long were you in the cutter?" I asked.

Moet heard my question and replied :

''Mais, zey lef ' Marutea in octohre, an' ze Zelee, the
Tranche war-sheep, fin' zem on Rapa-iti in Januaire.
Zey was — yo no se — more zan seexty day in ze boat."

Piha a Teina expressed neither gladness nor sorrow
that he had escaped the fate of Pere Ani. He knew, as
his race, that fate was inexorable, and he contemplated
life as the gift of a powerful force that could not be
argued with nor threatened by prayers, though, to be
in the mode, he might make such supplications.

"If I had had such a holioa moana, a chart of the sea,
as we formerly made of sticks," he said, "I could have
found Manga Reva without the stars. We made them
of straight and curved pieces of wood or bamboo, and we
marked islands on them with shells. They showed the
currents from the four quarters of the sea, and with
them we made journeys of thousands of miles to the
Marquesas and to Hawaii and Samoa. But we have
forgotten how to make them, and I know nothing of the
paper charts the white man has, but I can read the
aveia, the compass of the schooner. We did not take
our hooa in our canoes, but studied them at home."

The captain whistled, caught my eye, touched his fore-
head to signify Piha a Teina was wandering mentally,
and summoned the sailor to take the wheel.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 19

"He ees maamaa ewair since zat leetle voyage," he
said, sagely.

On the morning of the fourth day from Papeete the
first of the eighty Paumotu atolls raised a delicate green
fringe of trees fom' or five miles away. It lay so low
that from the deck of the schooner it could not be seen
even on the clearest days at a greater distance. One
heard the surf before the island appeared. It was only
a few feet above the plane of the sea, flat, with no hill
or eminence upon it, a leaf upon the surface of a pond.
I could hardly believe it part of the familiar globe. It
was more like the fairy-island of childhood, the coral
strand of youth, the lotus land of poesy. It was, in
reality, the most beautiful, fascinating, inconceivable
sight upon the ocean.

McHenry and I stood with Chocolat and watched the
slow rise of the atoll of Niau, as the Marara, under less-
ened sail and with Captain Moet at the helm, cautiously
approached the land. We crept up to it, as one might
to a trap in which one hoped to snare a hare but feared
to find a wolf. All liands stood by for orders.
Though the sky was azure and the sun broiling, one
never knew in the Pernicious Islands when the unfore-
seen might happen.

Seven miles long and five wide, Niau was a matcliless
bracelet of ivory and jade. Grieg Island, some Anglo-
Saxon discoverer once named it, but Grieg had fame
abroad only. None spoke his name as we advanced
warily over the road, familiar to them all as the Sulu
Sea to me. The cargo for Niau came through the
hatches, thrown up from the hold, sailor to sailor, and
was piled on deck until all was checked. Madame Moet

20 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

was on the poop by the after door of the cabin, hanging
over each item and marking it off upon her inventory,
while Jean hummed the "Carmagnole," and swung the
Flying Fish about on short tacks for her goal. Between
the shifting of the canvas the long-boat was lowered, and
the goods heaped in it: boxes and barrels, bales and
buckets, edibles and clothing, matches and tobacco, gim-
cracks and patent medicines.

As closer we went, I saw that Niau was a perfect
oval, composed of a number of separate islets or motus.
These formed the land on which were the trees and
shrubs and the people, but this oval itself was inclosed
by a hidden reef, several hundred feet wide, on which
the breakers -crashed and spilled in a flood of foaming
billows.

There was no enthusiasm over the beauty of Niau
except in my heaving breast, and I concealed it as I
would free thinking in a monastery. To McHenry
and Jean and Virginia, a lovely atoll was but a speck
upon the ocean on which to cozen inferior creatures.

''Madre de DiosT vociferated the skipper, when, a
mile from the gleaming teeth of the reef, he brought the
Marara up into the wind and halted her like a panting
mare thrown upon her haunches. "Mc'onree et M'sieu'
O'Breeon, eef you go 'shore, tomble een, pronto!"

He released the wheel to the mate, and we three
scrambled over the rail and jumped upon the cargo as
the boat rose on a wave, joining the four Tahitians who
were at the heavy oars, with Piri a Tuahine at the stern,
holding a long sweep for a rudder. It was attached by
a bight of rope, and by a longer rope kept from float-
ing away in case of mishap.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 21

Now came as delicate a bit of action with sails as a
yachtsman, with his mother-in-law as a guest, might reck-
lessly essay. Captain Moet sang out from his perch on
a barrel to the half-caste at the wheel to go ahead, and
the Flying Fish, which for a few minutes had been trem-
bling in leash, turned on her heel and headed directly
for the streak of foam, the roar of which drowned our
voices at that distance.

Eight hundred feet away, when it must have looked to
a landsman on the schooner that she was ahnost in the
breakers, we cast off the line and took to our oars. It
was nice seamanship to save time by minimizing rowing,
but certainly not in Lloyd's rules of safety. Those who
reckon dangers do not laugh in these parts. A merry
rashness helps ease of mind.

In five minutes our boat was in the surf, rolling and
tumbling, and I on my merchandise peak clasped a bale
fervently, though McHenry and Moet appeared glued
to barrels which they rode jauntily. It was now I saw
the art of the Polynesians, the ablest breaker boatmen
in the world.

All about seemed to me sohd coral rock or distorted
masses of limestone covering and uncovering with the
surging water, but suddenly there came into my altering
view, as the steersman headed toward it, a strange pit in
the unyielding strata. Into this maelstrom the water
rushed furiously, drawn in and sucked out with each roll
of the ocean. The Tahitians, at a word, stopped row-
ing, while Piri a Tuahine scrutinized intently the onrush-
ing waves. He judged the speed and force of each as
it neared him, and on his accuracy of eye and mind de-
pended our hves.

22 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

The oarsmen tugged with their blades to hold the
boat against the sweeping tide, and abruptly, with a
wild shout, Piri a Tuahine set them to pulling like mad,
while he with his long oar both steered and sculled.

"Tamau te paina!" all yelled amid the boom of the
surf.

"Hold on to the wood!" and down into the pit we
tore ; down and in, the boat raced through the vortex of
the chute, the pilot avoiding narrowly the coffin-like
sides of the menacing depression, and the sailors, with
their oars aloft for the few di-ead seconds, awaiting with
joyous shouts the emergence into the shallows. All
was in the strong hands and steady nerves of Piri a
Tuahine. A miscalculated swerve of his sturdy lever,
and we would have been smashed like egg-shells, boat
and bodies, against the massive sides. But spirit and
wood were stedf ast, and I rode as high and dry from the
imminent Scylla as if on a camel in the Sahara.

In a few twinklings of an eye we were past the reef,
and in the moat in fast shoaling, quiet water, studded
with hummocks and heaps of coral. The sailors leaped
into it shoulder-deep, and guided and forced the boat
as far shoreward as possible, to curtail the cargo-carry-
ing distance. Captain Moet, McHenry, and I went up
to our waists, and reached the beach.

CHAPTER II

Meeting with Tommy Eustace, the trader — Strange soil of the atoll — A
bath in the lagoon — Momuni, the thirsty bread balser — Off for Anaa.

THE crusader who entered Jerusalem had no
deeper feehng of reahzation of a long-cherished
hope than I when my foot imprinted its mold in
the glistening sand of the atoll of Niau. I stood in my
track and scanned it, as Crusoe the first human mark
other than his own he saw on his lonely island. Not
with his dismay, but yet with a slight panic, a
pleasant but alarmed perturbation, an awe at the won-
der of the scene. The moment had the tenseness of
that when I saw my first cocoanut-palm ; it mingled a
fear that I had passed one of the great climacterics of
visual emotion.

Here was I in the arcanum of romance, the promised
land of chimera, after years of faint expectation. I
was almost stunned by the reality, and I felt sensibly
the need of some one to share the pathos that oppressed
me. I did not forsake my love for Tahiti. That was
fixed, but this atoll was not the same. Tahiti was an
adored mistress, this a light o' love, a dazzling, alien
siren, with whom one could not rest in safety ; a fanciful
abode for a brief period, as incomparable to Tahiti as
an ice-field to a garden.

"What the bloody hell's eatin' on you?" exclaimed the
irked McHenry, questioningly as he glared at me.

24 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

"Are n't yout f eet mates? Let 's see Tommy Eustace!
He might have a bottle o' beer buried in a cool place."

Moet was shaking the salt water from his long, inky
hair. He had stumbled and dipped his head in the
brine.

" 'Sus-Marial" he swore. "Virginie she say Jean
been drink.' "

A shed-like building of rough boards, with unpainted
corrugated iron roof, was a hundred steps from the
water, the store and warehouse of the single trader, who
supplied the wants and ambitions of the hundred in-
habitants of Niau and endeavored to monopolize a
meager output of copra and pearl shell. It was on a
rude road, which stretched along the beach, edged by a
dozen houses, small, wooden huts, or thatched straw
shanties, much more primitive and poor than in Tahiti.
All the remainder of Niau was coral, water, and cocoa-
nut-trees, except a scanty vegetation.

Thomas Eustace, the trader, or Tome, as the natives
called him, was in the doorway of his establishment,
awaiting the sailors who had begun at once to carry the
Mararas freight from the boat through the moat. A
quarter of a century ago, a broth of a boy from Ireland,
he had stepped off a ship alongside the Papeete quay,
and had never left the South Seas since.

''Faix, I had the divil's own toime to shtay," say
Tome, as we four sat by an empty barrel head and drank
the warmish beer he had offered us with instant hospital-
ity.

"I waz that atthracted by the purty gir-ruls, the
threes, and the foine-shmellin' flowers that the ould man
of the ship nivir could dhraw me back to the pots an'

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 25

pans iv the galley. I waz the flunky in the kitchin iv a
wind-jammin' Sassenach bark, peelin' praties, an'
waitin' on sailormin. The father iv a darlin' hid me out
be Fautaua falls, an' the jondarmy hunted an' hunted,
wid nothin' for their thrubble."

A stoutish, quizzical man was Tomie, with
brown face and throat and hands, a stubby, chewed
mustache and sleepy, laughing eyes. By the purling
steam of Fautaua, where Loti had lived his idyl with
Rarahu and I had walked with a princess, Thomas
Eustace became Tome forever and ever. He was well
satisfied to be bashaw of an atoll, unused to greater com-
fort as he was, and enamored of reef and palm, and the
lazy, unstandardized life of the South Seas.

"Ye may picther me," he went on, as he poured the
beer, "jumpin' out iv the p'isonous galley iv that wind-
jammin' man-killer, an' fallin', be the grace iv God,
into a grove iv cocoanuts, wid roas' pig, breadfruit, and
oranges fur breakfus, deejunee, an' dinner, to whistle
low about a brown fairy that swung on the same branch
wid me! The Emerald Isle the divil! 'T is Tahiti's
the Tir-na'n-Og! This beats the bogs an' the peat an'
the stirabout, wid no peeler to move you on, an' no
soggarth to tell ye ye're a sinner!"

Tome was ten years in Penrhyn, the noted pearl island
belonging to New Zealand, and known as Tongareva.
Lying Bill, McHenry, and Eustace were fellow-traders
in that lonely spot. "Fellow" in such relations meant
the affectionate intercourse of wolves who united to
chase the sheep and quarrel over the carcass. McHenry
and Tome had greeted each other with cold familiarity,
each knowing the other through and through, wondering

26 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

how the other would beat him, and yet not averse to an
exchange of trade news and the gossip of Tahiti and
the Group, as they called the Paumotus.

"How 's old Lovaina?" asked Tome.

"Chargin' as much as ever for her cheap scoffin's,"
replied McHenry, who had never eaten a better meal
than that served at the Tiare Hotel. Eustace, I doubted
not, was a square and genial man, but among his busi-
ness kind he had to fight bludgeon with bludgeon. He
opened a fresh cocoanut and diverted the mouth of an
infant from its natural fount to make it swallow a few
drops. The mother, a handsome, young woman, proud
of her armful, gestured smilingly that Tome was its
father. '

"Mavourneen dheelish!" he called her, and the baby,
"Molly."

Cocoanuts differ in kind and quality as much as
apples, and Eustace gave me a kaipoa, which at his
direction I ate, husks and all, and found it delicious.

Leaving the two merchants to continue their armed
banter, I stepped outside the store and struck off the
road toward the center of the island, through fields of
broken coral, mysterious in its oppositeness from all
other terrestrial formations. There was no earth that
one could see or feel, but a matted vegetation in spots
showed that even in these whited sepulchers of the coral
animals outlandish plants had found the substance of
life. The flora, though desperate in its poverty, was
heartening in that it could survive at all. The lofty
cocoanut-palm, standing straight as a mast or curving
in singular grace, grew luxuriantly — the evergreen
banner of this giant fleet of anchored ships of stone.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 27j

Through a few hundred yards of this weird desert- jun-
gle, I reached the lagoon which the inner marge of the
great coral reef inclosed.

No lake that I have seen approached this mere
in simple beauty, nor had artist's vision wrought
a more startling, extravagant, yet perfect work of
color. The lagoon of Niau was small enough to
encompass with a glance from where I stood. I
felt myself in an enchanted spot. Niau was not
all wooded. For long stretches only the white coral
lined the shores, with here and there the plumy
palms refreshing the eyes — brilliant in contrast with
the bare sheen of the coral, and softly rustling in the
breeze.

The water of the lagoon was palest blue, verging to
green, clear almost as the pure air, and the beach shelved
rapidly into depths.

The beach was made up of tiny shells crumbling into
sand, billions and billions of them in the twenty miles
about the lagoon. In each of the legion coral isles this
was repeated, so that the mind contemplating them was
confused at the incalculable prodigality of the life ex-
pended to build them and the oddity of the problem ar-
ranged by the power planning them.

"Every single atom, from the least particle to the
largest fragment of rock, in this great pile," said Dar-
win, "bears the stamp of having been subjected to organ-
ized arrangement. We feel surprised when travelers
tell U'S of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other
great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest
of these when compared to these mountains of stone ac-
cumulated by the agency of various minute and tender

28 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

animals. This is a wonder which does not at first strike
the eye of the body, but, after reflection, the eye of
reason."

I sat down under a dwarf cocoanut and let my eyes
and mind dwell upon the gorgeousness of the prospect
and the insight into nature's reticences it afforded.
Everywhere were the tombs or skeletons of the myriad
creatures who had labored and died to construct these
footstools of Might. Could man assume that these eons
of years and countless births, efforts, and deaths, were
for any concern of his? But else, he asked, why were
they? To show the boundless power and caprice of the
Creator? Was not the world made for humanity?

An atoll was to an island as a comet to a star — a freak
or sport in the garden of the sea-gods. It was as if the
Designer had planned to set up, in the thousand miles
of ocean through which the Dangerous Islands stretched,
a whimsical cluster of shallower salt lakes, and so had
bidden trillions of tiny beings to inclose them. For,
after all, an atoll was but a lagoon surrounded by a reef
of coral, or rather two reefs, for in the plan of the
Architect there was built a second reef for every atoll,
and this outer barrier was sunken, as the one through
which we had come, but yet took the brunt of the waves,
and prevented them from washing away and destroying
the innner and habitable reef on which I then sat.

This hidden shoal belted the beach regularly, so that
it made a moat between the two ; and yet in most atolls
there was such an opening as that through which we had
come, often a mere depression, sometimes a deep and
wide mouth. One was forced to consider whether the
Architect had not taken man into his scheme, for with-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 29

out such an opening no people could reach the shore and
lagoon. But the grievous fact was that in some atolls
the minute workers had left no door and that man himself
had torn one open with tools and explosives. Even once
within the moat, our boat was in comparative safety only
in the mildest weather, for the moat was studded with
lumps and boulders of coral, and the most crafty guard-
ianship was imperative to keep our craft whole.

If there had been an entry through the inner shore
into the peaceful lagoon by which I lolled, then would
anchorage and calm have been assured. So, of course,
nature had in some other atolls than Niau attended to
this detail, and these I was to find more inhabited and
more developed, for in some even schooners might seek
the haven of the lake, and a fleet lie there in security.
The lagoons were thus, generally, safe and unflurried,
though sometimes terribly harried by cyclones, such as
Lying Bill described the Dane as riding from sea to
sea across the entire island of Anaa.

Each of the Paumotus was made up of a number of
motus, or islets, parted by lower strata in which was the
moat water. This string of motus assumed many dis-
similar figures. One had fifty pieces in its puzzle — a
puzzle not fully solved by science, or, at least, still
in dispute. The motus were all formed of coral rock
of comparatively recent origin geologically. Were
these atolls the mountain-tops of a lost Atlantis or
thrust-up marine plateaus? The wise men differed.
A theory was that the atolls were coral formations upon
volcanic islands that had slowly sunk, each a monument
marking an engulfed island or mountain peak.

Another, that volcanic activity, which mothered the

30 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

high islands in these seas, caused to rise from the bottom
of the ocean a series of submerged tablelands, leveled
by the currents and waves, on which the coral insects
erected the reefs — reefs just peeping above the surface
of the water — and on which the storms threw great
blocks of madrepores and coral broken from the mass.
When in this condition, mere rocky rings of milky coral,
over which each billow swept, without life or aught else
than the structures of the marvelous zoophytes, floors
cut and broken here and there by the surging and
pounding breakers, the hand of the Master raised them
up, as through Polynesia other islands had been raised,
and fixed these Paumotus as the fairest growths of
Neptune's park.

Lifted above the watery level, they were able to begin
their task of usefulness. Seeds carried by currents,
borne by the winds, or brought by those greatest of all
pioneers and settlers of new countries, the sea-birds,
were flung on these ready, but yet barren, atolls, and
vegetation gave them an entrancing present.

Volcano and insect combined to make these coral
blossoms of the South Seas so different from any other
mundane formations that the man with any dreaming
in his soul stood awe-struck at the wonder and artistry
of nature. They were the most wonderful and simple
of nature's works. They eluded portrayal by brush
and camera. No canvas or film could grasp their sym-
metry and grace, seize more than a fragment of their
alluring form or hint of their admirable colors. Ravish-
ing scenes from the deck of a ship, and marvels of con-
struction and hue when upon them, they were sad and

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 31

disappointing to the dweller, like a lovely woman who
has a bad disposition.

Circles, ovals, and horseshoes, regular and irregular,
a few niiles or a hundred in circumference, the Pau-
motus were always essentially the same — the lagoon and
the fringe of reef and palm. These lies D anger euses
were the supreme in creation in harmonious light and
shade. They were the very breath of imagination.
My thoughts harked back to the dawn of Hfe, and the
struggle between the land and water in which continents
and islands were drowned, and others rose to be the
home of beast and man, when God said, "Let the dry
land appear."

These atolls had fought the ceaseless war which
slowly, but eternally, shifted our terrestrial foothold.
Makatea, nearer Tahiti, lifted its strange cliffs two hun-
dred feet in the air. It had been raised by subterra-
nean force thirty-five fathoms from the sea-level, and
its coasts were vertical walls of that height.

The young Darwin's theory appealed even with these
examples of resurgence. It was improbable that an
elevatory force would uplift through an immense area
great, rocky banks within twenty or thirty fathoms of
the surface of the sea, and not a single point above that
level. Where on the surface of the globe was a chain
of mountains, even a few hundred miles in length, with
their many summits rising within a few feet of a given
level, and not one pinnacle above it? Yet that was the
condition in these atolls, for the coral animal could not
live more than thirty fathoms or so below the atmosphere,
so that the basic foundations of the atolls, on which the

32 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

mites laid their offerings and their bones, were fewer
than two hundred feet under the surface. The polyp
gnome died from the pressure of water at greater
depths. Just outside the reefs or between the
atolls, the depths were often greater than a mile
or two.

The vague science I possessed stimulated the memo-
ries of my reading of that oldest civilization in tradition,
the immense continent of Pan, which a score of millen-
niums ago, according to the poet archaeologists, flour-
ished in this Pacific Ocean. Its cryptogram attended
in many spots the discovery of a new Rosetta stone.
I myself had seen huge monoliths, half -buried pyramids
and High Places, hieroglyphs and carvings, certainly
the fashioning of no living races. Were these Pau-
motus, and many other islands from Japan to Easter,
the tops of the submerged continent. Pan, which
stretched its crippled body along the floor of the Pa-
cific for thousands of leagues? There were legends,
myths, customs, inexplicable absences of usages and
knowledge on the part of present peoples, all perhaps
capable of interpretation by this fascinating theory of
a race lost to history before Sumer attained coherence
or Babylon made bricks.

Over this land bridge, mayhap, ventured a Caucasian
people, the dominant blood in Polynesia to-day, and
when the connecting links in the chain to their cradle
fell from the sights of sun and stars, the survivors were
isolated for ages on the islands like Tahiti and the Mar-
quesas. On the mountain-tops, plateaus beneath the
water, the coral insect built up these atolls until they
stood in their wondrous shapes splendid examples of

■u

3
O

e3
PL,

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 33

nature's self -arrested labor, sculptures of unbelievable
brilliancy.

To them came first Caucasians who had been spared
in the cataclysm, and later the new sailors of giant
canoes who followed from Asia the line of islets and
atolls, fighting with and conquering the Caucasians,
and merging into them in the course of generations.
These first and succeeding migrations must have been
forced by devastating natural phenomena, by terrible
economic pressure, by wars and tribal feuds. It was
not probable that any people deliberately chose these
atolls in preference to the higher lands, but that they
occupied them in lieu of better on account of evil for-
tune.

These eighty Paumotu islands averaged about forty
miles apart, with only two thousand people in all of
them, which would allow, if equally distributed, only
twenty-five inhabitants to each. On more than half
of them no person lived, and all the others were scantily
peopled. Three or four hundred might occupy one
atoll where shell and cocoanuts were bountiful and fish
plentiful and good, while two score and more atolls
were left for the frigate-bird to build its nest and for
the robber-crab to eat its full of nuts.

The thud of a cocoanut beside me stirred me from my
reverie. I was wet with the wading ashore and the
sweat of my walk, and so I removed my few garments
and plunged into the lagoon. Going down to test the
declivity a yard or so from the water's edge I dropped
twenty feet and touched no bottom. The water was
limpid, delicious, and I could see the giant coral fans
waving fifty feet below me.

34 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

As I loitered on my back in the water, and looked
down into the crystal depths and at the clou'dless sky,
I had a moment's phantasm of a great city, its lofty
trade battlements, its crowded streets, the pale, set
faces of its people, the splendor of the rich houses, the
squalor of the tenements, the police with clubs and guns,
and the shrieking traffic. Here was the sweetest con-
trast, where man had hardly touched the primitive work
of nature. It was long from Sumer, and far from
Gotham.

I was floating at ease when I heard a voice. It
seemed to come out of the water. It was soft and al-
most etheric.

"Maitair it said, which meant, "You 're all right."

I turned on my side, and by my garments was a
long, gaunt Niauan, with a loose mouth, loafing there,
with his eyes fawning upon me. He smiled sweetly,
and said, "Goodanighta!"

As it was hardly seven o'clock in the morning, the
sun a ball of fire, and the glare of the reef like the shine
of a boy's mirror in one's eyes, I argued against his
English education. But courtesy is not correction.
I said in kind, "Goodanighta!" He came into the
water and repaid me by shaking my hand, and with a
movement toward the beach, said, "Damafina!"

''Maitail" I corroborated his opinion, and then he
beckoned to me to leave the lagoon and follow him. I
dressed, all moist as I was, and we returned toward the
village, I wondering what design on me he had.

"She canna fik (fix) you show Niau," my cicerone
explained, as he waved toward the island.

"All right, good, number one," I assented.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 35

He laughed with pleased vanity at his success in con-
versing with me in my tongue and at the envious looks
of the people on their tiny porches as we passed them,
and I saluted them.

"Momuni! Momunir they called after him with
scornful laughter, and beckoned me to leave him and
join them.

"Haere mat!" they said, sweetly to me. Come to
us!"

My guide did not like either the name they gave
him or their efforts to alienate us. He retorted with
an impolite gesticulation, and cried, ''Popay! Popay!"
Momuni, though, was plainly nervous, and afraid that
I might be won over by the opposition. He plucked me
by my wet sleeve and directed me to a shanty of old
boards set upon a platform of coral rocks four feet
from the bed of the atoll. In its single room on a
white bedspread were a dozen loaves of bread, crisp
and white, and smelling appetizingly. He lifted one,
squeezed it to show its sponginess, and put it to my
nose. He sniffed, and said, "She the greata coo-ooka."

I guessed that he referred to himself as the baker.
He pointed out toward the schooner and made me
understand that this baking was a present to me. I
was embarrassed, and with many flourishes explained
that the Tahitian cook of the Marara could not be com-
pared with him as a bread-maker, but that he was of
a jealous disposition and might resent bitterly the gift.
My companion was cast down for a moment, but bright-
ened with another idea. Through a hundred yards
more of coral bones we plowed to his oven, a huge, coral
stove like a lime-kiln, with a roof, and bags of Victor

36 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

flour from the Pacific Coast beside it. Pridefully he
made me note everything, as an artist might his studio.

Momuni then touched my arm, and said, "^Haere!
We can do."

We walked along the beach of the lagoon and found
a road that paralleled the one we had come. It was
lower than the other and the rain had flooded it. The
water was brown and stagnant, even red in pools, Hke
blood. Uncanny things shot past my feet or crawled
upon them, and once something that had not the feel
of anything I knew of climbed the calf of my leg, and
when I turned and saw it dimly I leaped into the air and
kicked it off. I heard it plop into the dark water.

Down this marsh we plodded and paddled, floundered
and splashed for half a mile. The cocoanut-palms
arched across it, but there was not a person nor a habita-
tion in view. I wondered why "she the great cook"
had led me into this morass. Momuni looked at me
mysteriously several times, and his lips moved as if he
had been about to speak.

He studied my countenance attentively, and several
times he patted and rubbed my back affectionately and
said, "You damafina." Then, slimy and sloppy as I
was. covered with the foul water up to my waist, when
we were in the darkest spot Momuni halted and drew
me under a palm.

He would either seek to borrow money or to cut
my throat, I thought hastily. Again he scanned me
closely, and I, to soften his heart and avert the evil,
tried to appear firm and unafraid. To my astonish-
ment he took from his pocket five five-franc notes, those
ugly, red-inked bills which are current in all the

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 37

Etahlissements Frangais de r Oceanic, and held them
under my nose. He smiled and then made the motion
of pulling a cork, and of a bottle's contents gurgling
through his loose mouth and down his long neck.

I shuddered at my thoughts. Could it be that in this
dry atoll, with intoxicants forbidden, and prison the
penalt}'' of selling or giving them to a native, this hospi-
table Niauan had offered me his bread and shown me his
oven, and the glories of the isle, and was displaying
those five red notes to seduce me into breaking the law,
into smuggling ashore a bottle of rum or wine ?

I was determined to know the worst. I drew from
my drawers (I had worn no trousers) an imaginary
corkscrew, and from my undershirt an unsubstantial
bottle. I pulled a supposititious cork, and took a long
drink of the unreal elixir. Momuni was transfixed.
His jaws worked, and his tongue extended. He
squeezed my hand with happiness and hope, and left
in it the five scarlet tokens of the Banque de Vlndo-
Chine.

"Wina damafina; rumma damafina," he confided.
The man would be content with anything, so it bit his
throat and made him a king for an evil hour.

Tome was dealing out tobacco when we reached his
store. His wife and baby, an Irish-Penrhyn baby,
were now eating a can of salmon and Nabisco wafers.

"Who is this gentleman, Mr. Eustace?" I asked,
pointing to Momuni.

"He 's an omadhaun, a nuisance, that he is, sure,"
said Tome. "He 's a Mormon deacon that peddles
bread an' buys his flour from some one else because I
won't trust him. He 's the only Mormon in this blessed

38 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

island. Every last soul is a Roman Cat'lic, except me,
and I 'm a believer in the leprechawn. Has that hooli-
gan been thryin' to work ye for a bottle of rum? He '11
talk a day for a drink."

"What 's Momuni and Popayl"

"Momuni is the way they say 'Mormons.' The
other's the pope wid the accint on the last syllable.
It 's the name for Cat'lics all over these seas, because
they worship the pope iv Rome. The Popays run this
island, but the Momunis have got Takaroa and some
others by the tail."

I turned to look at my guide, the bread-maker. I
had new admiration for him. It took courage to be the
one Mormon among a hundred Catholics, and to try
to sell them the staff of life. But he could not with-
stand the withering glances of Tome, and fled, with
gestures to me which I could only hazard to mean to
meet him later in the fearsome swamp, with the rum.

"Does Momuni owe you any money?" I asked the
trader, who was lighting his wife's cigarette.

"Does he? He owes me forty francs for flour, and
I '11 nivir see the shadow iv them. I '11 tell ye, though,
he 's the best baker in the Group, an' they 're crazy
about his bread."

Eustace had no cargo for us, and McHenry and I
caught the last boat for the Marara, Moet having stayed
for one trip only.

"Come an' shtay wid us a month or two," said Tome
in farewell. "We '11 make ye happy and find ye a
sweetheart! 'T is here ye can shpend yer valibil time
doin' nawthin' at all, at all."

He laughed heartily at his joke on virtue, and as we

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 39

dashed through the surf to climb into the boat I turned
to see him teUing the assembhng villagers some story
that might provoke a laugh and keep their copra a mo-
nopoly for him.

CHAPTER III

Perilous navigation — Curious green sky — Arrival at Anaa — Religion and
the movies — Character of Paumotuans.

A CURRENT set against us all night. Now I
understood fully the alarms and misgivings
that had caused the first and following dis-
coverers of the "Pernicious Islands" to curse them by
the titles they gave them. Our current was of the
mischievous sort that upset logarithms and dead reckon-
ing, and put ships ashore.

"This group is a graveyard of vessels," said Mc-
Henry, "and there 'd be ten times as many wrecked,
if they come here. Wait till you see the County of
Hoochurgh at Takaroa! I 've been cruisin' round here
more 'n twenty years, and I never saw the current the
same. The Frog Government at Papeete is always
talkin' about puttin' lighthouses on a half-dozen of these
atolls, -but does nothin'. Maybe the chief or a trader
hangs a lantern on top of his house when he expects a
cargo for him, but you can't trust those lights, and
you can't see them in time to keep from hittin' the reef.
There 's no leeway to run from a wind past beating.
It 's lee shore in some bloody direction all the time.

"There 's a foot or two between high and low, and
it 's low in the lagoon when the moon is full. It 's
high when the moon rises and when it sets. In atolls
where there 's a pass into the lagoon, there 's a hell

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 41

of a current in the lagoon at the lowerin' tide, and in
the sea near the lagoon when the tide is risin'.
We're goin' to beat those tides with engines.
In five years every schooner in the group will have an
auxiliary. There's only one now, the Fetia Taiao, and
she 's brand new. It used to be canoes, and then whale-
boats, and then cutters here, and purty soon it '11 be
gasolene schooners."

Then will the cry arise that romance has perished of
artificiality. But the heart of man is always the same,
and nothing kills romance but sloth.

We battled with the current and a fresh wind during
the long, dark hours, Jean Moet never leaving the deck,
and I keeping him company. Below on a settee Vir-
ginie said her beads or slept. I could see her by the
smudgy cabin lamp, and hear her call to her husband two
or three times, hours apart, "^a va hie7i?" Jean would
answer in Tahitian, as to a sailor, ''Maitai," and invari-
ably would follow his mechanical reply, with ''Et tot,
dors-tu?"

Ever light-hearted, currents nor squalls could burden
his Gascon spirit. He looked at the stars, and he
looked at the water, he consulted with the mate, and
gave orders to the steersman.

''Eh b'en/^ he said to me, ''moij, I am comme monsieur
ze gouverneur ov ze Paumotu who live een Favarava,
over zere." He pointed into the darkness. " 'E 'as a
leetle schoonaire an' 'e keep ze court and ze calaboose,
bot mos'ly 'e lis'en to ze musique an' make ze dance.
La vie est triste; vive la bagatelle! Maybee we pick
op Anaa in ze morning. Eef not, amigo mio, Virginie
she weel pray for nous both.

42 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Anaa, or Chain Island, as Captain Cook named it be-
cause of its eleven motus or islets, strung like emeralds
and pearls in a rosary, was not visible at daybreak, but
as I studied the horizon the sky turned to a brilliant
green. I thought some dream of that Tir-na'n-Og
spoken of by Tome in Niau obsessed me. I turned my
back and waited for my eyes to right themselves. One
sees green in the rainbow and green in the sunset, but
never had I known a morning sky to be of such a hue.
McHenry came on deck in his pajamas, and looked
about.

''Erin go hraghr he remarked. "Ireland is castin'
a shadow on the bloody heaven. There," he pointed, "is
the sight o' the bleedin' world. You 've never seen it
before an' you won't see it again, unless you come to
Anaa in the mornin' or evenin' of a purty clear day.
It 's the shinin' of the lagoon of Anaa in the sky, an'
it 's nowhere else on the ball. There 's many a Kanaka
in 'is canoe outa sight o' land has said a prayer to his
god when he seen that green. He knew he was near
Anaa. You can see that shine thirty or thirty-five
miles away, hours before you raise the atoll."

Some curious relation of the lagoon to the sky had
painted this hazy lawn on high. It was like a great
field of luscious grass, at times filmy, paling to the color
of absinthe touched with water, and again a true aqua-
marine, as I have seen the bay of Todos Santos, at En-
senada of Lower California. Probably it is the shal-
lowness of the waters, which in this lagoon are strangely
different from most of the inland basins of the South
Sea Isles. To these mariners, who moved their little
boats between them, the mirage was famed; and the

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 4a

natives had many a legend of its origin and cause, and of
their kind being saved from starvation or thirst by its
kindly glint.

McHeniy called down the companionway, "Hey,
monster, you can see the grass on Anaa. Vite-vite!"

Moet, who was below, drinking a cup of coffee, leaped
up the companionway. He called out swift orders to
go over on the other tack, and headed straight for the
mirage. The schooner heeled to the breeze, now fresh-
ening as the sun became hotter, and we reeled off six
or seven knots with all canvas drawing. In an hour
the celestial plot of green had vanished, fading out
slowly as we advanced, and we began to glimpse the
cocoanuts on the beach, though few trees showed on
the sky-line, and they were twisted as in travail.

Anaa, as others of these islands and Tahiti, too, had
suffered terribly by a cyclone a few years ago. More
than any other island of this group Anaa had felt the
devastating force of the mat at rorofai, the "wind that
kills" — the wind that slew Lovaina's son and made her
cut her hair in mourning. Hikueru lost more people,
because there were many there; but Anaa was
mangled and torn as a picador's horse by the horns of
the angry bull. A half-mile away we could plainly
see the havoc of wind and wave. The reef itself had
been broken away in places, and coral rocks as big as
houses hurled upon the beach.

"I was there just after the cyclone," said McHenry.
"It was a bloomin' garden before then, Anaa. It was
the only island in the Paumotus in which they grew
most of the fruits as in Tahiti, the breadfruit, the
banana, the orange, lime, mango, and others. It may

44 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

be an older island than the others or more protected
usually from the wind; but, anyhow, it had the richest
soil. The Anaa people were just like children, happy
and singin' all the time. That damned storm knocked
them galley-west. It tore a hole in the island, as you
can see, killed a hundred people, and ended their pros-
perity. There was a Catholic church of coral, old and
bloody fine, and when I got here a week after the cy-
clone I could n't find the spot where the foundations
had been. I came with the vessels the Government
sent to help the people. You never seen such a sight.
The most of the dead were blown into the lagoon or lay
under big hunks of coral. People with crushed heads
and broken legs and arms and ribs were strewn all
around. The bare reef is where the village was, and
the people who went into the church to be safe were
swept out to sea with it."

As at Niau, the schooner lay off the shore, and the
long-boat was lowered. In it were placed the cargo,
and with Moet, McHenry, and me, men, women, and
children passengers, four oarsmen and the boat-steerer,
it was completely filled, we sitting again on the boxes.

Once more the Flying Fish towed the boat very near
to the beach, and at the cry of "Let go!" flung away
the rope's end and left us to the oars. The passage
through the reef of Anaa was not like that of Niau.
There was no pit, but a mere depression in the rocks,
and it took the nicest manceuvering to send the boat in
the exact spot. As we approached, the huge boulders
lowered upon us, threatening to smash us to pieces, and
we backed water and waited for the psychological mo-
ment. The surf was strong, rolling seven or eight feet

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 45

high, and crashing on the stone with a menacing roar,
but the boat-steerer wore a smile as he shouted, "Tamau
te paina!"

The oars lurched forward in the water, the boat rose
on the wave, and onward we surged; over the reef,
scraping a little, avoiding the great rocks by inches al-
most, and into milder water. The sailors leaped out,
and with the next wave pulled the boat against the
smoother strand; but it was all coral, all rough and all
dangerous, and I considered well the situation before
leaving the boat. I got out in two feet of water and
raced the next breaker to the higher beach, my camera
tied on my head.

There was no beach, as we know the word — only a
jumbled mass of coral humps, millions of shells, some
whole, most of them broken into bits, and the rest mere
coarse sand. On this were scattered enormous masses
of coral, these pieces of the primitive foundation up-
heaved and divided by the breakers when the cyclone
blew. The hand of a Titan had crushed them into
shapeless heaps and thrown them hundreds of feet to-
ward the interior, the waves washing away the soil,
destroying all vegetation, and laying bare the crude
floor of the island. From the water's edge I walked
over this waste, gleaming white or milky, for a hundred
yards before I reached the copra shed of Lacour, a
French trader, and sat down to rest. The sailors bore
the women and children on their shoulders to safety, and
then commenced the landing of the merchandise for La-
cour. Flour and soap, sugar, biscuit, canned goods,
lamps, piece goods; gauds and gewgaws, cheap jewelry,
beads, straw for making hats, perfumes and shawls.

46 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Lacour, pale beneath his deep tan, black-haired and
slender, greeted us at the shed with the dead-and-alive
manner of many of these island exiles, born of torrid
heat, long silences, and weariness of the driven flesh.
A cluster of women lounged under a tohonu tree, the
only shade near-by, and they smiled at me and said,
^'la or a na oe!"

I strolled inland. It was an isle of desolation, rav-
aged years ago, but prostrated still, swept as by a gi-
gantic flail. Everywhere I beheld the results of the
cataclysm.

Picking up shells and bits of coral at haphazard, I
came upon the bone of a child, the forearm, bleached
by wind and rain. Few of the bodies of the drowned
had been interred with prayer, but found a last resting-
place under the coral debris or in the maws of the sharks
that rode upon the cyclone's back in search of prey.

It was very hot. These low atolls were always ex-
cessively warm, but not humid. It was a dry heat.
The reflection of the sunlight on the blocks of coral and
the white sand made a glare that was painful to whites,
and made colored glasses necessaiy to shield their eyes.
Temporary blindness was common among new-comers,
thus unprotected.

I walked miles and never lost the evidence of violence
and loss. There was an old man by a coral pen, in
which were three thin, measly pigs, a gi-ayish yellow in
color. He showed me to a small, wooden church.

"There are four Catholic churches in Anaa," he said,
"with one priest, and there are three hundred souls all
told in this island. The priest goes about to the dif-
ferent churches, but money is scarce. This New Year

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 47

the contribution was so trifling, the priest, who knew the
bishop in Papeete would demand an accounting, sent
word to know why — and what do you think he got back?
That Lacour, the trader, with his accursed cinemato-
graph, had taken all the money. He charged twenty-
five cocoanuts to see the views in his copra shed, and
they are wonderful; but the churches are empty. We
are all Katorika"

"Katorihar I queried. "That is Popay?"

The old man frowned.

"Popay! That is what the Porotetani [Protestants]
call the Katorika. I am the priest's right hand. But
we are poor, and Lacour, with his store and now with
his machine that sets the people wild over cowaboyas,
and shows them the Farani [French] and the Amariti
[Americans] in their own islands — there is no money
for the church."

I interrupted the jeremiad of the ancient acolyte.

"Was there nothing left of the old church?" I asked.

The hater of cinematographs took me into the humble
wooden structure, and there were a bronze crucifix and
silver candlesticks that had been in the coral edifice.

"I saved them," he said proudly. "When I saw the
wind was too great, when the church began to rock, I
took them and buried them in a hole I dug. I did this
before I climbed the tree which saved me from the big
wave. Ah, that was a real cathedral. The people of
Anaa are changed. The best died in the storm. They
want now to know what is going on in Papeete, the
great world."

A hundred years ago the people of Anaa erected three
temples to the god of the Christians. For a century

48 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

they have had the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Anaa had witnessed a bitter struggle between con-
tending churches to win adherents. When France took
hold, France was Catholic, and the priests had every op-
portunity and assistance to do their pious work. The
schools were taught by Catholic nuns. Their govern-
mental subsidy made it difficult for the English Prot-
estants to proselytize, and with grief they saw their
flocks going to Rome. Only the most zealous Protes-
tant missionaries were unshaken by the change. When
the anti-clerical feeling in France triumphed, the Con-
cordat was broken, and the schools laicized, the priests
and nuns in these colonies were ousted from the schools ;
the Catholic church was not only not favored, but, in
many instances, was hindered by officials who were of
anti-clerical feelings. The Protestant sects took heart
again, and made great headway. The Mormons re-
turned, the Seventh Day Adventists became active, and
many nominal Catholics fell away. The fact was that
it was not easy to keep Polynesians at any heat of re-
ligion. They wanted entertainment and amusement,
and if a performance of a religious rite, a sermon, re-
vival, conference, or other solace or diversion was not
offered, they inclined to seek relaxation and even pleas-
ure where it might be had. Monotony was the sub-
stance of their days, and relief welcomed in the most
trifling incident or change.

Lacour's wife, granddaughter of a Welshman but all
native in appearance, sat with the other women under
the tohonu tree when I returned. I had seen thousands
of fallen cocoanut-trees rotting in the swamps, and had
climbed over the coral fields for several miles. There

ATOLLS OF THE SUN

was no earth, only coral and shells and white shell-sand.
Chickens evidently picked up something to eat, for I
saw a dozen of them. In the lagoon, fish darted to and
fro.

Lacour's wife had a yellowish baby in her lap, and
she wore earrings, a wedding-ring, and a necklace and
bracelets.

The boat was plying from the schooner to the shore,
and I watched its progress. Piri a Tuahine held the
steering oar, laughing, calling to his fellows to pull or
not to pull, as I could see through a glass. A current
affected the surf, increasing or decreasing its force at
intervals, and it was now at its height. The boat en-
tered the passage on a crest, but a following wave struck
it hard, turned it broadside, and all but over. A flood
entered the boat, but the men leaped out and, though
up to their shoulders in the water, held it firm, and
finally drew it close to the beach. The flour and the
boxes and beds of native passengers were wetted, but
they ran to the boat and carried their belongings near
to the copra shed, and spread them to dry. Lacour
cursed the boat and the sailors.

Near Lacour's store was a house, in which lived Cap-
tain Nimau, owner of a small schooner. Nimau invited
me to sleep there and see the moving pictures. We had
brought Lacour a reel or so, and in anticipation, the
people of Anaa had been gathering cocoanuts for a week.
The films were old ones that Tahiti had wearied of, and
Lacour got them for a trifle. The theater was his copra
house, and there were no seats nor need of them.

He set the hour of seven for the show, and I alone
stayed ashore for it. By six o'clock the residents began

50 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

flocking to the shed with their entrance-fees. Each bore
upon his back twenty-five cocoanuts, some in bags and
others with the nuts tied on a pole by their husk.
Fathers carried double or even triple quantities for their
little ones, and each, as he arrived at Lacour's, counted
the nuts before the trader.

The women brought their own admission tickets.
The acolyte, who had inveighed against the cinemato-
graph, was second in line, and secured the best squat-
ting space. His own cocoanuts were in Lacour's bin.

When the screen was erected and the first picture
flashed upon it, few of the people of Anaa were absent,
and Lacour's copra heap was piled high. There were
a hundred and sixty people present, and four thousand
nuts in the box-office.

The first film was concerned with the doings of Nick
Winter, an English detective in France, a burlesque of
Sherlock Hohnes, and other criminal literatures. The
spectators could not make a head nor tail of it,
but they enjoyed the scenes hugely and were
intensely mystified by many pictures. An auto-
mobile, which, by the trickery of the camera, was
made to appear to climb the face of a sky-scraper,
raised cries of astonishment and assertions of diablerie.
The devil was a very real power to South Sea Islanders,
whether they were Christians or not, and they had
fashioned a composite devil of our horned and cloven-
hoofed chap and their own demons, who was made re-
sponsible for most trouble and disaster that came to
them, and whose machinations explained sleight of
hand, and even the vagaries of moving pictures.

What pleased them most were cow-boy pictures, the

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 51

melodramatic life of the Wild West of America, with
bucking bronchos, flying lassos, painted Indians whom
they thought tattooed, and dashes of vaqueros, border
sheriffs, and maidens who rode cayuses like Comanches.
Tahiti was daft over cow-boys, and had adopted that
word into the language, and these Anaans were vastly
taken by the same life. Lacour explained the pictures
as they unrolled, shouting any meanings he thought
might pass; and I doubted if he himself knew much
about them, for later he asked me if all cow-boys were
not Spaniards.

This was the first moving picture machine in these
islands. Lacour had only had it a few weeks. He
purposed taking it through the Group on a cutter that
would transport the cocoanut receipts. Lacour, Nimau,
and I sat up late. These Frenchmen save for a few
exceptions were as courteous as at home. Peasants or
sailors in France, they brought and improved with their
position that striking cosmopolitan spirit which dis-
tinguishes the Gaul, be he ever so uneducated. The
English and American trader was suspicious, sullen or
blatant, vulgar and often brutal in manner. The
Frenchman had bonhomie, politeness. England and
America in the South Seas considered this a weakness,
and aimed at the contrary. Manners, of course, origi-
nated in France.

"This island is on the French map as La Chaine"
said Captain Nimau, "but we who traverse these seas
always use the native names. Those old admirals who
took word to their king that they had discovered new
islands always said, too, that they had named them
after the king or some saint. A Spaniard selected a

52 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

nice name like the Blessed Sacrament or the Holy
Mother of God, or some Spanish saint, while a French-
man chose something to show the shape or color of the
land. The Englishman usually named his find after
some place at home, like New England, New Britain,
and so on. But we don't give a sacre for those names.
How could we? All those fellows claimed to have been
here first, and so all islands have two or three European
names. We who have to pick them up in the night,
or escape from them in a storm, want the native name
as we need the native knowledge of them. The land-
marks, the clouds, the smells, the currents, the passes,
the depths — those are the items that save or lose us
our lives and vessels. Let those vieux capitaines fight
it out below for the honor of their nomenclature and
precedence of discovery!"

What recriminations in Hades between Columbus
and Vespucci!

"Take this whole archipelago!" continued Nimau.
"The Tahitians named it the Poumotu or pillar islands,
because to them the atolls seemed to rise hke white trees
from the sea. But the name sounded to the people
here like Paumotu, which means conquered or destroyed
islands, and so, after a few petitions or requests by
proud chiefs, the French in 1852 officially named them
Tuamotu, distant, out of view, or below the horizon.
That was more than a half century ago, but we still call
them the Paumotu. There 's nothing harder to change
than the old names of places. You can change a man's
or a whole island's religion much easier."

Near the little hut in which we were, Nimau's house,
a bevy of girls smoked cigarettes and talked about me.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 53

They had learned that I was not a sailor, not one of
the crew of the Marara, and not a trader. What could
I be, then, but a missionary, as I was not an official,
because not French? But I was not a Catholic mis-
sionary, for they wore black gowns ; and I could not be
Mormoni nor Konito, because there in public I was
with the Frenchmen, drinking beer. Two, who were
handsome, brown, with teeth as brilliant as the heart of
the nacre, and eyes and hair like the husks of the ripe
cocoanut, came into the house and questioned Lacour.

"They want to know what you are doing here," inter-
preted Lacour.

"I am not here to make money nor to preach the
Gospel," I replied.

The younger came to me and put her arms about
me, and said : "Ei aha e reva a noho io neir And that
meant, "Stay here always and rest with me!"

After a while the acolyte joined us, and I put them
all many questions.

The Paumotuans were a quiet people, dour, or at
least serious and contemplative. They were not like
the Tahitians, laugh-loving, light-hearted, frenzied
dancers, orators, music worshipers, feasters. The Tahi-
tians had the joy of Hving, though with the melancholy
strain that permeated all Polynesia. The folk of the
Dangerous Archipelago were silent, brooding, and re-
ligious. The perils they faced in their general vocation
of diving, and from cyclones, which annihilated entire
populations of atolls, had made them intensely suscep-
tible to fears of hell-fire and to hopes of heaven. The
rather Moslem paradise of Mormonism made strong ap-
peal, but was offset by the tortures of the damned.

54 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

limned by other earnest clerics who preached the old
Wesley- Spurgeon everlasting suffering for all not of
their sect.

Had religion never affected the Paumotuans, their
food would have made them a distinct and a restrained
people. We all are creatures of our nourishment.
The Tahitians had a plentitude of varied and delicious
food, a green and sympathetic landscape, a hundred
waterfalls and gentle rills. The inhabitants of these
low isles had cocoanut and fish as staples, and often
their only sustenance for years. No streams meander
these stony beds, but rain-water must be caught, or
dependence placed on the brackish pools and shallow
wells in the porous rocks or compressed sand, which
ebbed and flowed with the tides.

To a Tahitian his brooks were his club, where often
he sat or lay in the laughing water, his head crowned
with flowers, dreaming of a life of serene idleness.
Once or twice a day he must bathe thoroughly. He
was clean; his skin was aglow with the effect of air
and water. No European could teach him hygiene.
He was a perfect animal, untainted and unsoiled, ac-
customed to laving and massage, to steam, fresh, and
salt baths, when Europeans, kings, courts, and com-
moners went unwashed from autumn to summer; when
in the "Lois de la Galanterie" written for beaux and
dandies in 1640, it was enjoined that "every day one
should take pains to wash one's hands, and one should
wash one's face almost as often."

Environment, purling rivulets under embowering
trees, the most enchanting climate between pole and
pole, a simple diet but little clothing, made the Tahitiar

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 55

and Marquesan the handsomest and cleanest races in
the world. Clothes and cold are an iron barrier to
cleanliness, except where wealth affords comfort and
privacy. Michelangelo wore a pair of socks many
years without removing them. Our grandfathers
counted a habit of frequent bathing a sign of weakness.
In old New England many baths were thought con-
ducive to immorality, by some line of logic akin to that
of my austere aunt, who warned me that oysters led to
dancing.

The Paumotuan, before the white man made him a
mere machine for gathering copra and pearl-shell and
pearls, had a very distinct culture, savage though it
was. He was the fabric of his food and the actions
induced in him by necessity. Ellis, the interesting mis-
sionary diarist of Tahiti and Hawaii, recorded that in
1817, when at Afareaitu, on Moorea, he was printing
for the first time the Bible in Tahitian "among the vari-
ous parties in Afareaitu . . . were a number of natives
of the Paumotu, or Pearl Islands, which lie to the north-
west of Tahiti and constitute what is called the Danger-
ous Archipelago. These numerous islands, like those of
Tetuaroa to the north, are of coralline formation, and
the most elevated parts of them are seldom more than
two or three feet above high water mark. The princi-
pal, and almost only, edible vegetable they produce is
the fruit of the cocoanut. On these, with the numerous
kinds of fishes resorting to their shores or among the
coral reefs, the inhabitants entirely subsist. They ap-
pear a hardy and industrious race, capable of enduring
great privations. The Tahitians believe them to be
cannibals. . . . They are in general firm and muscular.

56 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

but of a more spare habit of body than the Tahitians.
Their limbs are well formed, their stature generally
tall. The expression of their countenance, and the
outline of their features, greatly resemble those of the
Society Islanders; their manners are, however, more
rude and uncourteous. The greater part of the body
is tattooed, sometimes in broad stripes, at others in
large masses of black, and always without any of the
taste and elegance frequently exhibited in the figures
marked on the persons of the Tahitians."

One who traveled much in the isolated parts of the
world was often struck by the unfitness of certain popu-
lated places to support in any comfort and safety the
people who generation after generation persisted in liv-
ing in them. For thousands of years the slopes of
Vesuvius have been cultivated despite the imminent
horror of the volcano above. The burning Paumotu
atolls are as undesirable for residences as the desert of
Sahara. Yet the hot sands are peopled, and have been
for ages, and in the recesses of the frozen North the
processes of birth and death, of love and greed, are as
absorbing as in the Edens of the earth. Hateful as a
lengthy enforced stay in the Paumotus might be to
any of us, I have seen two Paumotuan youths dwelling
abroad for the first time in their lives, eating delicious
food and hardly working at all, weep hours upon hours
from homesickness, a continuous longing for their atoll
of Puka-ruhu, where they had half starved since birth,
and where the equatorial typhoon had raped time
and again. Nature, in her insistence that mankind
shall continue, implanted that instinct of home in us
as one of the most powerful agents of survival of the

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 57

species. Enduring terrible privation, even, we learned
to love the scenes of our sufferings. Never was that
better exemplified than in these melancholy and mad-
dening-atoUs of the half -browned Archipelago.

CHAPTER IV

The copra market — Dangerous passage to shore at Kaukura — Our boat
overturns in the pass — I narrowly escape death — Josephite Mis-
sionaries— The deadly nohu— The himene at night.

WORD we got at Anaa of a few tons of copra
at Kaukura sent us hurrying there. The
wind was against us, and we drew long sides
of a triangle before we reached that atoll, which was,
as our starting-point, at the base of the isosceles. Kau-
kura was a divergence from our intended course, but
these schooners were like birds of the air, which must
take their sustenance as fortune wills. Copra was
scarce, and competition in buying, fierce. The natives
received about four cents a pound, but as payment
was usually in goods, the Tahiti traders, who shipped
copra to America and Europe, profited heavily. There
were grades in copra, owing to the carelessness of the
natives in drying it. Green or poorly-dried nuts
shrank, and the nuts parched in kilns developed more
undesirable creosote than sun-dried. All copra was
sold by weight and quality, and it continually lessened
in weight by evaporation of oil. Time was the essence
of a good bargain. The sooner to the presses of the
mainland, the greater the return. Crude mills in the
Paumotus or Tahiti crushed out the oil formerly, and
it was sealed in bamboo lengths, and these exported.
These tubes, air-tight, were common mediums of ex-
change, as wampum among Indians, or gold-dust in

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 59

Alaska. Modern processes extracted double the oil of
the old presses, and the eight-foot sections of the long
grass were almost obsolete for cocoanut-oil, and used
mostly for sauces sold in the Papeete market-place.

"Trade ain't what it was," said McHenry. "There's
more traders than natives, almost. I remember when
they were so crazy to exchange our stuff for their prod-
uce, we 'd have the trade-room crowded all day, an'
had to keep guns handy to chase the mob away, to add
up the bloody figures. Now every atoll has its store,
and the trader has to pat his copra-makers an' divers
on the back, instead o' kickin' them the way we used
to. The damn Frogs treat these Kanakas like they were
white people, an' have spoiled our game. We can't
trade in the Paumotus unless the schooner has a French
registry and a French captain, — Lyin' Bill is a Frog
citizen for not stealin' a vessel he had a chance to, —
an' when you leave the Papeete you 've got to register
every last drop o' booze you 've got aboard. It 's sup-
posed to be only for us on the schooner, and for the
whites in the Paumotus, or a few chieves who have
permits, for bein' Froggy. But it 's the rotten mis-
sionaries who hurt us, really. We could smuggle it
in, but they tell on us."

We had not caught a fish from the schooner, despite
having a tackle rigged most of the days. I had fixed
a bamboo rod, about eighteen feet long and very strong,
on the rail of the waist of the vessel, and from it let
trail a hundred feet or so of tough line. The hook was
the most perfect for the purpose ever made by man.
It was cut out of the mother-of-pearl lining of the
Paumotuan pearl-oyster shell. It was about six inches

60 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

long, and three quarters wide, shaped rudely like a
flying-fish, and attached to it on the concave side was
a barb of bone about an inch and a half in length, fas-
tened with purau fiber, and a few hog's bristles inserted.
The line was roved through the hole where the barb
was fastened, and, being braided along the inner side
of the pearl shank, was tied again at the top, forming
a chord to the arch. Unbaited, the hook, by the pull
of the schooner, skipped along the surface of the sea
like a flying-fish. I had made a telltale of a piece of
stick, and while McHenry and I talked and Jean Moet
slept it snapped before my eyes. To seize the rod and
hold on was the act of a second. I let out the entire
five hundred feet of line, before the fish tired, and then
it took four of us to drag him to the deck. He was a
roroa, a kind of barracuda, about ten feet long, and
weighing a couple of hundred pounds.

The fish made a welcome change in our diet and was
enough for all, including a number of Paumotuans who
were returning to Takaroa for the opening of the div-
ing season. Chocolat nibbled a head, but preferred
the remnants of a can of beef. He improved daily
in his tricks and in his agility in avoiding being hurtled
into the water by the roll or pitch of the schooner.
He had an almost incredible instinct or acquired knowl-
edge of the motion of the Marara, and when I felt sure
we had lost him — that he would fall overboard in an-
other instant — he would leap to the deck and frolic
about the wheel. The spokes of it were another con-
stant threat to his health, for one blow when they spun
fast might kill him; but he was reserved for a more
horrid fate.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 61

Kaukura rose from the sea at dawn, after a night
of wearing and tacking. It was an atoll, irregularly
annular in shape, twenty-six miles long and ten wide,
wooded in patches, and with vast stretches where only
the dazzling coral shone. It, too, had been spoiled in
prosperity by an inimical wind and tide, and the cocoa-
palms had been annihilated that had once grown upon
all its many component islets. The cocoanut-tree lives
more than eighty years, and does not fruit until seven
years old, so that the loss of thousands of these life-giv-
ing palms was a fearful blow. Each tree bore a hun-
dred nuts annually, and that crop was worth to the
owner for copra nearly a dollar, besides being much of
his food.

Landmarks we gradually discerned; a village, two
churches, and a row of houses, and then the French
tricolor on a pole. The surf broke with a fierce roaring
on the reef, and when McHenry and I left the schooner,
Moet stayed aboard, as the wind was ominous. There
was no pass into the lagoon at this village, and even the
pit in the barrier-reef had been made by French engi-
neers. They had blown up the madrepore rock, and
made a gateway for small boats.

The schooner did not take our painter, for the breeze
was too stiff for the venture, and so we had a half-mile
to row. When we neared the reef and entered the pit,
I felt that it was touch-and-go, for we rose and tot-
tered on the huge swells, and dived into their hollows,
with a prophetic certainty of capsizing. I could hardly
keep on the box under me, and swayed forebodingly.
Then suddenly the steering oar caught under a bank
of coral. I barely heard the cry of Piri a Tuahine,

62 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

''E era! There she goes!" when the boat rose on its
stern with a twisting motion, as if a whale had struck
it with its fluke, and turned turtle. I was slighted into
the water at is topmost teeter, falling yards away from
it, and in the air I seemed to see the Tahitians leaping
for safety from its crushing thwarts and the cargo.

McHenry's "What the bloody !" as we both

somersaulted, was in my ears as I was plunged beneath
the surface.

With the fear of encountering the boat, the dark bulk
of which I saw dimly above me, I swam hard under
the water a dozen strokes, and rose to find myself be-
neath the reef, which grew in broken ledges. When
my head in stunning contact with the rock knelled a
warning to my brain, I opened my eyes. There was
only blackness. I dived again, a strange terror chilHng
me, but when I came up, I was still penned from air
in abysmal darkness.

Now fear struck me weak. I realized my extraor-
dinary peril, a peril glimpsed in nightmares. I had
penetrated fifteen or twenty feet under the ledge, and
I had no sense of direction of the edge of the coral.
My distance from it was considerable; I knew by the
invisible gloom. With a fleeting recollection of camera
films in my shirt pocket, came the choking dread of
suff'ocation, and death in this labyrinth.

I supposed I invoked God and his Son to save me.
Probably in my agony I promised big things to them
and humanity if I survived. I kept my eyes open and
struck out. After swimming a few yards I felt the
coral shelving inwardly. I realized that I had gone

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 63

farther from my only goal of life. I felt the end was
close, but still in desperation moved my limbs vigor-
ously.

Then I felt the water lashing about me. Something
seized my arm. Shark stories leaped from my mem-
ory's cold storage to my very soul. My blood was an
icy stream from head to toes. Singular to relate, I
was aware of a profound regret for my murders of
many sharks — who, after all, I reasoned with an ata-
vistic impulse of propitiation, were but working out the
wise plan of the Creator. But the animal that grasped
my arm did not bite. It held me firmly, and dragged
me out from that murky hell, until in a few seconds
the light, God's eldest and loveliest daughter, appeared
faintly, and then, bright as lightning, and all of a sud-
den, I was in the center of the sun, my mouth open at
last, my chest heaving, my heart pumping madly, and
my head bursting with pain. I was in the arms of
Piri a Tuahine, who, as all the other Tahitians, had
swum under the reef in search of me.

In the two or three minutes — or that half-hour — dur-
ing which I had been breathless, the sailors had recap-
tured the boat and were righting it, the oars still fas-
tened to the gunwales. I was glad to be hauled into
the empty boat, along with McHenry, who was sput-
tering and cursing.

"Gorbli-me!" he said, as he spat out salt water, "you
made a bloody fool o' yerself doin' that ! Why did n't
ye look how I handled meself ? But I lost a half-pound
of tobacco by that christenin'."

I was laid down on the cargoless seats, and the men

64 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

rowed through the moat, smiling at me with a worthy
sense of superiority, while McHenry dug the soaked
tobacco out of his trousers pocket.

"Ye can always trust the Kanaka to get ye out o'
the water if ye capsize," said he, artfully. "We 've
taught him to think o' the white man first. He damn
well knows where he 'd get off, otherwise."

A hundred feet farther, we came to a spit of rocks,
which stopped progress. A swarm of naked children
were playing about it. Assisted by the Tahitians I
was lifted to my feet, and, with McHenry, continued
to the sand.

There I took stock of my physical self. I was bat-
tered and bruised, but no bones were broken. My
shins were scraped and my entire body bleeding as if
a sharp steel comb had raked me. My head was bloody,
but my skull without a hole in it, or even marked de-
pression, except my usual one where phrenologists lo-
cate the bump of reverence. I was sick at my stomach,
and my legs bent under me. I knew that I would be
as well as ever soon, unless poisoned, but would bear
the marks of the coral. All these white men who jour-
neyed about the Paumotus bore indelible scars of coral
wound.

My friend, the poet, Rupert Brooke, had been made
very ill by coral poisoning. He wrote from the Tiare
Hotel in Papeete : "I've got some beastly coral-poison-
ing into my legs, and a local microbe on top of that,
and made the places worse by neglecting them, and sea-
bathing all day, which turns out to be the worst possible
thing. I was in the country, at Mataiea, when it came
on bad, and tried native remedies, which took all the

a
o

-a
H

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 65

skin off, and produced such a ghastly appearance that
I hurried into town. I Ve got over it now and feel
spry." His nickname, Pupure, meant leprous, as well
as fair, and was a joking double entendre by the natives.

I was later, in the Marquesas, to see a man die of
such poison received in the Paumotus. But, in Kau-
kura, I had to make the best of it, and after a short
rest began to see the sights. There was a crowd of
people about, men and women, and still more children,
all lighter than the Paumotuans in complexion and
stouter in body. They were dressed up. The men
were in denim trousers and shirts, and some with the
stiff white atrocities suffered by urbanites in America
and Europe. The women wore the conventional night-
gowns that Christian propriety of the early nineteenth
century had pulled over their heads. They were not
the spacious holokus of Hawaii. These single gar-
ments fitted the portly women on the beach as the skin
of a banana its pulpy body — :and between me and the
sun hid nothing of their roly-poly forms. I recognized
the ahu vahine of Tahiti.

"la ora na i te Atua!" the people greeted me, with
winning smiles. "God be with you!" was its meaning,
and their accent confirmed their clothing. They were
Tahitians. I spoke to them, and they commiserated
my sad appearance, and pointed out a tall young white
man who came striding down the beach, his mouth
pursed in an anxious question as he saw me.

"Got any medicine on that hay wagon?" he asked.
"We Ve got a bunch of dysentery here."

I knew at once by his voice issuing through his nos-
trils instead of his mouth, and by the sharp cut of his

66 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

jib, that he was my countryman, and from the Middle
West. He had the self-satisfied air of a Kansan.

"The trade-room of the Marara is full of medical
discoveries, perunas, Jamaica ginger, celery compounds,
and other hot stuff," I replied, "but what they 11 cure
I don't know. We have divers patent poisons known
to prohibition." •

"That 's all rotten booze. My people don't use the
devilish stuff," he commented, caustically. He con-
tinu-ed on, wading to the boat, and, after a parley, pro-
ceeding with it to the schooner.

McHenry had half determined to plant himself, at
least temporarily, in Kaukura, and left me to spy on
the store of a Chinese, who had brought a stock of goods
from Papeete. I walked toward an enormous thatched
roof, under which, on the coral strand, were nearly
a thousand persons. The pungent smoke from a hun-
dred small fires of cocoanut husks gave an agreeable
tang to the air; the lumps of coral between which they
were kindled were red with the heat, the odors rose from
bubbling pots. All the small equipment of Tahitian
travelers was strewn about. Upon mattresses and mats
in the shed, the sides of which were built up several
feet to prevent the intrusion of pigs and dogs, lay old
people and children, who had not finished their slum-
bers. Stands for the sale of fruits, ice, confections,
soda-water, sauces, and other ministrants to hunger and
habit bespoke the acquired tastes of the Tahitians; but
most of the people were of Kaukura and other atolls.

Kaukura alone had nearly a thousand inhabitants.
Its lagoons were the richest in pearl of all the group.
Being one of the nearest of the Paumotus to Tahiti,

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 67

it had been much affected by the proselytizing and com-
mercializing spirits of that island — spirits often at vari-
ance but now and again joined, as on a greater scale
trust magnates capitalize and direct missions and reli-
gious institutions with the left hand, while their right
takes toll of life-killing mill and mine.

The village was as attractive as a settlement could be
in these benighted islands, the houses stretching along
one or two roads, some in gala color. A small, sprightly
white man was donning shirt and trousers on the ve-
randa of the best residence at the end of the street. He
was about forty years old, with a curiously keen face,
a quick movement, and an eye like an electric light
through a keyhole.

"Hello," he said, briskly, "by golly, you 're not an
American, are you? I 'm getting my pants on a little
late. We were lip all hours last night, but I flatter my-
self God was glad of it. Kidd 's my name ; Johnny
Kidd, they call me in Lamoni. I 'm glad to meet you,
Mr. ?"

"O'Brien, Frederick O'Brien, of almost anywhere,
except Lamoni," I replied, laughingly, his good-na-
tured enthusiasm being infectious.

He looked at me, inquiringly.

"Not in my hne, are you?" he asked, with an apprais-
ing survey of me.

My head bleeding and aching, my body quivering
with the biting pain of its abraded surface, I still sur-
rendered to the irony of the question. I guessed that
he was a clergyman from his possessive attitude to-
ward God, but he was so simple and natural in manner,
with so little of a clerical tone or gesture, that I would

68 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

have thought him a street-faker or professional gambler
had I had no clue to his identity. I remembered, too,
the oft-quoted: "In my Father's house are many man-
sions."

"I 'm merely a beach-comber," I assured him. "I
take a few notes now and then."

"Ob, you 're not a sky-pilot," he went on, in comic
relief. "You never can tell. Those four-flushing
Mormons have been bringing a whole gang of young
elders from Utah to Tahiti to beat us out. I 'm an
elder myself of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints. They usually call us the Jose-
phites. In these islands we are Konito or Tonito.
We 've been having a grand annual meeting here. Over
sixty from Tahiti, and altogether a thousand and
seventy members. They 've been gathering from most
of the Paumotus for weeks, coming with the wind, but
we 're about over now."

"But I thought the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints was the Mormons," said I, puzzled.

"Mormon!" There was such vigor in his explosive
catching up of my query that I may well be pardoned
if I thought he placed the common name for Sheol after
that of the sect. But it stands to reason that he did
not. His whole training would stop such a word ere
it escaped him.

"Mormon! I should say not! Those grafters and
polygamists are not our kind. They stole our name.
We were the same until Brigham Young split off and
led his crowd to Utah. Our headquarters is at La-
moni, Iowa, but I. N. Imbel, who 's gone to the
schooner, my partner, and I are the missionaries in these

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 69

islands. We 're properly authorized ministers who
make this our regular and whole business. My pal and
I live in Papeete, but run through the Paumotus when
there 's anything doing."

The reverend fellow had no airs about him.

"Sit down and take off your clothes and dry them,
and I '11 rub your cuts with some liniment," he invited.
"They '11 dry in the sun, and here 's a pareu to slip over
you. I 'd hke to tell you more about our work, so 's
you won't mix us up with those Mormons. They 're a
tough bunch. My father 's the head of our mission in
England, and I 'm in charge of these islands. Every
year we have a business meeting. That 's what this is ;
not a revival. We don't believe in that emotion game.
We call it a 'reasonable service.' We take up a collec-
tion, of course. We invite the natives to investigate
pur claims. We have the custom to get converts by
debating with the Mormons, but after we had accepted
a challenge to meet them in Papeete the French gov-
ernor stopped the show, because a French law forbade
such meetings. They used to have riots in France, it
seems. The Mormons teach polygamy and other
abominations. They '11 tell you they don't, but they do.
You ask any Mormon native if he believes in plural
wives, and he '11 say yes, that the elders from America
teach that it 's right. Those Mormons ran away from
here once, when the French government scared them,
and we got in and had most of the natives in the Pau-
motus that the Catholics had n't kept. Then when
the Mormons saw there was no danger, they came back
here from Salt Lake. Oh, they 're a bad outfit.
We 're regularly ordained ministers, not farmers off on

70 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

a lark. This temple here cost a thousand dollars, with-
out the labor. That was all voluntary. Wait a
minute!"

He dashed into a room, and returned with a pamphlet
which purported to be the findings of the Court of
Lake County, Ohio, and he read from it a decree that
the Utah Mormons were a fragment and split off from
the real simon-pure religion established by Joseph
Smith in New York. I wished that Stevenson had
been there to hear him, for I remembered his page of
bewilderment at the enigma of the "Kanitu" and Mor-
moni in the Paumotus, and how he made comparisons
of the Holy Willies of Scotland, and a New Guinea
god named Kanitu. His uninquiring mind had not
solved the problem.

"We beat those wolves in sheep's clothing in this
court," said Elder Kidd, animatedly. "We 're the
real church, and the Brighamites are a hollow sham."

Mr. Kidd engaged my interest, true or pseudo-dis-
ciple of Joseph Smith. He was so human, so guileful,
and had such an engaging smile and wink. He seemed
to feel that he was in a soul-saving business thoroughly
respectable, yet needing to be explained and de-
fended to the Gentile. His competitors' incompetency
he deemed worthy of emphasis.

"Not long ago," he said, "in certain of these Pau-
motus there had been a good deal of backsliding from
our church. Nobody had stirred them up, and with
these people you have got to keep their souls awake all
the time or they '11 go to sleep, or, worse, get into the
control of those Mormons. They '11 steal a convert like
you 'd peel a banana, and that 's what I call the limit

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 71

of a dirty trick. The Mormons thought they had a
puddin' in these backshders to pull them over to their
side. I heard about it, and without a word to any one
I took a run through the group. I went through that
crowd of backsliders with a spiritual club, and I not
only redeemed the old Josephites, but I baptized
seventy-five others before you could run a launch from
here to Anaa. It was like stealin' persimmons from
a blind farmer whose dog is chained. I was talkin'
to the head Mormon in Papeete shortly afterward, and
he asked me what we were doin'. I counted off the
seventy-five new ones, and he had to acknowledge his
church had n't made a count in a long time. I offered
to bet him anything he was beat to a finish, but he quit
cold."

The Reverend Mr. Kidd excused himself to go to
the meeting-house and get his breakfast with some
of his deacons. McHenry had returned from his tour
of espionage. He was cast down at the poor chance
for business.

"There 's nothing doin'," he said. "Twenty years
ago I was here with a schooner o' booze to a Konito
meetin' like this. There was kegs o' rum with bloody
tops knocked in right in the road. An' wimmin'!
You 'd a-gone nuts tryin' to choose. This is what re-
ligi'n does to business. A couple o' bleedin' chinks
sellin' a few bottles o' smell water, an' a lot o' Tahitians
with fruit an' picnic stuff. A thousand Kanakas in one
bunch an' not one drunk. By cripes, the mishes have
ruined the trade. The American Government ought
to interfere. You and me had better skin out to west-
'ard where there ain't so many bloody preachers, an'

72 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

you can handle the Kanaka the way you want. To-
night this mob '11 be in that meetin'-house singin' their
heads off, instead o' buyin' rum and dancin' like they
used to. Them two sky-pilots has got all the francs.
Even the Chinks has n't made a turn. Kopcke of Pa-
peete is here an' ain't made a sou. He 's goin'-a go
to leeward."

"McHenry," I interrogated, "do you never consider
the other fellow? Aren't these poor people better off
chanting hymns and praying than getting drunk and
dancing the hula, just to make you money."

He regarded me with contemptuous malice.

"I knew after all you were a bloody missionary," he
said, acridly. "I been on to you. You '11 be in that
straw shed to-night singin' 'Come to Jesus.' You 'd
better look out after your cuts ! You '11 be sore 'n a
boil to-morrow when they get stiff. Let 's go back to
the schooner and get drunk!"

I was tempted to return to the Marara to ease my
misery, and only the promise of Elder Kidd to assuage
it with Hniment, and an ardent desire to attend the
Josephite services that night, detained me in the heat
of the atoll. McHenry persisting in his decision to
cool his coppers in rum, and I to see everything of
Kaukura, I joined with a friendly native for a stroll.
The Josephite temple was a small coral edifice, washed
white with coral lime. An old and uncared-for
Catholic church was near-by. Most of the residences
were thatched huts, or shacks made of pieces of boxes
and tin and corrugated iron, with a few formal wooden
cottages, painted red, white, and blue. They were very

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 73

poor, these Kaukurans, from our point of view, earn-
ing barely enough to sustain them in strength, and with
few comforts in their huts, except the universal sewing-
machine. Everywhere that was the first ambition of
the uncivilized woman roused to modern vanities, as
of the poor woman in all countries.

Walking along the beach I narrowly escaped a more
serious accident than the disaster of the reef, for only
the warning of my companion stayed me from tread-
ing upon a noJiu, the deadliest underfoot danger of the
Paumotus. It was a fish peculiarly hateful to humans,
yet gifted by nature with both defensive disguise and
offensive weapons, a remnant of the fierce struggle for
survival in which so many forms of life had disappeared
or altered in changing environment. The nohu lay on
the coral strand where the tide lapped it, looking the
twin of a battered, mossy rock, so deceiving that one
must have the sight of the aborigine to avoid stepping
upon it, if in one's way. Put a foot on it, and before
one could move, the nohu raised the bony spines of its
dorsal fin and pierced one's flesh as would a row of hat-
pins; not only pierced, but simultaneously injected
through its spines a virulent poison that lay at the base
of a malevolent gland. The nohu possessed a protec-
tive coloring and shape more deluding than any other
noxious creature I know, and kept its mouth shut ex-
cept when it swallowed the prey for which it lay in
wait. Its mouth is very large, and a brilliant lemon-
color inside, so that if it parts its lips it betrays itself.
Brother to the nohu in evil purpose is the tataraihau.
But what a trickster is nature! The nohu is as ugly

74 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

as a squid, and the tataraihau beautiful as a piece of the
sunset, a brilliant red, with transverse bands of choco-
late, bordered with ebony.

"If you can spit on the nohu before he sticks his
taetae into you, it will not poison you," sagely said
my savior, as he stabbed the wretch with his knife.

Pliny, as translated by Holland, said:

All men carry about them that which is poyson to serpents :
for if it be true that is reported, they will no better abide the
touching with man's spittle than scalding water cast upon them :
but if it happen to light within their chawes or mouth, especially
if it comes from a man that is fasting, it is present death.

Pliny in his day may have known of quick-witted
people who, when assailed by a snake, had presence of
mind to expectorate in his chawes, but the most hungry,
salivary man could hardly avail himself of this prophy-
lactic unless he recognized the nohu before treading
upon him. The Paumotuans employ the mape, the
native chestnut, the atae, ape, and rea moeruru. These
are all "yarb" remedies, and the first, the juice of the
chestnut, squeezed on the head and neck, they swear by.
The French doctors advise morphine injection or laud-
anum externally, or to suck the wound and cup it. Co-
agulating the poison in situ by alcohol, acids, or caustic
alkali, or the use of turpentine, is also recommended.
If the venom is not speedily drawn out or nullified, the
feet of the victim turn black and coma ensues. The
French called the 7iohu, La Mort, The Death.

My Paumotuan friend and Elder Kidd together gave
me this information, and when we brought the nohu to
the house in which he lived the clergyman said we would

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 75

eat it. The native heated an old iron pipe and, after
flaying the skin off the fish, boiled it. The flesh was
remarkably sweet and tender.

I lay on a mat, and, after the American had laved me
with the liniment, the Paumotuan, a Konito elder, mas-
saged me for an hour, during which grievous process I
fell asleep, and woke after dark when the "reasonable
service" was beginning.

The people were ranged under the immense roof in
orderly ranks, the Tahitians being in one knot. Both
the American elders were upon a platform, sur-
rounded by the native elders, who aided in the conduct
of the program, which was in Paumotuan. The Pau-
motuan language is a dialect closely allied to the Maori,
which includes the Tahitian, Hawaiian, Marquesan,
New Zealand, Samoan, and other island tongues. The
Paumotuan was crossed with a strange tongue, the
origin of which was not fixed, but which might be the
remains of an Aino or negroid race found in the Pau-
motus by the first Polynesian immigrants. Tahitians
easily understood the Paumotuans, though many words
were different, and there were many variations in pro-
nunciation and usage. The Tahitians had been living
closely with Europeans for a hundred years, and their
language had become a mere shadow of its past form.
The Paumotuan had remained more primitive, for the
Paumotuan was a savage when the Tahitians were the
most cultivated race of the South Seas; not with a
culture of our kind, but yet with elaborated ceremoni-
als, religious and civil, ranks of nobility, drama, ora-
tory, and wit.

It being the conclusion of the grand annual meeting

76 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

of the Josephites, a summing up of the business condi-
tion of the sect in these waters was the principal item.
Elders Kidd and Imbel stressed dependence of the Al-
mighty upon his apostles, prophets, evangelists, and
pastors, and of these called-of-God men upon the francs
collected at such gatherings as this.

Both the divines spoke earnestly, and mentioned Je-
hovah and Joseph Smith many times, with Aarona,
Timoteo, Pauro, and other figures from the Scriptures.
They struck the pulpit when they spoke of the Mormoni,
and the faces of the congregation took on expressions
of holy disdain.

Somewhat like the modern preacher of the larger
cities, the elders strove to entertain as well as instruct,
edify, and command their flock. They proposed a
charade or riddle, which they said was of very ancient
origin, and perhaps had been told in the time of the
Master's sojourn among men. They spoke it very
slowly and carefully and repeated it several times, so
that it was thoroughly understood by all:

He walked on earth,

He talked on earth,

He reproved man for his sin;

He is not in earth,

He is not in heaven.

Nor can he enter therein.

This mysterious person was written about in the Bible,
said Elder Kidd.

Aue! That was a puzzler! Who could it be?
Many scratched their heads. Others shook theirs de-
spairingly. A few older men, of the diaconate, prob-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 77

ably, smiled knowingly. Some began to eliminate
likely biblical characters on their fingers. lesu-Kirito,
Aberahama, loba, Petero, and so on through a list of
the more prominent notables of Scripture. But after
five minutes of guesses, which were pointed out by Mr.
Kidd not to comply with the specifications of the
charade, the answer was announced with impressive unc-
tion:

"Asini Balaama."

Balaam's ass. Aue! Why, of course. I had
named to myself every persona dramatis of the Book I
could recall, but the talkative steed had escaped me.
We all laughed. Most of the congregation had never
seen an ass or even a horse, and the word itself was
pulled into their language by the ears. But they could
conjure up a life-hke picture of the scene from their
pastor's description, and there were many interchanges
between neighbors about the wisdom of the beast, and
his kindness in saving Balaam from the angry angel
who would have killed him.

But in time the prose part of the service came to an
end, and the singing began. I moved myself to the
shadows outside the pale, and stretching at full length
on a mat on the sand, gave myself to the rapture of
their poetry, and the waking dreams it brought.

Himene, all mass singing was called in these islands
— the missionary hymn Polynesianized. They had
only chants when the whites came; proud recitatives of
valor in war, of the beginnings of creation, of the wan-
derings of their heroes, challenges to the foe, and pray-
ers to the mysterious gods and demons of their supernal
regions. They learned awedly the hymns of Christian-

78 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

ity, and struggled decades with the airs. Confused
with these were songs of the white sailors, the spirited
bowline and windlass chanteys of the British and Ameri-
can tars, the trivial or obscene lays of beach-combers
and soldiers, and later the popular tunes of nations
and governments. Out of all these the Polynesians
had evolved their himenes, singing as different from
any ever heard in Europe or America as the bagpipe
from the violin, but never to be forgotten when once
heard to advantage, for its barbaric call, its poignancy
of utterance, and its marvelous harmony.

In the great shed outside which I lay under the pur-
ple sky, the men and women were divided, and the
women led the himene. One began a wail, a
high note, almost a shriek, like the keening of a
wake, and carrying but a phrase. Others met her
voice at an exact interval, and formed a chorus,
into which men and women entered, apparently at
will, but each with a perfect observance of time, so that
the result was an overwhelming symphony of vocal
sounds which had in them the power of a pipe-organ to
evoke thought. I heard the cry of sea-birds, the crash
of the waves on the reef, the thrashing of the giant
fronds of the cocoa-palms, the groans of afflicted hu-
mans, and the pseans of victory of embattled warriors.
The effect was incredibly individual. Each white
heard the himene differently, according to his own cos-
mos.

There under the stars on Kaukura, cast down and con-
scious as I had been of my trivial hurts, and of a certain
loneliness of situation, I forgot all in the thrill of emo-
tion caused by the exquisite though unstudied art of

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 79

these simple Josephites, worshipers, whose voices
pierced my heart with the sorrows and aspirations of an
occult world. The Reverends Kidd and Imbel were
forgotten, and all but the mysterious conflict of man
with his soul. I fell asleep as the himene went on for
hours, and was awakened by Kopcke, the trader, who
said that the Marara was to sail at midnight, and that
he had been asked to bring me aboard.

Chocolat barked a welcome from the taffrail as we
boarded the schooner, and with the offshore wind we wel-
comed I could hear a faint human noise which I inter-
preted as the benediction of the Reverend Johnny Kidd.

CHAPTER V

Captain Moet tells of Mapuhi, the great Paumotuan — Kopcke tells about
women — Virginie's jealousy — Au aflfrighting waterspout — The wrecked
ship — Landing at Takaroa.

AINTENANTr said Captain Moet, as he
gave orders for the course, "we weel veesit ze
king ov ze Paumotu. Monsieur O'Breeon, 'e
got no nose, hot 'e ees magmfique. 'E hke out ov ze
story-book. Ze bigges' tradaire, ze bes' divaire, ze hon
pere ov ze Paumotu. An' 'e ees reech, eef 'e don' geeve
'way ev'rysing. Nevaire 'ave I know one homhre like
'eem!"

"He 's lost his grip since he got old," McHenry inter-
rupted, in his contrary way. "They say he 's got a mil-
lion francs out in bad accounts to natives. He 's rotten
easy, and spoils trade for a decent white man, by cripes!"

"Norn d'une pipe!" cried the Marseillais. "Mac,
you nevaire see anysing nice. 'E ees not easy ; 'e ees not
rotten. 'E 'as got old, an' maintenant, 'e ees 'fraid
ov ze devil, ze diablo malo. Mac, eef you waire so nice
as Mapuhi, I geeve you wan hug an' kees. 'E ees
'onnes', Mac, vous savez! Mapuhi say somesing, eet
ees true. Zat bad for you, eh?"

Mapuhi! In Tahiti, among the Paumotu traders at
the Cercle Bougainville, his name was every-day men-
tion. He was the outstanding figure of the Paumatuan
race. Lying Bill had narrated a dozen stories about

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ATOLLS OF THE SUN 81

him over our glasses, and Goeltz, Hallman, all the
skippers and supercargos, had spoken of him.

"Mapuhi 's som'mat for looks without 'is nose," said
Captain Pincher. "I 've known 'im thirty years, an'
'e 's the biggest man in the group in all that time.
'E 's got Mormonism stronger now, an' 'e 's bloody well
afraid of 'ell, the 'ell those Mormon missionaries tell
about; but 'e 's the best navigator in these waters."

"He 's past eighty now, big-hearted but shrewd,
and loving his own people," said Woronick, the Pari-
sian, and cunningest of Tahiti pearl merchants, except
Levy. "He 's gone on Mormonism, but he 's smart
with all his religion. The trouble is he 's let charity
run away with business principles, and divers and others
get into him for hundreds of thousands of francs. I 'd
take his word for anything, and you know me! They
did n't keep me out of the United States because I 'm
a dummy, hein?"

"He 's a remarkable man, this Kanaka," joined in
Winnie Brander, master of a sieve of a schooner, as he
drank his Doctor Funk. "When he was a boy he was
a savage. His father ate his enemies. For fifty years
Mapuhi has been sailing schooners in the Paumotus.
He 's the richest man there, and the best skipper in
these waters that ever weathered the New Year gales.
I 'm captain of a schooner and I have sailed the Group
since a boy, but, matching my experience against his, —
and I have n't had a tenth of his, — Mapuhi knows more
by instinct of weather, of reefs, of passes, and of sea-
manship than I have learned. He 's known from Samoa
to Tahiti as a wizard for sailing. He knows every one
of the eighty Paumotus by sight. Wake him up any-

82 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

where in the Group in sight of land, and he '11 take a
squint and tell where they are. God knows that 's
the hardest bit of spying there is, because these atolls
are mostly all alike at a distance — just a few specks
of green, then a bunch of palms, and a line of coral.
It 's something uncanny the way this fellow can locate
himself. They say he can tell them at night by the
smell."

" 'E 's a bloody Rockefeller down 'ere," Lying Bill
took up the story. " 'E 's combed this 'ere 'ole ocean.
I remember when 'e lost the Tavaroa 'e 'ad built by
Matthew Turner in California, and four other schoon-
ers, in the cyclone of 1906. Many a boat 'e built 'im-
self. 'E was the devil for women, with the pick of the
group an' 'im owin' 'alf the families in debt. Then the
Mormons got a 'olt of 'im, an' 'e began pray in' an'
preachin', and stuck by 'is proper wife. You '11 see
that big church, if you go to Takaroa, 'e built, an' where
'is ol' woman is buried."

Arid now I was bound for the atoll of this mighty
chief of his tribe, and was to see him face to face.
From Kaukura, the Marara raced and lagged by turn.
The glass fell, and I spoke to McHenry about it, point-
ing to the recording barometer.

"There 's trouble comin'," he said, testily. "I know
that. I don't need any barometer. We South Sea
men have got enough mercury in us to tell the weather
without any barometer."

The rain fell at intervals, but not hard enough for
a bath on deck, the prized weather incident of these
parts. With no fresh water in Niau, Anaa, or Kau-
kura, or not enough for bathing, and with only a dole

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 83

on the Marara for hands and faces, I, with remem-
brance of Rupert Brooke's complaint about the effect
of sea-water on coral wounds, was about half-crazy
for a torrential shower. But the rain passed, and the
sunset soothed my sorrow. Never had I known such
skies. In this heaven's prism were hues not before
seen by me. INIanila, I had thought, was of all the
world apart for the beauty and brilliancy of its sunsets.
Such bepainted clouds as hung over the hill of Mari-
veles when I rode down the Malecon in the days of the
Empire! But Manila was here surpassed in startling
shape and blazing color.

A great bank of ocher held the western sky — a per-
fect curtain for a stage upon which gods might enact
the fall of the angels. It depended in folds and fringes
over stripes of gold — a startling, magnificent design
which appeared too regular in form and color to be acci-
dent of clouds. One had to remember the bits of glass
in the kaleidoscope.

The gold grew red, the stripes became a sheet of
scarlet, and that vermilion and maroon, swiftly chang-
ing as deeper dipped the sun into the sea, until the en-
tire sky was broken into mammoth fleecy white tiles,
the tesselated ceiling of Olympus. The canopy grew
gray, and night dropped abruptly. A wind came out
of the darkness and caught the Marara under full can-
vas. It drove her through the fast-building waves at
eleven knots. The hull groaned in tune with the shriek-
ing cordage. The timbers that were long from the
forest, and had fought a thousand gales, lamented their
age in moans and whines, in grindings and fierce blows.
The white water piled over the bows, deluged the deck,

84 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

and foamed on the barrier of the cabin rise. I stripped
and went forward to meet it. I could have danced in
it for joy. Oh! the joy of sail! Steam and motor
made swift the path of the ship, but they had in them
no consonance with nature. They were blind and deaf
to the wind and wave, which were the very life of the
schooner. They brought no sense of participation in
speed as did the white wings of the Marara, nor of kin-
ship with the main. They were alive, those swelling
and careening sheets of canvas, that swung to and fro
with the mind of the breeze, and cried and laughed in
stress of labor.

The rain blanketed the ocean, the vessel heeled over
to starboard until her rail was salty, the jibs pleaded
for relief, but man was implacable. For hours we held
our course, driving fast in the obscure night toward the
home of the wondrous diver, the man without a nose,
Mapuhi, the uncrowned king of the Dangerous Isles.

But when the moon lit the road to Takaroa, she
lulled the wind. The eleven knots fell to seven, and to
five, and at midnight we drifted in a zephyr.

When I went below in a light squall, sure sign of
near-by land, Kopcke, the handsome trader, and a na-
tive girl were asleep on a mat in the passageway beside
and partly under my bunk. I had to step over them.
Her red tunic was drawn up over her limbs in her rest-
less slumber, and a sheet covered closely her head. He
lay on his back, his eyes facing the cabin lamp, his
breathing that of a happy child after a day of hard
play. As a matter of fact he had drunk a half dozen
tots of rum since he had brought me aboard.

Kopcke had failed at Kaukura, and like McHenry

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 85

was bound for Takaroa, to set up a store for the div-
ing season. He was a ne'er-do-well who existed with-
out hard work merely because of familiarity with the
people and languages of the islands. After a few
glasses on board he had spilled his affairs to me, and
especially his amorous adventures, in the boasting way
of his kind. "Mary pity women!" A quarter-Tahi-
tian, his father a European, and his mother French
Tahitian, he was remarkably good-looking, in the style
of a cinema idol. He had first married the half-caste
daughter of Lying Bill, one of the many children of
that Bedouin of the Pacific, who, in more than three
decades of roaming the islands, had, according to his
brag, scores of descendants. She had died, and Kopcke
had left their child to charity, and taken up with an-
other whom he had deserted after a year, leaving her
their new-born infant.

"She would not obey me," Kopcke explained to Vir-
ginie and me. "I was good to her, but she was ob-
stinate, and I had to send her to Takepoto. She had a
good thing but could not appreciate me. I then took
this girl here, whose father is an old diver in Takaroa,
with a good deal of money. He once picked up a
single pearl worth a big fortune. She is sixteen, and is
easily managed. You 've got to get them young, mon
ami, to learn your ways. That Takepoto girl feels
sorry now. Women are queer, all of them, mon vieuw,
n'est-ce pas?"

Virginie was all Huguenot French blood though born
in Tahiti, and Kopcke went against her puritan grain.
She thought him a bad example for her Jean, who,
though as devoted a husband as seaman, was danger-

86 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

ously attractive to the native girls. Moet could
tutoyer them in their own tongue, with a roughish but
alluring manner toward them that, though it crowded
the trade-room of the Marara with customers for finery
and cologne water, tortured Virginie. His endearing
terms, his gentle slaps on their hips, and momentary
arm about their waists, rended Virginie between jeal-
ousy and profits.

''Mais,'' Jean would exclaim, after an interchange of
bitter words, in which cochon had been applied to him,
"how zat femme zink I do bees'ness. Wiz kicks 'an
go-to-'ells? She count ze money wiz plaisir, bot Jean
Moet, 'er 'usbin', 'e mos' be like wan mutton. 'Sus
Maria! I will make show 'oo ees boss!"

Kopcke was rather more honest in his dealings with
women than the white men. His quarter-native strain
made him less ruthless, and more understanding of
them. The ordinary European or American in the
South Seas had not his own home's standards in
such affairs. He released himself with a prideful
assertiveness from such restraints, and went to an
opposite ethic in his breaking of the chain. His
usual attitude to women here was that of the average
man toward domesticated animals — to pet and feed
them, and to abuse them when disobedient or at whim.

Of course, the white flotsam and jetsam of humanity
in these islands, who in their own countries had prob-
ably starved for caresses, and who may never have
known women other than the frowzy boughten ones of
the cabaret and brothel, were here giving back to the
sex what it had bestowed on them in more formalized
circles. The soft, loving women of Polynesia paid for

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 87

the sex starvation enforced by economic conditions
among the superior whites. A feast brought the in-
gratitude of the beggar.

All day, with half a gale, we sailed past atolls and
bare reefs, groves of palms and rudest rocks, primal
strata and beaches of softest and whitest sand. The
schooner went close to these islands, so that it appeared
I could throw my hat upon them; but distances here
were deceptive, and I suppose we were never less than a
thousand feet away. Yet we were near enough to hear
the smash of the surf and to see the big fish leap in the
lagoon, to drink the intoxicating draft of oneness with
the lonely places, and to feel the secrets of their isola-
tion. I was happy that before I died I had again seen
the Thing I had worshipped since I began to read.

I slipped off the coat of years and was a boy on a
pirate schooner, my hand on Long Tom, the brass gun,
ready to fire if the cannibals pushed nearer in their
canoes. Again I had trained my hand and eye so that
I brought down the wild pigeon with my sling, and I
outran the furious turtle on the beach. I dived under
the reef into the cave where the freebooters had stored
their ill-gotten treasure, and reveled in the bags of
pieces of eight, and the bars of virgin gold. I thought
of Silver, and sang:

"Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest —
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum !"

''Mais voiis etes gai" said Jean Moet. "Qu'est cela?
You not drink wan bottle when I no look?"

At three o'clock in the afternoon the gale had almost
died away. The sun was struggling to break through

88 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

the lowering sky. McHenry and Kopeke were en-
gaged in their usual bombast of personal achievement
with women and drink, and I, to shut out their blague,
was playing with Chocolat. Suddenly Kopeke broke off
in a sentence and shouted to Moet, who was in the
trade-room.

"Capitaine! Capitcdnel" he called loudly through
the window of the cabin. "There is a flood in air.
Puahiohiof On deck! On deck!"

His voice vibrated with alarm, and Moet made three
jumps and was at the wheel. He looked ahead, and
I, too, saw, directly on the course we were steering, a
convolute stem of water stretching from the sea to the
sky. Well I knew what it was. I whirled McHenry
around.

"Look!" I said, and pointed to the oncoming spec-
tacle.

"A bloody waterspout!" yelled McHenry. "By
cripes — here 's where we pay up!"

I heard the native passengers and the sailors for-
ward shouting confusedly, and saw them throwing
themselves flat on deck, where they held on to the
hatch lashings and other stable objects. Moet, with a
fierce oath, ordered the sailors to the halyards.

"Off with every stitch!" he commanded, as he threw
the wheel hard over. "Vave! Vavel'f

^'TromheT he warned his wife, who was in the cabin
with Kopcke's girl. "Hold on, Virginie, hold on!
Pray, and be quick about it!"

McHenry, Kopeke, and I sprang to the main boom,
and helped to take down the canvas and make it fast.
The jibs were still standing, when the Marara turned

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 89

on her heel hke a hare pursued by a hound. The water-
spout was yet miles distant, but rushing toward us, as
we made slow starboard progress from our previous
wake. The daylight faded; the air seemed full of wa-
ter. The sailors were again prone, and we, at the calm
though sharp word of Moet, pulled over the companion
cover. I shrank behind the house, and McHenry
tucked his head into the bend of my body, while Kop-
cke, on his knees, held on to the traveler.

''Sacramentor said Moet, as if to himself. "Maybe
she no can meet zat!"

With pounding heart, but every sense alert, I
watched the mad drive of the sable column. The Ma-
rara was now in smooth water, — the glassy circle of the
Puahiohio, — and so near was the terrifying, twisting
mass of dark foam and spindrift that it seemed impos-
sible we could avoid it. Every inch the master, Moet
alone stood up. Chocolat was huddled whimpering be-
tween his feet. I saw the captain pull up the straps
that held the wheel when in light airs we drifted peace-
fully, and attach them so that the helm was fixed.
There was a dreadful roaring a short way off and near-
ing every second. The spout was bigger than any of
the great trees I had seen in the California forests, and
from its base a leaden tower of hurrying water seemed
to wind in a spiral stream to the clouds.

"She 's going to drop," said McHenry in my ear.
"Now hold on, and we '11 see who comes out of the
bloody wash!"

The roar was that of a blast-furnace, and so close, so
fearful, I ceased to breathe. Captain Moet crouched
by the steadfast wheel, his hand on the spokes. For-

90 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

ward, I saw two Tahitians with their palms upon their
ears.

Suddenly the Marara heeled over. The starboard
rail was in the water, and Kopcke, McHenry, and I, a
tangled heap against the rail, as we struggled to keep
our heads above the foam. Farther and farther the
schooner listed. It was certain to me that we must meet
death under it in another instant. Moet's feet were
deep in the water, and now the wheel held him up. We
clutched madly at the stanchions of the rail, as we
choked with the salt flood.

Came the supreme moment. The waterspout rose
above us on the port bow like a cliff, solid as stone. A
million trumpets blew to me the call of Judgment Day.
Then the wall of water passed by a hundred feet to
port. In another breath the Marara regained her poise
and was on an even keel. The peril was over.

"Mais, tonnere de DieuT cried Moet, excitedly, "zat
was a cochon ov a watairespouse ! Zere air many in
zese latitude. Some time I see seex, seven, playin'
'round at wan time. I sink we make ze sail, and take
wan drink queeck. Eh, Virginie, ici/ Donne-moi un
haiser, httle cabbage! Deed you pray 'ard?"

Over his petit verre, the captain said to me, confiden-
tially, "Moi, I was almos' become a hon catholique
again."

Chocolat, who must have thought he had borne his
part bravely in the crisis, frisked wildly about the wheel,
risking his own brown hide at every leap, to testify his
joy at his safety.

McHenry and Kopcke, with the heartening rum in
their stomachs, resumed their palaver.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 91

"That spout did n't come within fifty feet of us," said
McHenry. "I 've seen one in which a bird was bein'
carried up, whirhn' round and round, and not able to
fly away. It was comin' toward us hke lightnin' when
I jumped into the shrouds with a 'big tin tub, an' 'banged
it like bloody hell. It scared the spout away, an' it
busted far enough from us not to hurt us. Bill an'
Tommy Eustace can swear to that."

"DiahleT Kopcke broke in. "Mapuhi and his daugh-
ter were in a cutter coming from Takepoto when they
were attacked by a tromhe. It did not strike them but
the force of it overturned their cutter, four miles from
shore, and knocked the girl insensible, so that Mapuhi
had to swim to shore with her."

They are fearsome spectacles at their best, these phe-
nomena of the sea, comparable only in awe-inspiring
qualities to the dread composants of St. Elmo's Fire,
those apparitions of flame which appear on mastheads
and booms on tempestuous nights, as if the spirits of
hell had come to welcome the sailor to Davy Jones's
locker. Waterspouts I had seen many times. They
were common in these waters, — more frequent, perhaps,
than anyM'here else, — and to the native they were the
most alarming manifestation of nature. Many a canoe
had been sunk by them. There were legends of de-
struction by them, and of how the gods and devils used
them as weapons to destroy the war fleets of the ene-
mies of the legend-telling tribes.

When I went to sleep at ten o 'clock that night, we
were ranging up and down between Takepoto and Tak-
aroa, steering no course but that of prudence, and wait-
ing for the dawn.

92 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

I came on deck again at four. The moon was two
thirds down the steep slope of the west, a golden sphere
vaster than ever jbefore. The sea was bright and quak-
ing, and shoals of fish were waking and parting the
shining surface of the water.

Suddenly from out of the gloom of the distance there
loomed as strange a vision as ever startled a wayfarer.

A huge ship, under bare poles, solemn and lonely
of aspect and almost out of the water, lifted a black
bulk as if bearing down upon us. Somber and omi-
nous, void of light or life, fancy peopled it with a ghostly
crew. I almost expected to read upon its quarter the
name of Vanderdecken's specter-ship, and to hear the
mournful voice of the Flying Dutchman's skipper re-
port that he had at last reached a haven.

The weirdness of this unexpected sight was incred-
ibly surprising. It electrified me, dismayed me, as
few phenomena have.

Piri a Tuahine, at the wheel, called down to the cap-
tain.

''Paparai te pahi matai!" he announced in the even
tone of the Maori sailor. "The ship wrecked in the
cyclone!"

Moet came on deck in pajamas, surveyed the spec-
tacle of desolation, said "Bon jourT to me, gave an
order to the sailor to "Keep her off," and returned to
snatch another nap. I saw through the stripped masts
of the wrecked ship the fires of the bakers who mix their
flour with cocoanut-milk, and wrap their loaves in co-
coanut-leaves to bake. They were comforting as tokens
of the living, contrasted with the sorrowful skeleton
of one-time glory in that isolated cradle of rocks.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 93

Kopcke stuck his head through the companionway to
observe our bearings, squinted at the somber wraith
through his heavy eyes, — he and McHenry had played
ecarte most of the night, — and rephed to my query:

"As you say, mon gargon, it is the County of Rox-
burgh, that Enghsh ship. She lost her reckoning, and
in a big hurricane crashed upon the reef. Her crew
put over a boat but it was smashed at once, and those
who reached the shore were badly bruised and broken
by the coral. When the people of Takaroa — my girl's
father was one of them — rushed to succor them, they
fought them off, because their books said the Paumo-
tuans were savages and cannibals. It was n't till they
saw Takauha, the gendarme, and he showed them his
red stripe on the sleeve of his jacket, that they real-
ized they were not on a cannibal isle. Takauha
brought Monsieur George Fordham, an Englishman,
to interpret for them, and they were taken care of.
They had broken arms and legs, and heads, too. Ma-
puhi bought the ship from Lloyd's for fifteen hundred
francs. Think of that! He took everything off he
could, but the hull, masts, and yards stayed on. He
made thousands of dollars out of the ship, and in his
store you will find the doors and chests and the glass.
She was built in Scotland."

Her hull and decks of heavy metal, and her masts
and yards, great iron tubes, she had defied even that
master wrecker, Mapuhi, to disrobe her of more than
her ornaments. Carried over the reef upon a gigantic
wave, and perched upon a bed of coral in which she now
fitted as snugly as in a dry-dock, she had withstood the
storms and tides of years, and doubtless must stay in

94 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

that solitary spot until time should disintegrate her
metal and dissolve its atoms in the eternal sea.

The palms on the atoll paraded in battalions, waving
their dark heads like shakos, and the surf shone in silver
splashes, as I sat on the cabin house and watched the
dawn unfold. Slowly the moon withdrew. At half-
past five o'clock, the mother of life and her coldly
brilliant satellite were in concert, and the ocean was
exquisitely divided by sunbeams and moonbeams match-
ing for favor in my admiring eyes.

Kopcke reappeared with a cigarette. He had an
unusual chance to find me alone, and was hungry for in-
formation.

"There is a passage in the reef at Takaroa," he said,
"but you can bet the Marara won't go through it. It is
plenty big enough to let her in, but that takes seaman-
ship. Now, I have seen Mapuhi sail his schooner
through this passage in half a gale of wind, and swing
her about inside in the space most chauffeurs in Tahiti
need to turn their automobiles. No one else would try
it. He won't go in; but Mapuhi would have his crew
stand by, and, with the wheel in his own hands, would
tear through the opening as if he had all the seven seas
about him."

I was below washing my hands, when the roar of
the breakers came to my ears with the call of Moet
that a boat was leaving. I rushed to the waist of the
schooner and, catching hold of a belayed rope's end,
dropped on the dancing thwart. Chocolat made a
bound and landed on his master's lap. Moet swore,
but we were away.

There was a high sea, and for a few seconds it was

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 95

pitch and toss whether we could keep right side up.
However, we struck the gait of the rollers, and, with
Piri a Tuahine at the long steering-oar, moved toward
the beach, urged on by rowers and breakers, but op-
posed by a strong outsetting current.

The dexterity of the steersman saved us a dozen
times from capsizing. Often we climbed waves that,
but for an expert guidance, would have crashed over
us. Many and many a boat turns over in these
"landings" and spills its life freight to death or hurt.
Nearing the passage, a white and brawling two hundred
feet between murderous rocks, the boat had to be
swung obliquely to <nter, and we hung upon a comber's
peak for a seeming age, the rowers sweating furiously at
the oars, until Piri a Tuahine gave a staccato signal.
Oars inboard, we rushed down the shore side of the
breaker, and were at peace in a lovely lagoon.

Of the many miles of circumference of Takaroa, a
tiny motu was inhabited by the hundred and fifty
people, and on it they had built a stone quay for small
boats. We made fast to it and sprang ashore.

CHAPTER VI

Diffidence of Takaroans — Hiram Mervin's description of the cyclone —
Teamo's wonderful swim — Mormon missionaries from America — I
take a bath.

THERE was no stir on the quay of Takaroa. In
these latitudes the civihzed stranger is shocked
by the indifference to his arrival of the half-
naked native. It enrages a prideful white. He per-
haps remembers the pages of Cook and the other dis-
coverers, who wrote of the overflowing enthusiasm of
the new-found aborigines for them; but he forgets the
pages of history since national, religious, and business
rivalries invaded the South Seas. These Paumotuans,
and, indeed, most Polynesian peoples, are kin to pet
cats who madden mistresses by pretending not to hear
'Calls, and by finding views from windows interesting
when asked to show their accomplishments or fine coats.
Though they may have seen no outsider for months,
these Paumotuans will appear as unconcerned at a white
visitor's coming as if circuses dropped in their midst
daily. Yet every movement, every word of a new-
comer is as alluring to their imaginations, bored by the
sameness of their days, as a clown's antics to a child.

"It is a politeness and pride, not indifference," had
explained my friend, that first gentleman of Tahiti,
the Chevalier Tetuanui, of Mataiea. "We simple is-
landers have been so often rebuffed bj^ uncultivated
whites that we wait for advances. It is our etiquette."

<11

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 97

The main thoroughfare of the village stretched up
from the quay half a mile, with one or two ramifying
byways, along which straggled the humble homes of the
Takaroans. There were not the usual breakfast fires
before them, as in Tahiti, where breadfruit and feis are
to be cooked, nor did the appetizing odor of coffee rise,
as in Tahiti, for Mormonism forbade coffee to its adher-
ents as it did alcohol and tobacco. Beside the quay
were dozens of cutters, and a small launch. Canoes were
being relegated to lesser civilizations by the fast sail-
ing cutters. Motor power was new here ; almost new in
Tahiti. But a few years and it would be common, for
while the islander cared nothing for time, he was at-
tracted to labor-saving machines.

Captain Moet set the sailors to unload the Mararas
boat, and the chief of Takaroa appeared. The French,
whose island possessions in P.olynesia occupy sea room
in spots from eight to twenty-seven degrees below the
equator, and from 136 to 155 west of Greenwich, have
left survive, in title at least, the chieftaincies, the form
of government they found upon seizure. ''Monsieur
le Chef" they said of the native officials here, as they
did of a head cook in a restaurant. These chiefs,
though nominally the representatives of French sover-
eignty, were, in pitiable reality, wretchedly-paid tax
collectors, policemen, and bailiffs. But they often were
gentlemen — gentlemen of rich col'or. The strapping fel-
low who had vised the documents of the Marara, though
wearing only denim overalls, lacked nothing in cour-
tesy. A rent disclosed that the "alls" were over his
birth-suit.

I was not arrayed very smartly, having left collar,

98 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

cravat, and socks, as well as shirt and undershirt, aboard.
Pongee coat and trousers, with flexible shoes, were in
this tropic an ideal compromise with culture. Open the
coat, and the breeze had access to one's puris natural-
ibus, and, if one had to swim or wade, little clothing
was wetted. The chief surveyed me, saw that I took no
interest in the cargo, and drew his own conclusion.

''la ora na!" he said gently, and led me toward the
village.

It was seven years earlier that the last great cyclone
had devastated these islands. Takaroa was mute wit-
ness of its ruin. The houses were almost all mere shacks
of corrugated iron — walls and roofs of hideous gray
metal. A few wooden buildings, including two stores,
were the exceptions. The people had neither courage
nor money to rebuild comfortable abodes. Lumber
must be brought from Tahiti and carpenters employed.
No more unsuitable material than iron for a house in
this climate could be chosen, except glass, but it was
comparatively cheap, easily put together, and a
novelty. It was as unharmonious a note among the
palms as rag-time music in a Greek theater, and in
the next cyclone each separate sheet would be a guillo-
tine. Nothing more than a few feet above the ground
withstands these hurricanes, which fell cocoanuts- as
fire eats prairie-grass.

We had not walked a hundred yards before a power-
ful half-caste stopped me with a soft "Bon jour!'* A
good-looking, clean-cut man of thirty years, the white
blood in him showed most in his efficient manner and
his excellent French.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 99

"You are American," he said in that tongue in the
mildest voice.

"Mais oui." I replied.

"I am Hiram Mervin, son of Captain Mervin, owner
of the schooner France- Austral. My father is Ameri-
can, and I am half American, though I speak no Eng-
lish. You may have read of me. I repaired his boat,
the Shark, for that American author. Jack. His
engine was broken down. He wanted me to go to
Australia as his mechanician, but my father said no,
and when an American says no, 4ie means that, nest-ce
pas. Monsieur?"

"Where were you," I inquired, "when the last cy-
clone blew?"

His fine brown face wrinkled. Hiram had a firm
chin, a handsome black mustache, and teeth as hard and
white as the keys of a new piano.

"Ah, you have heard of how we escaped? Non?
Alors, Monsieur, I will tell you. I am a diver, and
here I keep a store. We were at Hikueru, my father
and I, when it began to storm. Father watched the
barometer, and the sea. The mercury lowered fast,
and the waves rolled bigger every hour.

" 'The barometer is sinking fast. The ocean will
drown the island,' said mv father. 'Noah built an ark,
but we cannot floaton one ; we must get above the water.'

"There were four cocoanut-trees, solid and thick-
trunked, that grew a few feet from one another. Bad
planting, oui, but -most useful. He set me and some
others, his close friends, to climbing these trees and cut-
ting off their heads, so that they stood like pillars of

100 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

the temple. It was a pity, I thought, for we ruined
them. Then we took heavy planks and lifted them to
the tops of these trees and spiked and roped them in a
platform.

"Attendez, Monsieur! All this time the cyclone in-
creased. My father was not with us. It was the div-
ing season on Hikueru, and people were gathered from
all over the atolls, and from Tahiti, hundreds of Maoris,
and many whites. My father was directing the efforts
of the people to save their property. We had not yet
thought of our lives being in great danger. We island-
ers could not live if we expected the worst.

"A gale from the east, strong but not dangerous, had
lashed the water of the lagoon and made it like the
ocean, and then, turning to the west, had driven the
ocean mad. Now the ocean was coming over the reef,
the waves very high and threatening. We knew that
if ever the sea and the lagoon met to fight, we would be
the victims. Thus, Monsieur, the lagoon surrounded
by the island, and the usually calm waters inside the
outer reef, were .both in a frightful state, and we began
to fear what had been in other atolls. My father was
wise, but, being a Mormon and also an American, he
must not think of himself first. My father came to us
and tested the platform, and showed us where to
strengthen it.

" 'The island will be covered by the sea and the la-
goon,' he said. 'Make haste, in the name of God!'

"Some one, a woman, called to him for help, and he
ran to her. A sheet of iron from a roof came through
the air, and wounded him. I thought his head was al-
most cut off, from the quantity of blood. Mais, Mon-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN lOl

sieur, c'etait terrible/ We caught hold of my father,
and made a sling with our ropes, and lifted him, un-
conscious, to the platform at the top of the trees. He
raised his head and looked around.

" 'Go down again I' he commanded. 'Cut down those
three trees. If they fall they will strike us.'

"Monsieur, that was my father, the American, who
spoke, though nearly dead. He was wise. We did as
he said, as quickly as we could, and climbed back to
the platform. The great breakers of the ocean were
now far up on our beach at each end of the tide. The
whole width of the land from the edge of the beach to
the lagoon is but the length of four or five cocoanut-
trees. The water below the atoll was forced up through
the coral sand, Monsieur, until it was like the dough
of the baker when he first pours in the cocoanut juice.
People still on the ground went up to their arms in it.
We feared the atoll would be taken back to the depths.
Our platform was nearer the lagoon than the moat —
to be exact, two hundred feet from the moat, and a hun-
dred from the lagoon. ^ly father had us tie him to the
platform and to the trees. We had brought plenty of
ropes for that.

''Mon Dieu! Below the poor people were tying them-
selves to the trunks of the cocoanut-trees, and climbing
them, if they could, and roosting in the branches like
the wild birds of the air. They were shrieking and
praying. There were many whites, too, because all the
pearl-shell and pearl buyers, and the keepers of stores
like us, were there from Papeete. The little children
who could not climb were crying, and many parents
stayed with them to die. The sea was now like the reef,

102 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

white as the noon clouds with foam. We had bound
my father's wounds with my shirt, but the blood dripped
on the boards where he lay with his eyes open and watch-
ing the cyclone."

The chief, who had accompanied me, became restless.
He understood no French.

"Monsieur V Ainericain, do I detain you?" Hiram
Mervin asked me.

I signed for him to continue.

"Then came the darkness. There were only the
sounds of the wind and water, the crash of the cocoanut-
trees as they fell with their human fruit. We heard the
houses being swept away; we thought we caught
glimpses of vessels riding on the breakers, and we im-
agined we caught the shrieks of those being destroyed.
But the wind itself sounded like the voices of people.
I heard many calling my name.

" 'Hiram Mervin, pray for us! Save us!' said the
cyclone.

"Ah, I cannot tell it! It was too dreadful. It was
hours after darkness that the sea reached its height.
Those below were torn from hummocks of coral, from
the roofs of houses, and from trees. We knew that the
sharks and other devils of the sea were seizing them.
The sea rushed over the land into the lagoon and the
lagoon returned to the sea. When they met under us,
they fought like the bulls of Bashan. Hikueru was
being swallowed as the whale swallowed Io7ia, the pero-
feta. We held on though our trees bent like the mast
of a schooner in a typhoon. We called often to one
another to be sure none was lost. When morning
came, after night on night of darkness, the waters re-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 103

ceded, and we saw the work of the demon. Almost
every house had been cut down, and most of the trees.
The cemeteries were washed up, and the bodies, bones,
and skulls of our dead for decades were strewn about or
in the ocean. The lagoon was so full of corpses old and
new that our people would not fish nor dive for shells
there for a long time. The spirits are still seen as they
fly through the air when there is a gale. But, Mon-
sieur, our four cocoanut -trees had stood as the pillars
of the temple of Birigi'ama lunga. Not for nothing
was my father born in America. Mais, Monsieur, the
chief is waiting. The mitinare will be glad to see you.
Au revoir/'

Hiram took a step to return to the quay when he
called back to me. "Ah, there is Teamo, who is the
Living Ghost," and he pointed to a Paumotuan woman
who was coming up from the quay towards where we
three stood. Teamo had the balanced gait of one who
sits or stands much in canoes, and she strode like a man,
her powerful figure showing under her red Mother-Hub-
bard which clung close to her stoutish form. Short, she
was like most of the Paumotuans, of middle height, but
with her head set upon a pillar of a neck, and her bare
chocolate arms, rounded, but hinting of the powerful
muscles beneath the skin. Her hair was piled high on
her head like a crown, and upon it was a basket in which
were two chickens. A live pig was under her arm.
She was carrying this stock from our boat.

"There," said Hiram, "there is Teamo, who is the
greatest swimmer of all these seas, and who went
through the great cyclone as does a fish. Haere viair
he called, "This monsieur, who is an American, like my

104 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

father, wants to hear about your swimming of the seas
in the matai rorofai."

Teamo put down her pig and the chickens from her
head, sat upon her haunches, and drawing a diagram in
the coral sand, she told her strange tale in her own
language.

"The water is coming over the atoll, and the lagoon
and the sea are one," said Teamo, "when my brother
and sisters and I climbed the great cocoanut-tree by our
house, because it is death below. You know the cocoa-
nut-trees. You see they have no limbs. You know
that it is hard to hold on because the great trees shake in
the wind, and there is no place ta sit. Only we could
put our arms around the leaves and hold as best we
might. When it comes on dark we feel the wind roaring
louder about us, and we hear the cries of those who are
in other trees. Then far out on the reef we hear the
pounding of the sea and the waves begin more and
more to come over the atoll until* they cover it deeper
and deeper, and each succeeding wave climbs higher and
higher toward where we cling. We know that soon
there will come a wave whose teeth will tear us from
the tree.

"That wave came all of a sudden. It was like a
cloud in the sky. It lifted me out of the cocoanut-
leaves as the diver tears the shell from the bank at
the bottom of the lagoon. It lifted me and took me
over the lagoon, over the tops of all trees, and when
it went back to the ocean, it carried me miles with it.
I was on the top of its back, almost in the sky, and
it was as black as the spittle of the devil-fish."

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 105

The chief was hstening attentively, for she spoke in
Paumotuan. Hiram Mervin interposed:

"Teamo went away from Hikueru on that wave and
stayed three days," said he. "She was numbered with
the dead when the count of the living was made by my
father."

Teamo squatted on the sand of the road. I was
afraid she would weary in her relation, as do her race.
"Parau vinivinir I said, and smoothed her shoulders.

"I kept upon its back," she resumed. "All through
that night I swam or floated, fighting the waves, and
fearing the sharks. I called on Birigi'ama lunga and
on letu Kirito, and on God. Hours and hours I kept
up until the dawn. Then I saw a coral-reef, and swam
for it. I was nearly crushed time and time on the
rocks, but at last I crawled up on the sand above the
water, and fell asleep.

"When I awoke I was all naked. The waves had
torn my dress from me, and the sun was burning my
body. I was bruised and wounded, but I prayed my
thanks to the God of the Mormons. I stood upon my
feet, and I saw all about me the poke roa, the black-
ening and broken bodies of people of Hikueru. They,
too, had floated on the same wave, but they had per-
ished. They were all about me. I searched for cocoa-
nuts, for I was drying up with thirst and shaking with
hunger. At last I found one under the body of my
cousin, and, breaking it with a rock, I drank the water
in it, and again fell asleep.

"Now when I awoke I was stronger, and a distance
away in the water I saw a box floating. I broke it

106 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

open, and found it had in it tins of salmon. They
were from some store in Hikueru, for I soon knew
there was no living human on that atoll but me. I
could not open the tins of salmon but pierced holes
in them with a piece of coral and sucked out the fish.
God was even better to me, for I found a camphor-
wood chest with a shirt and pareu in it, and I put them
on. I then found a canoe thrown up on the beach,
and it was half full of rain-water. I made up my
mind to'return to my home in the canoe. It was broken
and there was no paddle. I patched it, I found the
outrigger, and tied it on with cocoanut fiber which I
plaited. I made a paddle from the top of the salmon
case, and lashed it to the handle of a bpooni I found.
I kept enough fresh water in the canoe, and a,fter two
days of eating and resting I pushed out in the canoe,
with the remainder of the salmon. I could not see any
other atoll, but I trusted to God and prayed as I pad-
dled. I pushed over the reef at daybreak of the third
day, and paddled until the next morning, when I saw
Hikueru, and reached the remnants of my village."

Teamo gathered up her burdens and, with a reminis-
cent smile, walked on.

''Monsieur VAmericain," said Hiram, "you may be
sure that when she returned to Hikueru from Tekokota
— that atoll was fifteen miles away — they were afraid
of her, as the friends of Lataro when letu Kirito raised
him from the dead."

The chief's restlessness increased, as if he must de-
liver me somewhere quickly; but I thought of the man
they called the king of the Paumotus.

"The house of Mapuhi, is it — "

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 107

"The chief is taking you there now," said Hiram.
"The elders are there. My father was long-time the
partner of Mapuhi. They sailed their schooners to-
gether and had their divers."

"You and your father are Mormons?"

''Nous sommes hons Mormons," replied the half-caste,
seriously. "Am I not named for the king who built
the temple of Solomon. It is a shame, Monsieur, that
those Konito are permitted in these islands. They
corrupt the true religion."

The chief touched my arm, and we proceeded, after
an exchange of bows with the son of the American.
We walked to the very end of the small motu or
islet. The motus are often long but always very
narrow, between three hundred and fifteen hundred
feet.

The people of Takaroa had chosen to pitch their huts
on this spot of the whole atoll because of the pass into
the lagoon being there. That was the determining
factor just as the banks of rivers and bays were
selected by American pioneers. Where the salt water
was on three sides — the moat, the lagoon, and the chan-
nel between the next motu — was the residence of our
seeking.

It was a neat domicile of dressed lumber, raised ten
feet from the ground on stilts. It was fenced about, and
here and there a banana-plant or fig-tree grew in a
hole dug in the coral, surrounded by a little wall of coral
and with rotting tin cans heaped about. Driven in the
trunks were nails. I asked the chief the reason, and
he replied vaguely that the trees needed the iron of the
cans and the nails.

108 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

We were entering the grounds now, and I guessed it
was Mapuhi's house.

"Mapuhi is here?" I inquired.

^'^''E, he is at prayer, maybe."

The chief shrank back, as we were on the porch.

"Faaea oe; tehaeri net au. You stay ; I go," he said.

On the side veranda, a girl of seventeen or so, in a
black gown, lay on a mattress and yawned as she
scratched her knee with her toes — not of the same leg.
She was almost naked, slender and very brown. These
Paumotuans are darkened by the sun, their hair is not
long and beautiful like the Tahitians'. Beauty is a
matter of food and fresh water. She lay on this bare
mattress, without sheets or pillows, evidently just
awakening for the day. She made quite a picture
when she smiled. The daughter of the king, doubt-
less.

There was a noise in response to my knock, and the
door opened. A tousled pompadour of yellowish-red
hair above hazel eyes peeped out, the eyes snapped in
amazement, and their owner, a strapping chap of
twenty-five, put out his hand.

"Hello! Where are you from?" he said.

"Off the Marara just now, and from the United
States not long ago."

"Well, gee cricketty, I 'm glad to see you! My
name 's Overton, T. E. Overton of Logan, Utah.
Come here, Martin! He's Martin De Kalb of Koo-
sharem, Utah. We 're Mormon elders. Say, it 's good
to talk United States!"

A body leaped out of bed in an inner room, and a pair

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 109

of blue eyes under brown hair, an earnest face, sup-
ported by an athletic figure in pajamas, rushed out.
The owner seized my hand.

"I '11 be doggoned! I did n't know anything was in
sight. The Marara! Any mail for me? Come in, and
we '11 dress."

The king's daughter had fled when the missionaries
appeared. I entered the living-room and found a chair,
while the elders flooded me with questions from their
sleeping quarters, as they put on their clothes. While
I answered, I looked at the home of this foremost of the
Paumotuans, whose father and mother had eaten their
kind.

A dining-room table and half a dozen cheap chairs
were all the furniture. South Sea Islanders found sit-
ting in chairs uncomfortable, and these were plainly
guest seats, for governors and pearl-buyers and mis-
sionaries.

The walls held prints curiously antagonistic. Brig-
ham Young, founder of the Utah Mormon colony, with
a curly white beard, smooth upper lip, and glorified
countenance, sat in an arm-chair, holding a walking-
stick of size, with a gilded head. A splendiferous col-
ored lithograph of the temple at Salt Lake flanked the
portrait.

On the other wall was a double pink page from a New
York gazette, usually found in barber-shops and on
boot-black stands, with pictures of two prize-fighters,
Jeffries and Johnson, one white and the other black,
glaring viciously at each other, and with threatening
gloved fists. Beneath this picture was in handwriting:

110 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Teferite e Tihonitone

Taata Moto

Emerging from their bedroom, the elders caught my
eyes fastened on the pink page, and they looked grieved,
as housewives whose kitchen is found in disorder.

"They 're crazy about boxing," said Overton.
"That's young Mapuhi who put that up and wrote that.
We reprove them for such ungodly interests, but they
are good Mormons, anyhow."

I led the conversation to their own work in this group.
They became enthusiastic. Sincere faces they had,
simple and strong, of the pioneer type. They were
sons of healthy peasantry, and products of plain living
in the open. De Kalb had left a wife and child in Koo-
sharem, and Overton a sweetheart in Logan, to take
their part in spreading their gospel among these natives.
They were voluntary missionaries, paying their own ex-
penses for the two or three years they were to give to
proselytizing, according to the rule of their church, they
said. They were eager to return to their women and
their farms, and their service was soon to be at an end.
Each had spent a year or so in Papeete in the Mormon
Mission 'House, learning the Paumotuan language and
the routine of their duties, and now for a year and more
they had journeyed from atoll to atoll where they had
churches, preaching and making converts, they said.
They talked with fervor of their success.

"The Lord has been mighty good to us," said De
Kalb, who was in his twenties. "We 've got this island
hog-tied. If it were n't for the Josephites and some of
those Catholic priests, we 'd have every last one. Those

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 111

Josephites are sorest, because they are deserters from
Mormonism. Why are they? Why, their so-called
prophet was Joseph. I forget his other name. Oh,
no, he was not our martyr, Joseph Smith. They split
off from the real church. They don't amount to a hill
of beans, but when the Mormons left these islands, be-
cause the French were hostyle, these Josephites sneaked
in and got quite a hold by lying about us, before we got
on to their game and came back here. They 're out
for the stuff. The real name of our church here is,
Te Etaretia a Jesu Metia e te feia mo'a i te Mau Ma-
kana Hopea Net"

"Gosh, I 'd like to get my hair cut and roached," said
Elder Overton. "It was fine, when I left Papeete. I
just have to let it go," and he stirred his golden shock
with the air of a man who has abandoned comfort for an
ideal.

"Do the Paumotuans cling to their heathen customs?"
I asked.

Overton looked at the floor, but De Kalb, the older,
spoke up.

"They will circumcise," he said hesitatingly. "We
try to stop it, but they say it is right; that it makes
them a separate people. They often wait until thirteen
years of age before prompted to perform the rite. The
kids don't appreciate it."

"And tithes?" Your church members give a tenth of
their incomes?"

Again De Kalb replied :

"They should," he said. "These Takaroans are just
beginning to see the beauty of that divine law. It is
hard to make them exact. Perhaps they give a twen-

112 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

tieth. It 's cocoanuts, you know, and it 's hard to keep
account."

"Of course, polygamy is — " I was about to say "for-
bidden," when I felt that I had broached a delicate topic.
I was stupid. Here in a lagoon surrounded by a nar-
row fringe of coral, to bang the eternal polyangle of one
man and many women! The elders looked pained. I
was about to withdraw the remark with an apology, but
Westover made the most of his twenty-four years and
waived aside my amends.

"It must be met," he said. "We obey the laws of the
land. The American law forbids plural marriages, and
our church expressly forbids them. We are loyal
Americans. We say to these people that polygamy
is not to be practised. That 's true, no matter what
the Josephites say."

Elder De Kalb, who was watching me, interposed :

"I suppose you 're not a Mormon, but, as a matter
of fact, is n't polygamy, with wives and children to the
extent of a man's purse, all avowed and cherished, bet-
ter than adultery?"

Overton got upon his feet. "You bet it is," he de-
clared, with intense feeling. "It 's nature's law. There
are more women than men by millions. Men are polyg-
amous by instinct. And, by heavens! look at all those
old maids at home and in England!"

Considering the sorrows of old maids, I felt my stand-
ards being endangered, but was saved from downright
perversion by accepting the royal favor of a tub of
fresh water from a cistern that caught the rain-water
from the roof. I was seeking to immerse myself in the
inadequate bath when I saw the daughter of the king

!»

o
o

o
-a

2
"a!

r r

o
o

a
ca

o
o

<o
C

i' ..__

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 113

gazing at me interestedly, and I hope that I blushed.
But the princess distinctly winked in the direction of
my hosts as I attempted to sink into obhvion in the ten-
gallon pail.

CHAPTER VII

Breakfast with elders — The great Mapuhl enters — He tells of San Fran-
cisco— Of prizefighters and Police gazettes — I reside with Nohea —
Robber crabs — The cats that warred and caught lish.

TIMES in my life a bath had been a guerdon
after days of denial in desert and at sea, but
seldom so grateful as that in the stony garden
of Mapuhi under the tropical sun. My wounds were
healing, but the new skin forming in a score of places
bound me like patches of plaster. Not many houses in
the Paumotus were constructed to impound rain, even
for drinking purposes. The cocoanut furnished the
liquid for quenching thirst, or the brackish rain-water
retained in holes dug five or six feet in the coral was
drunk by the natives. The Europeans of any perma-
nent residence gathered the rain in barrels or cisterns,
and sometimes made ample reservoirs, while in a few
atolls were little fresh lakes fed by rains, the bottoms of
which were formed by a coral limestone impervious to
water. Such lakes were very precious.

When I went up the steps to the house, I found the
Mormon elders fully dressed and preparing breakfast
for three. A can of California peaches, a small broiled
fish, and pilot biscuits were all the meal, but the grace
was worthy of a feast. They bowed their heads, closed
their eyes, and implored God to bless their fare, to make
it strengthen them for the affairs of this world only as
they conduced to His greater honor and glory. And

114

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 115

they put in a word for me, "Our brother who has come
among us all unannounced, but doubtless for some good
purpose known to Him who directs the sparrow's fall,
and the sphere's movements."

"We have to economize dreadfully," said De Kalb,
apologetically. "We are spending our savings.
Canned goods are dear. But we are saving souls right
along. There is to be a service in the temple in half an
hour, and we would like you to attend. We are going
to pray for a successful rahui, the diving season, and for
the safety of the divers. You know they never know
when they 're going to come up dying or dead from
the bottom of the lagoon."

As he spoke there was framed in the doorway a native
whom I knew instinctively to be the monarch of this
cluster of atolls. He wore only a dark-blue pareu
stamped with white flowers, but some men have an air
which makes you know at first sight that they are masters
of those about them. So was this Mapuhi, who, of all
Paumotuans in a hundred years, had become distin-
guished among whites. Mapuhi was a giant in stature,
a man solidly planted on spreading bare feet of which
each toe was articulated as the fingers of a master
pianist's hand. His legs were rounded columns, the
muscles hidden under the pad of flesh, his chest a great
barrel, and below it a mighty belly, the abdomen of a
Japanese or Chinese god of plenty. He was almost
black from a life upon and in the salt water.

His head was huge, a mass of grizzled hair low upon
his forehead. His eyes, very large and luminous, gentle
but piercing, gave an impression of absolute fearless-
ness, of breadth of mind, and of devotion to his idea, be

116 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

it ideal or indulgence. His chin was round and power-
ful, but not prognathous. His mouth was well-formed,
big and sensual under the short gray mustache, and
not lacking in humor or a trace of irony. His nose was
all but missing, for once when building a schooner an
adz had shpped and cut it off. His face was thus flat-
tened, with a shght suggestion of a fragment of a Greek
gladiator's head; but it was not so disfigured as one
might think, and preserved a mien of dignity and re-
serve force, of moral grandeur and superiority which
one might call kingly were kings as of old. But it
was in his eyes I read the reasons for his rise from the
ruck of his race to lordship over it, and to the admiration
of the white traders and mariners whom he bested in all
their own ways — navigation, ship-building, and even
trade.

When Mapuhi saw me, he looked inquiringly at the
elders, and then smiled. I saw two rows of teeth, large
as my thumb nail, and as brilliant as the pearl-shell from
which he had wrung his vast fortune. He stood up-
right, straight as a mast, solid as a tree, and commanding
in every sense. More than seventy years of wrestling
with the devils of the sea and lagoon, and the outcasts
of Europe and America, had failed to bow him an inch or
to take from him apparently a single attribute of his
vigorous manhood except that across his broad face ran
a score of wrinkles, which criss-crossed his forehead into
diamond panes, and made one know he had learned the
secrets of man and wind and water by fearful experi-
ence.

Thus was Mapuhi who had made the winds and cur-
rents his sport, who in the dark of night ran the foaming

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 117

passes that the white mariner shunned even in daylight,
and who had made the trees and lagoons of his isles pay
him princely toll. This was the man who alone had out-
witted the white trader who came to take much and give
little.

"Good morning," said Mapuhi, in English, of which
he knew only a few words. He gave me a probing
glance, and retired, to appear in a few minutes in black
calico trousers, a pink undershirt, and a belt of red silk.
His eyes asked me if I was a trader come to compete
with him. He sat down in a great chair that vaguely
resembled a throne, wrought of bamfboo, and carved, and
trussed to bear the exceeding weight of the man, for
Mapuhi was over three hundred pounds. As he sat
he inquired of the elders the reason for my being there.
He did it with his foot. He twisted his toes into the
most expressive interrogation, which was a plain ques-
tion to the elders. They said in Paumotuan that I was
an American, an important man, but precisely what
were my affairs they did not know. I was interested
in Mormonism, in Takaroa, and in the career of Ma-
puhi. Assured that I was not another Tahiti trader,
Mapuhi put out his great hands and took into them one
of mine, and pressed it, as he said in Paumotuan, "My
island is yours."

I was loath to talk my poor Paumotuan, because I
wanted to get as closely as possible to the mind of this
noblest of his tribe ; and so I conversed in French, except
when I appealed to the elders for more exact meanings
in Paumotuan.

"Mapuhi," I began, "even in San Francisco sailors
know your skill in these dangerous waters."

118 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

"Ah, San Francisco!" said Mapuhi, regretfully. "I
was there. I had a ship built there, and I sailed it to
Takaroa. I lived there a week in your great house into
which one drives with horses."

. I conjured a picture of Mapuhi coming in a hack from
the dock in San Francisco to the Palace Hotel, and of
the striking contrast between this mighty man of these
isles and the little men of finance and of commerce who
must have dined about him. Kalakaua, king of the
Hawaiian Islands, had lived there, and had died there.
But charming as was that prince of bons vivants, he was
nevertheless the victim of the white man's vices, and as
years passed, his appearance became that of an overfed,
over-ginned head porter. Even the patrons of the
Palace must have had some vision of this man Mapuhi
on the deck of his schooner, his vast chest and arms bare,
his hair blown by the wind. Or, emerging from the
waters of the lagoon, arising from the plunge to the
coral cave where the lethal shark looks for prey. This
was what he spoke in face and form to me.

"I had seven nights," said Mapuhi, "in your great
house, and seven days in your streets. The people were
like the fish in the lagoon of Pukapuka, where no man
seeks them, and where they crowd each other until they
kill. I went in a room from the ground to v/here I slept,
a room that moved on a cord ; and I rode in other rooms
that moved about the roads on iron bands in which people
sat who never said a word to one another, and who never
spoke to me. As I walked in the roads they were dark
as in the cocoanut-groves, for your houses make caves
of the roads, as under the barrier-reef."

"But, Mapuhi," I said, "we are happy in our way."

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 119

"You do not laugh much," returned the chief, "Only
I heard the laughter from the houses in which you sold
rum. I am a good Mormon. I do not now drink your
mad waters, but in your city only the mad waters made
men happy. I was a gentile myself many years and did
not know the truth. I, too, drank the mad waters."

Mapuhi's eyes sought the picture of Brigham Young
which was on the wall, but mine went to the figures
of the prize-fighters, Jeffries and Johnson. Ma-
puhi intercepted my glance and immediately became
alert.

"Was it possible that I had ever seen Teferite or Ti-
Tionitone?'^

This question was put to Elder Overton, who hesi-
tated to interpret. The subject was a scandal through-
out the Paumotus. I read that in the preacher's face,
but, comprehending the import of the words, I said that
I knew Teferite; that he lived very near me, and that
I saw him often in his store. Once or twice I had
bought goods of him. He was getting very fat since
Tihonitone had whipped him, and most of his time he
hunted fish and wild animals. Tihonitone, the neega,
as the Paumotuans call Afro-Americans, I had seen
more than once, I said.

"That neega knocked down the white Teferite and
took the hundreds of thousands of francs given the
winner," said Mapuhi, with spirit. "They are both
great men, but the neega is the greatest. Next to the
chiefs of the Mormon church, they are the greatest
Americans."

"Have you never heard of Roosevelt, Teddy Roose-
velt?" I demanded.

120 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

He did not know the man. An acquaintance in Ta-
hiti sent him now and then the pink paper which con-
tained the pictm-es of fighting men, of fighting dogs,
and of women whose bosoms and legs were bare.
America must now be full of these fights, and of beauti-
ful women almost naked, he said.

"Your two most famous men, Teferite and Tihoni-
tone^ sell rum. The goods you bought of Teferite was
rum, for he keeps a rum store in Los Angelese, and the
neega in Keekago."

Each sentence tore the elders' hearts, but Mapuhi
salved their wounds.

"These men are gentiles, I know," he concluded.
"The elders have informed me. Mormons sell no rum.
But tell me, is Tihonitone master of his white wife? I
have her picture. She is beautiful."

Overton frowned.

"Mapuhi," he said, gently, "you make too much of
those 'Police Gazette' pictures. The godly in America
never see them. They are for the rum-drinkers, and
are found only in the resorts of the wicked. Strength
is admirable, but the fighting men of our country are
the Philistines whom Jehovah chastised."

To me, in English, the Utahan said: "That coon's
licking the white man has cost the whole white race dear.
A preacher in India told me England could better have
afforded to give Johnson five million dollars, for what
it has cost in troops. The same in Africa. The evil
of prize-fighting was never better exemplified. Jef-
fries' beating has hurt religion seriously."

Mapuhi and the elders left the room, and returned in
a few minutes in black broadcloth coats and high white

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 121

collars, in which they sweated woefully. We all walked
to the temple. It was close beside the beach, built of
coral blocks, smeared with cement, white as the ocean
foam. Its iron roof, painted crimson, was the only spot
of color on the motu, except the nodding palms.

"It is like the blood of the martyrs," exclaimed Over-
ton, piously. "The temple was begun over twenty years
ago. Nine years it took to build it, because the con-
verts were few and poor, and labor scarce. Twice
cyclones leveled it. Ten years ago the Takaroans began
it again, and for two years it has been completed. I
know of no more sublime monument to the true religion
than this little temple. Every block of coral is a re-
deemed soul. If only the gentiles in America knew the
work we were doing!"

We entered the temple reverently, the congregation,
already seated, nearly filling it. On its rude coral floor
were rough benches accommodating five or six per-
sons each. A pulpit of gingerbread scrollwork, the
only other furniture, was apologized for by De Kalb.

"It was the plainest we could get. It was made for
the Catholics. They like 'em fancy, like their religion."

Elder Overton preached the sermon. De Kalb read
from the Bible and the "Book of Mormon." The
people who filled the edifice paid all attention. Serious
always in their demeanor, except when affected by al-
cohol, they were positively melancholy in religion. All
who could afford it wore black, and the oldsters had
long frock coats of funereal hue, and collars like the
Americans.

After the services, I broached to the elders my ne-
cessity of a habitation. With the diving season opening

122 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

in a few weeks, divers and traders would be at Takaroa
from all about, and the 140 people of the atoll would
be multiplied three or four times. Most of these divers
would crowd in the houses of the natives, and the ma-
jority of the traders would live on their schooners. Ma-
puhi regretted that all his accommodations were be-
spoken.

The elders took me to the house of Nohea, a small,
neat cottage, at the end of the avenue leading from the
mole, an avenue all shining white with coral sand. It
reminded me of the shell roads of my native State,
Maryland, in my childhood. It was lined with the
shanties and huts of the inhabitants.

Nohea greeted me quietly. He was a dark man, six
feet four inches in height, big all over, his muscles well
insulated by deep fat, and with the placid giantism of
a Yeddo wrestler. He was taciturn, reserved, and
melancholy. Most of these natives became spiritually
strained when, as commonly, late in life, they gave up
the wicked pleasures of the flesh — alcohol, tobacco, and
philandering. They lost toleration for unrighteousness,
and the joy that in their unregenerate state had oozed
from their wicked pores turned to acid.

A friend and sometime partner of Mapuhi, and as
devout a Mormon, Nohea was, next to Mapuhi, the fore-
most figure in the archipelago. He was not a trader,
except that he sold his pearls, shell, and copra for money
and merchandise ; but he had dignity, strength, and per-
sonality— not quite as had Mapuhi, but more than any
other Takaroan. Among Paumotuans few men
showed distinctive character. Nohea possessed that,
and also physical strength and skill for the diving, for

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 123

the handling of boats, and for the making of copra.
When there was no white missionary at Takaroa, he
was the hierophant of the Mormon church. He con-
ducted the services and advised the faithful, collected
the tithes, and admonished the sinners. He did not fail
in zeal for that task. Nohea painted a hell darker than
a shark's jaws, a pit of horror, lit by black flames which
burned the non-Mormons, and a heaven on earth where
baked pig was a free dish at all hours. The Mormon
heaven is nearer the Mussulman's than the Christian's.
Food and rills of fresh water, many beautiful and pas-
sionate wives, song and feasting, were promised the
Paumotuan. Golden harps and streets of pearl would
hardly have brought their tithes to the church treasury.

The very day I joined him I began to see things
through his eyes. I was bathing at dusk in the clear
waters of the lagoon near our home. The severe heat
of the equatorial day had passed, and the still salt lake
was as refreshing to my sun-stricken and coral-scratched
body as the spring of the oasis to the parched traveler.
The night was riding fast after the sunken sun, and
driving the last gleam of color from the sky.

As I floated at ease upon the quiet surface of the
pale-green lagoon, the sounds of the murmurous twi-
light— the rustling of the trees and the splash of the
surf on the outer shore — were made discordant by a pe-
culiar scraping noise near-by. I turned lazily over on
my face and raised my head from the water.

On the coral in the deceptive half-light of the crepus-
cule was a hideous, shell-backed monster, which had
emerged from an unseen lair, and moved slowly and
lumberingly toward the cocoanut-trees. Its motions

124 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

and appearance, in the semi-obscurity, took on the qual-
ity of a dream-beast, affrighting in its amazing novelty.
It was like a great paper-mache animal in a pantomine.

I was beset by apprehension that it might advance to
the lagoon and approach me in an element in which it
would be my master. I swam swiftly to shore and
called, "Nohea!"

My companion came from near our hut, where on the
red-hot coral stones, which had been made to glow by a
fire of cocoanut-husks, he cooked the fish he had caught
that afternoon.

He looked at me inquiringly, and I pointed to the
alarming creature now disappearing in the palm-grove.

"AueT he cried irascibly, and sprang after the night-
mare. When I overtook him, he was standing at the
foot of a lofty cocoanut-tree and shaking his fist at the
object of his pursuit, which was climbing with unbeliev-
able speed up the slippery gray trunk.

^'^I teienei! It is the kaveu, that devil of the night
who robs us of our cocoanuts while we sleep. But wait !
I made a vow to destroy the next one I found thieving!"

Nohea went a hundred yards to where a banana
plant was growing in earth brought from Tahiti. He
gathered clay and leaves, and with painstaking eifort
fashioned a wreath of the mixture six inches wide and
several feet in length. I stood in wonderment, guessing
that he was making a charm to bring about the death
of the despoiler of the groves.

Nohea took a length of coir, the rope the Paumotuans
make of cocoanut-fiber, — from the tree which feeds them,
clothes them, and houses them, — and, tying it into a
girdle but httle larger than the girth of the palm, put

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 125

it about his wrists. The cocoanut-tree had, at regular
intervals upon its trunk, projecting bands of its tough
bark, and about the first of these above his head Nohea
slipped the rope. He pulled himself up by it, and,
clasping the tree with his legs, seized a higher holding-
place. Thus he proceeded with ease until he had
reached a point half-way of the lofty column. There
he halted, and, taking from his shoulders his matted
band, he plastered it firmly around the trunk.

He then slipped to the ground. I was as puzzled
as a boy who was told at sailing that the ship was
weighing its anchor, and saw no scale.

"That will do for him," said Nohea, "as the reef
shatters the canoe when the steersman fails to find the
pass."

He returned to the fire, and soon we were absorbed in
the pleasant processes of supper. We lived simply, be-
coming near-to-nature folk, but we had plenty. First,
we ate popo, tiny fish we had snared in our traps, and
which we swallowed raw, after a soaking in the juice of
limes. With our bonito steak we had broiled cocoanut-
meat, and for drink we opened the wondrous chalices
of the green nuts and enjoyed the cool wine. There
was no breadfruit, for these islands of stone afforded
no nourishment to such delicate and rich plants. But
we had ship's biscuit from the schooner, and for desert
a pot of loganberry jam. Nohea, his stomach full, sat
contemplatively on his haunches. Now and then he
cocked his ear toward the cocoanut-grove, but he said
nothing. The crown of the tree in which the giant
crustacean had vanished was lost in the gloom of night.
A slight breeze sprang up from the distance toward the

126 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Land of the War Fleet, and pandanus and miki-miki
bushes nodded and gave forth little noises as their leaves
and branches rubbed together.

Over all was the atmosphere of mystic aloofness which
the white feels so keenly in these far-away dots — the
utter difference of scene and incident from the accus-
tomed one of the home land. I mused about my own
future in these little known tropics —

Nohea cautiously raised himself to his feet, and, mo-
tioning me to be silent, directed my attention to the
tree up which had gone the ugly marauder an hour be-
fore. We heard plainly a grating, incisive noise, and in
a moment a huge cocoanut fell from among the swaying
leaves to the earth.

A smothered exclamation of fury broke from the
Paumotuan, but he made no step and continued point-
ing at the palm. Then I heard a scratching, and peering
through the darkness with the aid of my electric torch,
I saw the colossal crab coming down the trunk. He
held on to the slippery bark by the sharp points of his
walking legs, and backwardly descended with extreme
care.

Nohea watched intently as the animal neared the
girdle of clay and leaves. I noted his excitement, but
still could not resolve his plan. It flashed upon me as
its success was established in an instant of action.

The robber-crab, touching the clay, moved less care-
fully, and suddenly, to my astonishment, let go his
hold, and with claws wildly beating the air, whirled
downward from the height of forty feet, crashing on
the rocks at the foot of the tree. In a second Nohea
was upon him with a club of purau wood. But there

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 127

was no need for further punishment. The drop had
caused instant death. The immense shell was smashed
and the monster lay inert upon the coral stones.

The diver sprang in the air and clapped his hands
rapidly, as might a winning bettor at a prize-fight.

"The fool!" he said. "He has no koekoe — no bowels
of wisdom. He thought the clay was the bottom, and
that he was already with the nut he had robbed me of,
and which he could open and eat. Many I have killed
like that one, but it takes time. I have had such a thief
steal my pareu for his house, and a bottle of kerosene
for mere mischief. We will eat the flesh of this one's
legs, and I will melt his fat against the rahui when I
might have rheumatism."

Nohea showed me a great mass of blue fat under the
kaveus tail, and from this he boiled down a quart of
the finest oil. It was not only a specific for rheumatism
but the best possible lubricant for sewing-machines and
clocks, he said. He put some of the oil in the sun, and
when thickened it made butter, though not with a milky
taste.

This thievish crab seemed marked by his star — doubt-
less of the Cancer constellation — to play a deceptive part
in the crustacean world, for not only had he practically
abandoned the water as his element, learned to climb
trees, and to eat food utterly foreign to his natural ap-
petite, but he had a habit of hiding his tail when the rest
of his body was in full view. He would stick it in any
convenient hole, under a log, or even in the cocoanut-
shell he had emptied. He was over-conscious and seem-
ingly ashamed of it, like an awkward man of his hands
at a wedding.

128 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

The kaveu's descent from the hermit-crab family
might explain his tail-concealment custom, for the her-
mit concealed his entire body in a borrowed shell, and
so, perhaps, the robber-baron was but showing an atavis-
tic remnant of the disguise instinct. The whole crab
tribe seemed tainted with this fear of being merely them-
selves. Many of them picked up a piece of seaweed and
stuck in on their projecting curved bristles, and let it
grow as a kind of permanent bonnet. Others took
pieces of live sponge, and fastened them to hooks on
their backs. One clever chap stitched seaweed threads
together to form a tube, and then crawled into it. And
one masonic crab mixed a sandy cement and plastered
its back with it until it looked like the floor of its pond.

These specious masqueraders selected colors, too, to
suit their background, and the seaweed or sponge must
match the environment or be rejected. Older and hard-
ened backsliders invited oysters and other moUusks and
worms that live in limestone pipes to dwell on their
shells, and move about with them. I was convinced
that these low-down-in-the-scale beings knew more
about their environment, and practised "safety first"
more assiduously, than did man himself. The biggest
robber-crab in the Takaroa groves could not have got a
humble hermit brother to volunteer to go to war against
a crab colony, or risk his life to glorify the crab state.

In carrying a cocoanut, the robber crab held it under
some of its walking legs, and retired, raised high on the
tips of its other members a foot from the ground. Its
body measured two feet long by eighteen inches wide.
It did not use its claws in ascending the tree, but clung
with the sharp points of its legs ; and I saw it go up steep

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 129

rocks upon these. The remarkable strength of this mol-
lusk was proved when one was placed in an ordinary
tin cracker-box, which it could not take hold of, and
a few hours later had twisted off the lid. Nohea said
that they were not easy to trap, and that more than once
a Paumotuan, who had climbed a tree in the night to
procure nuts, to his great horror had had his hair seized
by a crab. He said that usually they bit off from six to
ten nuts upon each ascent of a palm.

"The kaveu likes to eat the young turtles when they
are hatched and making their first journey to the water,"
Ndhea informed me. "The crab, knowing where the
eggs are buried, watches them as they mature in the
sand."

I told Nohea of the crabs I had seen in Japanese
waters, some stretching seven or eight feet, and another
which bore a human face upon its back. To see one of
the latter crawling upon the sand was to see what ap-
parently was a human mask moving across the beach.
The Japanese said that these crabs were never known
until after a fleet of pirates had been destroyed, and the
leading villains beheaded upon the sea-shore.

Against the rat, which was perhaps a worse enemy of
the beneficent cocoanut than the crab, my friend Nohea
had no safeguard. He could not afford to encircle his
trees with bands of tin, as did corporate owners of plan-
tations in Tahiti, but he told me, with great appreciation,
the story of Willi, the clever American dentist, and his
atoll of Tetiaroa, near Tahiti. Once it was the resort
of the kings and aristocracy of Tahiti, the sanatorium
to which they went when jaded, or wounded in war or
sport, and to which the belles retired to whiten their

130 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

complexion by wearing off the sunburn in the shade of
the banyans and cocoanuts. It was famed in the annals
of the Arioi, the ancient minstrels of Tahiti, as a scene
of orgiastic dances.

"The atoll of Tetiaroa," said Nohea, "had always
many cocoanut-trees. The lagoon is as rich in fish as
is Takaroa. Never had many people lived there, for
it was tabu, and only for the Aril, the nobles, and the
Arioi. But now it belongs to the man who takes away
teeth from the head, and who hammers gold upon those
that remain."

The master diver spun his tale vividly but slowly.
Often he repeated the same statement, for the Paumo-
tuan speech, like that of all Polynesia, is a picture lan-
guage, and iteration and harping is the soul of it, as of
the ancient Hebrew chronicles.

Upon my mat and gazing into the expressive eyes of
the diver, I recalled what I myself had been told by
the owner of Tetiaroa, and, with Nohea's story, pieced
together the facts.

Dr. Walter Johnstone Williams, the dentist of Ta-
hiti for twenty years, had, as related Nohea, taken away
the teeth of the South Sea Islanders or gilded those
which remained. They love those shiny, precious-metal
teeth, these children of the tropics, and would give al-
most an}i;hing to gain the golden smile they admired.
So when the royal family of Tahiti fell in debt to Dr.
Williams, they -bartered, in exchange for fillings and
pullings, facings and bridges, and for other good and
sufficient consideration, the wondrous atoll of Tetiaroa.
Upon it the shrewd and skillful dentist found tens of
thousands of cocoanut-palms which had grown as volun-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 131

teers in the generous way of tropic verdure, and he him-
self planted tens of thousands more in order to increase
the copra crop. He found a plague of rats, and, being
unwilling to expend the large sum that would be needed
for the metal bands which would frustrate the rats, he
longed for a Pied Piper to lead the pests into the sea.
But he bethought himself of the proverbial appetite of
the domestic cat for the rat, and, lacking a magic whis-
tler, he advertised for cats, offering to pay a franc for
each one brought to his house by the Papeete quay. He
had copies of his advertisement struck off on the press
and posted upon the trees in and about Papeete, as was
the custom.

The result was a flood, a deluge, a typhoon of cats.
The Tahitian boy was as eager as his American brother
to earn a few coins to spend on- luxuries; and so
the cats, much like our own in appearance except for
their tails, which were curved like a question-mark,
came in bags, in boxes, and in nets, while others were
personally conducted, yowling, in the arms of the
Tahitian youth.

Dentist Williams had not expected so many, and had
much trouble in finding places for them to reside un-
til he could remove them to Tetiaroa.

There were cats in his office, cats on the landings,
cats in every room, and his garden was a boarding-
place of felines. When more than a thousand had been
collected, he posted a notice to ward off any further sel-
lers, and, chartering a schooner, hastened with his live
cargo to the atoll. There was no necessity of putting
down a gangway from the vessel to the little wharf at
Tetiaroa, for once she was made fast it needed but

132 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

the loosening of their bonds to cause the thousand cats
to reach the shore in one bound from the deck.

Of course, the cats set immediately about their pleas-
ant business of catching and eating the rodents. There
were tens of thousands of them, perhaps hundreds of
thousands, because the island had been little inhabited
for many years and the rats had been multiplying
unmolested. But with a thousand South Sea Island
cats to prey upon them, the easy supply of rats
was soon exhausted. Then the cats chased them up and
down the trees, in and out of caves and from every
refuge, so that there came a day when the last rat
was in the maw of a cat.

Meanwhile, with such rich meat diet the cats in-
creased mightily. When the rats were all gone, they
were confronted with the problem of existence for un-
counted thousands of cats. They might have learned
to eat cocoanuts, but they had become such confirmed
meat-eaters that they would not abandon their carnal
appetites. They did what greed does the world over —
what the Russians did recently — they began to eat one
another. And they followed the example of industrial-
ism which takes the young in factories.

First toms and tabbies lay in wait for the children of
other cats, and soon there was not a kitten left alive,
nor could the parents prevent the devouring of their
children because of the avid hunger of the adults.

With the kittens gone, began a struggle, with the
death of all as the apparent end in view. Swifter
and stronger cats slew weaker cats, and the cats which
allied themselves in bands, attacked distant strongholds
of cats. Slowly and surely went on this internecine

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 133

warfare, with the seeming certainty that, if not halted,
one day the last two cats on Tetiaroa would face each
other in the final contest of prowess. Then one lone
cat might remain doomed to certain death from star-
vation, .because there would be no meat left.

Once on a leviathan Atlantic liner, when the usual
exterminating process of hydrocyanic gas could not
be used, all food was removed, and the rats were left
to starve, with a dozen cats to hasten the end. But the
rats ate the cats, and then the leather cushions, and
finally their weaker brethren, until the last rat died of
starvation.

But on Tetiaroa when there were but a few dozen
of the quickest, cleverest, and strongest cats remain-
ing, the process suddenly stopped. Atavism, heredity,
or the stern battle for life, developed in the survivors
unusual intelligence, or they had a return of plain
cat-sense. Perhaps they held a powwow, or meow-
meow, or whatever a council of cats should be called,
and decided upon the one course that would preserve
their species. In any event, they saved themselves by
ending the warfare. They reverted to the habits of
their forefathers, and went fishing. It is as natural
for a cat to fish as for a dog to hunt a rabbit. Fal-
coner marked the ferocious jaguars of South America
lying in wait upon the shores of the river Plata to seize
the fish that passed by the roots of the trees. My
goldfish ponds in California were raided by cats many
times.

"I myself," said Nohea, "have seen the fisher-cats
of Tetiaroa stretched at length on the shores of the
lagoon, awaiting their prey. I have seen a mother cat,

134 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

with her kittens stringing in a cue behind her, snar-
ing in silence, and with paws fierce to strike, the small
fish which come in the eddies of the shallow pools. I
have seen the good parent pass a small fish back to
her child and smile mider her bristling whiskers at
her cleverness* in providing such fare for her little
ones."

The diver ceased speaking, and unrolled his mat.
He knelt a moment and prayed, and then he laid him
down, and in a moment his deep breathing was inform-
ing of his serene slumber.

I lay there a few minutes thinking of his story, of
the robber-crabs and the fisher-cats, and above me the
vast fronds of the cocoas inclined to and fro, while,
doubtless, other industrious crabs, unwarned by their
kindred's fate, were climbing for nuts.

CHAPTER VIII

I meet a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary, and a descendant of a mu-
tineer of the Bounty — They tell me the story of Pitcairn island —
An epic of isolation.

MAPUHI, though a zealous Mormon, was not
illiberal in his posture toward other faiths.
In his long years he had entertained a number
of them as ways to salvation before the apostles of
Salt Lake sent their evangelists to Takaroa. A day
or two after landing he brought to Nohea's hut two
aliens, whom, he said, I should know, because their
language was my own. He introduced them as Jabez
Leek, mahana maa mitmare, a "Saturday missionary,"
and Mayhew December Christian, his assistant. They
had come to the atoll to dive in living waters for souls.
A few words and they were revealed as exceptional
men, from far-away places. The Reverend Jabez
Leek was my countryman, as were the opposing elders
I had met here and at Kaukura. He said, with our
half-defiant local pride, that he came from the home
of "postum and grape nuts." A divine of the
Seventh Day Adventist persuasion, he cheerfully as-
sociated diet and religion, as do most sects, the Jews
with kosher foods and no pork; the Catholics with ab-
stinence from meat on certain days, and Mormons from
alcohol, coffee, and tea; and Protestants with the par-
taking of the Lord's Supper.

135

136 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

"I am hoping to win for the true Christ a few souls
for saving from the lake of fire in that final day," said
the Reverend Mr. Leek, with the accent of sincerit5^
There are few hypocrites among missionaries. They
believe in their remedies.

Mapuhi, when Mr. Leek's declaration was inter-
preted to him by Mayhew December Christian, was
stirred. He said so, and the most interesting subject
in the world to elderly people the world over — the state
of man after death — was discussed eagerly, though with
the reserve of proselytizing disputants. They agreed
that in Mormonism and Seventh Day Adventism they
had in common the personal reign of Christ on earth
and prophecy. Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet,
the pastor from Battle Creek, Michigan, compared with
the God-inspired Ellen G. White, who, he said, had
led humanity back to the infalHbility and perfection of
the Bible as the sole rule of life and faith. They both
believed in a Supreme God, and that only in the last
century, two thousand years after his son had been
here in person, God had raised up men and women to
conduct sinners to paradise. It had been a revolution-
ary century in revealed religion. The Battle Creek
preacher began to tell of the apocalyptic Mrs. White
and her prophetic announcements, and Mapuhi was
beginning to prick up his big brown ears when he was
called away. The Mormon elders needed him in a con-
ference. The slow, interpreted speech of the minister
flowed into rapid English as he directed his words to
me and Mr. Christian. The latter was evidently of
mixed blood, with Anglo-Saxon features, light-brown
hair, dark-blue eyes, but a dark skin and the volup-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 137

tuous mouth of these seas. His voice, too, had a unique
timbre, and his Enghsh was slightly confused by
Polynesian arrangement of sentences.

"God has set his seal upon rebellion for his own
purposes," continued Leek. "The conflict with Satan
is fiercer every year, but the Lord listens to those who
supplicate him. He is proof of his mercy."

He put his hand on the shoulder of Mayhew De-
cember Christian.

"The first white settlers in the South Seas were
rebels. They were traitors to their king, murderers, and
revolters against religion, morals, and society. They
were in the hands of Satan, and some of them must
perish in the lake of fire after the final judgment. But
Christian here is a true sample of the strange way God
works out his plans. He is a great-grandson of
Fletcher Christian, who led the mutiny of the British
ship Bounty, and he is a Seventh Day Adventist and a
missionary of our denomination."

The mutiny of the Bounty! A phrase projects a
hazy page of history or raises the curtain upon an al-
most-forgotten episode. Fletcher Christian! There
was a name. They frightened children with it while
he was still alive, and it became a synonym for insub-
ordination at sea. A thousand sailors in two gener-
ations were spread-eagled or hailed to the mast and
given the cat while the offended officer shouted, "You 'd
be a damned Christian, would you? I '11 take the
Christian out o' you!" He and his desperate gang had
committed the most romantically infamous crime of
their time, and their story had been for a hundred years
singular in the manifold annals of violent deeds in the

138 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

tropics. Their rebellion and its outcome was written
scarlet in the records of admiralty, and for long was
a mysterious study for psychologists, a dreadful illus-
tration to the godly of sin's certain punishment, and the
most fascinating of temptations to seamen and adven-
turers.

The Bounty had gone to Tahiti from England to
transport breadfruit-trees to the West Indies. George
III was on the throne of maritime England, and be-
tween the equator and the polar circle his flag flew
almost undisputed. Captain Cook had carried home
knowledge of the marvelous fruit in Tahiti, "about the
size and shape of a child's head, and with a taste be-
tween the crumb of wheaten bread and Jerusalem arti-
choke." The West Indies had only the scarcely
wholesome roots of the manioc and cassava as the main
food of the African slaves, and their owners believed
that if the breadfruit were plentiful there, the negroes
would be able to work* harder. Lieutenant Bligh,
Cook's sailing-master, was despatched with forty-four
men in the two-hundred-ton Bounty to secure the trees
in the Society Islands, and fetch them to St. Vin-
cent and Jamaica. When they at last reached maturity
there, the slaves refused to eat them, and another dream
of perfection went by the board.

Bligh was a hell-roarer of the quarter-deck, of the
stripe less common to-day than then, only because of
such mutinies as it prompted. Crowded in a leaky
ship, with moldy and scanty provisions, half around
Cape Horn, and all around Cape of Good Hope, after
twenty-seven thousand miles of sailing, and a year and
two months of harsh discipline and depressing lack of

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 139

decent food or sufficient water, the green and lovely
shores of Tahiti were a haven to the weary tars. They
were greeted as heaven-sent, and for six months they
ate the fruits of the Isle of Venus, swam in its clear
streams, and were made love to by its passionate and
free-giving women in its groves. When, with a thou-
sand breadfruit shoots aboard, Bligh ordered up-anchor
and away, the contrast between the sweets of the pres-
ent and the prospect of another year of Bligh's tyr-
anny, with a certainty of poverty in England or hard-
ship at sea, turned the scale against the commander.
An attempt to wreck the ship by cutting its cable failed,
but the second night of the homeward voyage Fletcher
Christian, master's mate, who had -made three voyages
under Bligh, being in charge of the deck, led a mutiny.
Bligh was seized in his bunk, bound, and, with eight-
een of the crew who were not in the plot, and a small
amount of food and water, set adrift in a small boat.
Bligh's party reached Malaysia after overcoming over-
whelming dangers and sufferings, and most of them
went from there in a merchant's ship to London, where
Bligh's account of the mutiny, and his and his loyal
men's wanderings, "filled all England with the deepest
sympathy, as well as horror of the crime by which they
had been plunged into so dreadful a situation." The
frigate Pandora, with twenty-four guns and 166 fighting
men, blessed by bishops, and with a special word from
the king, but just temporarily recovered from his re-
current insanity, sailed speedily to "apprehend the mu-
tineers."

Those hearties had meanwhile arranged their own
fates. The Bounty was now a democracy with Chris-

140 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

tian as president, and the vote, after an experiment in
another islet, was to go back to the fair ones in the
groves of Tahiti. There sixteen of the twenty-five
aboard, determined to become landsmen, and, with the
joyous shouts and hula harmonies of their native friends,
transferred their share of the plunder on the ship to
the shore, and went to dancing among the breadfruits.
Christian was shrewder. He knew well the long arm
of the British monarchy, and warned his shipmates their
haven would be but for a little while. They were caper-
ing to the pipes of Pan and would not listen, and so with
nine Englishmen, six Tahitian men, ten Tahitian belles,
and a girl of fifteen, the Bounty weighed and steered
a course unknown to those who stayed.

These latter weltered in an Elysium of freedom from
humiliations, discipline, work, and unrequited cravings
for mates, and in a perfection of warmth, delicious
viands, exaltation of rank, and amorous damsels.
Chiefs adopted them, maidens caressed them, the tender
zephyrs healed their vapors, and they were happy; un-
til the Pandora arrived, snared them, and took them in
chains to England, where they were tried and three
hanged in chains at Spithead. The Pandora reported
that no trace could be found of the Bounty, and the
most that could be done was to anathematize Christian
and the mutineers, and to make the path of the ordinary
seaman more thorny, as a deterrent to others.

For twenty-four years England heard nothing of the
further movements of the pirates. The new generation
forgot them, but Christian's name Ungered as a threat
and a curse. The ship and crew disappeared as com-
pletely as though at the bottom of the sea; and when

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 141

their refuge finally was disclosed, horrifying and also
wonderfully poignant chapters were added to the log
of the Bounty, and one of the most curious and affecting
conditions of humanity brought to light. The bare out-
line of all this is in every Pacific chronography, but
one must have heard its obscure intricacies from a scion
of a participant to appreciate fully their lights and
shadows. Mayhew December Christian told me these,
and the Reverend Jabez Leek commented and pointed
the moral.

"My great grandfatheh want go farthes' from Eng-
alan'," said Mayhew, "and he look on chart of Bounty
an' fin' small islan' not printed but jus' point of pencil
made by cap'in where English ship some years before
find. It was call' Pitcairn for midshipman who firs'
see it from mas.' He steer there an' in twenty- three
day Bounty arrive. That where I was born."

Not by any spelling or clipping of letters could I
convey the speech and accent of the islander, English,
Tahitian, and American, — Middle Western, — combined
into a peculiar patois, soft at times, and strident at
others, with admixture of Tahitian words. He went
on to tell how his ancestor and his companions looked
with hope at the land which must give them safety or
death. They reached the shore through a rocky inlet
and rough breakers, and, on finding stone images, hatch-
ets, and traces of heathen temples, were cast down by
fear of savages. But as days passed, and they gradually
wandered over the entire island without trace of any
present inhabitants, they felt secure. Its smallness in
that vast and then trackless waste of waters below the
line reassured them of its insignificance to mariners or

142 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

rulers, it being only five miles long by two wide, and
with no harbor or protected bay. Rugged in outline, and
uninviting from the deck, with peaks and precipices
sheer and sterile-looking, the mutineers were gladdened
to walk through forests of beautiful and useful trees,
with fruit and grasses for making native clothes; and
about its borders to be able to catch an abundance of
fish and crustaceans.

They drove and warped the ship into the inlet against
the cliff, and fastened it by a cable to a mighty tree,
and in a few weeks removed everything useful to the
upland where they pitched their first camp. Christian,
with the determination and foresight that saved his
group from the ignominious end of those who would
not abjure the ease of Tahiti, insisted on burning the
Bounty, to remove all indication of their origin to vis-
itors, and, doubtless, to make impossible belated efforts
to desert their sanctuary. They lived in tents made of
the canvas until they built houses from the ship's planks,
and these among the spreading trees so that they were
completely unseen from the sea. They had ample pro-
visions from the stores until they could raise a crop of
vegetables, and the plants they brought might supple-
ment those indigenous. The island was covered with
luxurious growths, there was water, and they extracted
salt from pools among the rocks. They parceled out all
the land among the Englishmen, and each with his Tahi-
tian wife set up his own home. The Tahitian men
helped different ones in their building and cultivation,
and in peace and comparative plenty they began one of
the most startling experiments of mankind.

Nine Englishmen, mostly rude sailors, with ten Tahi-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 143

tian women and a girl, and six Tahitian men, — unevenly
divided as to sex, whites and Polynesians unable to
converse except meagerly, with totally different inherit-
ance and habits, — were there as the experimenters, with
no restraint upon passions or covetings except the feeble
check of mutual interests. A hamlet in the ripest civil-
ization has difficulty to govern by these. Compromise
through a supposed expression of the will of the major-
ity in elections has become an accepted solvent, but in
reality the determined and organized minority wins usu-
ally. On Pitcairn, as in Eden, a woman caused the fail-
ure. After two years of associated achievement, the wife
of Williams, a mutineer, having fallen to death from
a cliff while gathering sea-birds' eggs, that subject of
King George demanded and was awarded the wife of
a Tahitian comrade. The committee of the whole,
Anglo-Saxon whole, in contemplation of their own
naked souls, could not deny Williams. The woman
left the hut of her husband and shared the couch of
the victor in the award. "There was no appeal, for
the supreme court, as in America, was final, no matter
what the congress of the people wished. The lady was
complacent, but the cuckolded Tahitian got together
his color majority and protested. He was told to
nurse his wrath in hell, and the court administered sum-
mary sentences to all who disputed its power or equity.
Timiti had murmured, but, as mere treason was too
sublimated a charge, they brought another against him,
and the tribunal was assembled, with the entire citizenry
as witnesses and auditors. Christian walked up -and
down in the house as evidence was offered, and once,
as he turned, Timiti, sure of the court's finding, flew

144 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

out of the door. He escaped to the other shore of the
island, but after weeks was decoyed by false promises
and murdered as his deceivers combed his tangled hair,
a sign of friendship.

The remaining Tahitian males formed a committee of
vigilance, and voted to rid the island of the entire su-
preme court. Its members were saved from immediate
assassination by their wives, who, in the way of women
on continent and islet, loved them because they were
the fathers of their children. Moreover, since Cook
claimed as paramour in Hawaii the Princess Lelemah-
oalani, dark women have been fired by ambition for so-
cial and environmental climbing on a white family tree.
The wives of the English in Pitcairn were able to inform
their husbands through the gossip of the wives of the
Tahitians, who also sided with the whites. One carried
her adherence far enough to murder her spouse while
he slept. Life was made fearful for these wives, and
once they constructed a raft and were beyond the break-
ers to sail to Tahiti or oblivion, when the Englishmen's
women's wailing and pleading induced them to return.
For months more it was touch and go as to survival.
Murder stalked hourly, and the oppression of the
whites became that of masters towards slaves. Then the
Tahitians crept into their huts and secured the firearms,
and with these hunted down the Europeans. They
killed first John Williams, the successful litigant, and
then Fletcher Christian, the chief justice, and, quickly,
John Mills, Isaac Martin, and William Brown. Wil-
liam McCoy, John Quintal, and John Adams were fleet
enough to reach the woods, and Edward Young, mid-
shipman of the Bounty, beloved of all the women, was

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 145

secreted by them. John Adams when hunger-pressed
showed himself, and was shot and badly wounded. He
ran to the bluff above the sea, and was about to hurl
himself to destruction when induced to refrain by his
pursuers, whose hearts failed them. Adams, Young,
McCoy, and Quintal, but a quartet of the nine muti-
neers, remained, and five of the six Tahitian men. The
latter had cut down the four to a minority of the male
populace, and were delighted to swear eternal amity.
Adams recovered, and, at a midnight session, the whites
released themselves from their oaths and decreed the
wiping out of every male but themselves. They swore
as allies the widows of the other sailors, and, as fast as
dark opportunity offered, the decree was executed.
They were, shortly, the only men.

Now was a second chance for peace and success. The
experiment of putting together without higher author-
ity a band of white men with women and slaves as spoils
had miscarried. The inferior tribesmen were finished,
but there were four of the higher race, and eleven na-
tive women, still subjects for further probation. One
would say for certain that on that lonely speck of land,
having glutted any blood lust, and with twelve of their
number already dead, these four men of the same race,
religion, and profession would get along somehow. It
was not to be.

"McCoy," said Mayhew December Christian, "liked
to drink liquor. Before he* was a seaman he worked in
a distillery in England, and on Pitcairn he distilled ti
leaves in his tea-kettle. They all had drunk his alcohol,
and it had been a factor in the quarrels. He got worse
as he became older, and he and Quintal kept up a

146 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

continuous spree until the devil gi-ipped McCoy for his
own, and McCoy tied a rock around his waist and
leaped into the sea. Three whites were left, and Quin-
tal had learned nothing from the past. He drank
the ti liquor, and when his wife came from fishing with
too few fish he bit off her ear. When she fell from
the cliff and was disowned, Quintal, with all the other
women to choose from, demanded the wife of one of
his two shipmates. He made terrible threats against
both of them, and they knew he meant what he said."

In the first case since its institution the court of
Pitcairn divided. Adams and Young, taunted by the
continuing insults of Quintal to their matrimonial in-
tegrity, and faced with the probability of extinction un-
less they acted vigorously, seceded from the minority.
They deluded Quintal into a momentary incautiousness
when the recurrent insistence of his demand was being
quarreled over in the presence of the entire community,
and butchered him with a hatchet.

"I heard the daughter of John Mills, an old woman,
relate the incident," said Mayhew. "They were gath-
ered together, children and all, in Adams's house, when
he and Young jumped upon Quintal and chopped him
to pieces-. The blood was everywhere, she said, and we
grew up with a song about it. My mother used to
croon it to :me on her lap."

Young, midshipman, of gentle breeding, and a se-
rious man at his lightest, faded away, and in his last,
melancholy days, uttered the name of God. Con-
vinced that Adams would not strike him down, he
gave way to a conviction of sin, the remembrance of his
childhood at home. He died begging for mercy, which

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 147

Adams assured him would be granted to a contrite heart.
They laid him in a grave upon the land he had cultivated,
and over him was said the first word of funeral sermon
pronounced in Pitcairn. John Adams, the preacher,
of the fifteen males who had sailed in the Bounty from
Tahiti, was sole survivor. Fourteen had perished, thir-
teen violently, in the search for happiness and free-
dom from restraint. Man had almost annihilated his
brother.

John Adams had a dream in which it was pointed out
to him that upon his head was not merely the blood of
the many who had been murdered, but that the bodies
and souls of the innocents remaining were in his care.

"Thou art thy brother's keeper," said the scroll in
his vision. He counted his human kind. The feud had
swallowed fourteen strong and wilful men, but nature,
as it had allowed their crops to grow and their trees to
become fruitful, had preserved eight of the women, and
their fertility had given twenty-three children to the
mutineers. Christian had fathered three, McCoy three,
Quintal the bold, five, Young six, Mills two, and Adams
four. Adams drew about him these thirty-one beings,
and commenced a new regimen. He forswore the de-
mocracy of Pitcairn, and in the sweat of his soul dedi-
cated the island to the God of the Bible and prayer-book
that had molded on a shelf until then. In tears and with
vows he gathered his flock about him and daily and
nightly expounded to them verses and read them pray-
ers. He did not lose sight of the material needs in his
flinging himself on the compassion of heaven, but gave
every one a task and saw that it was done. He taught
the children English from these, the only books saved,

148 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

and it was not the least of his accomplishments that he
was able to make his language theirs, for their mothers
knew nothing of it. The thirty-two became one family,
the eight widows looking upon him as their father, as
did the little ones. Morning and evening, and all Sun-
day, a stream of prayers for their welfare and salvation
was directed by him toward the seat of the Almighty,
and the theocracy of Pitcairn waxed fat and sweet.
With one head, and many hands, yearly increasing as
the children grew, they perfected their fields and bow-
ers, their fewer houses and their gear, and, born into
the environment, the adolescents became marvelously
adapted to its necessities. When the scene was un-
veiled to the outer world, it would have needed a Rous-
seau to describe its felicity.

Captain Mayhew Folger, a sealer from Boston, com-
manding the Topaz, lifted the curtain twenty years after
the mutiny and ten years after Adams had become
its sole survivor. He sailed to Pitcairn to look for
seals, and offshore was hailed in English by three youths
in a boat who offered him cocoanuts, and told him an
Englishman was there. He landed, and was received
with warm hospitality. He put down Adams's state-
ment in the Topaz's log, with the comment that what-
ever his crimes in the past, he was now "a worthy man,
and might be useful to navigators who traverse this
immense ocean." He also recorded that Adams gave
him hogs, cocoanuts, and plantains.

England did not gain a clue to the "mystery of the
Bounty" through the Topaz log. Captain Folger
tarried a day at Pitcairn, and his ship was confiscated at
Valparaiso shortly afterwards by the Spanish governor

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 149

of Chile. Young America and England were not close
friends, and their navies and merchant marines were at
odds. Six years elapsed before even the British ad-
miralty knew the facts. They were gained on an ex-
pedition of immense interest to Americans. Captain
Porter, of the Yankee navy, had been not long before
in the Marquesas Islands, to which he had taken prize
ships captured in the war between Great Britain and
the United States, and where he had flown the American
flag in token of possession, and killed many helpless
natives to indicate his power. The British captured
Porter in the Essex, undid at Nuku-Hiva what he had
done, and did it over in the name of King George.
Bound from the Marquesas to Chile, Captain Staines
of the Briton unexpectedly sighted Pitcairn and was
confounded at the signs of human life in huts and laid-
out fields, but more so when Thursday October Christian
and George Young shouted from a small boat to "throw
them a rope." Invited aboard the Briton and put
at table, they asked a blessing in English, and said they
had been taught by John Adams of the Bounty to
reverence God in every act. The Briton commander,
amazed at this apparition of civilization from the ghostly
past, put ashore a party, and investigated the colony
of forty-eight. The stupified Pitcairn folk were afraid
that Adams would be taken prisoner, and he doubtless
would have been except for the pleadings of the young,
and especially of Adams's "beautiful grown daughter."
The captain stayed a few hours and reported to the
admiralty in England the answer to the Bounty rid-
dle, and that never in his lifetime had he seen such a
model settlement or such virtuous and happy people.

150 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

England was at war with Napoleon, and left Adams
to time. Ten years later came a British whaler, and
Adams confessed himself old to its captain. He begged
for a helper in governing his conmionwealth, and espe-
cially in teaching them. The captain assembled the crew
and asked for a volunteer. John Buffet, twenty-six,
cabinet-maker, twice shipwrecked, and a lover of his
fellow, stepped out and was accepted. He knew that it
meant years of isolation from Europe, but that was
what he had craved in his rovings. When his ship was
ready to sail, Johnny Evans, nineteen, Buffett's chum,
was missing. He had hidden in a hollow stump. The
community was obliged to receive him. And so two
white men, fresh from Europe, became members of a
family of several score half-breeds who, in an idyllic
simplicity and a gentle savagery, had lived for years
undisturbed by a foreign or dissentient element, and
who in their common affection and openness of heart
were remindful of the Christians of the catacombs. The
second period of Pitcairn was ended.

It continued as a secluded handful of people, but new
theocracies began to govern them. God had been al-
ways their dependence and lord paramount, but his vice-
gerents had guided them in tortuous paths toward his
throne.

The Reverend Jabez Leek, who had often supplied
links in the chain which had led the relation of Mayhew
December Christian from the mutiny to the coming of
Buffett and Evans, said this:

"I was induced to go to Pitcairn by the devotion of
one of its sons to the place of his birth," he explained.
"I met him in California. He was a young man, and

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 151

one of the few Pitcairners who had ever been to
America. He had voyaged to England as a sailor on
a ship that had touched at Pitcairn, and was trying to
return home. That seemed impossible. Twice he had
shipped on vessels bound for Australia, with promises
to land him if the wind permitted, and once had sighted
his island, but his ships were driven past both times,
and he had been forced to go half-way round the world
on them. He toid me that he had left home in order
to earn money to start married life better. He had
engaged himself to a Pitcairn girl, and, as is the custom
there, the marriage day was put three years away. It
was already two years and a half since he had departed.
He had not the means to charter a ship, — that would
have cost thousands, — and his health was fast going.
Just homesickness. It was nothing else. The doctors
said there was nothing the matter with his body, but he
got weaker. There was no ship offering, and I doubt if
he could have passed muster, but daily he examined the
shipping lists, and often went to the docks and offices
to get a chance. It was he who told me about Pitcairn
and its God-fearing people, and he first introduced
me to the true religion of Christ. He was a sincere
Seventh Day Adventist, and confident of the coming
of Christ on earth and of his own salvation. It was
pitiful to see him fail. We lodged in the same house,
and I talked to him daily. He said that when he saw
Pitcairn receding in the distance after seven months on
the Silverhorn, he could not leave the rail of the ship,
and remained there when night came peering into the
darkness until at dawn he had to take up his duties.
His only hope was in God, but he was destined to wait

152 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

until the first resurrection, unknowing time or space,
until he comes before the judgment of God. As the
day set for his marriage came nearer, he abandoned
desire to live past it, and the only sorrow he had was
that his sweetheart could not know his inability to keep
his troth. He died the day before the three years ex-
pired, and in his last moments advised me that God had
made him the channel through which the truth of re-
ligion might be made known to me. His death opened
my eyes, and I accepted the gospel.

"I studied for our ministry, and, with service in other
fields, I was fortunate enough to be chosen to go to
Pitcairn after expressing my earnest desire to see God's
will and power shown in such manifest ways. Our de-
nomination had its own missionary vessel, the Pitcairn,
doing the Master's work in these seas, and I went on it.
On the thirty-third day we came to Bounty Bay and
anchored, and in the boat that put off to greet us, be-
sides two of our own elders, was this young man, great-
grandson of the Fletcher Christian who had, we fear,
died without knowing God's mercy. I remained on
Pitcairn a long time, a fruitful, peaceful span, for all
there were devout members of our church, and God had
blessed them greatly in faith and works. They had not
been without religious trials, though, and it was only in
1886 that they received the gift of the truth. Buffett,
the young Englislmian upon whom Adams put the
teaching, married Midshipman Young's daughter, Dor-
othy; and Evans, John Adams's girl, Rachel. They
were there a half dozen years when George Hun Nobbs
arrived with an American named Bunker. They came
from Chile in a yawl. Nobbs had heard there the

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 153

Bounty story, and was so excited over it that he induced
Bunker to start out with him for Pitcairn in a small boat.
Nobbs said he was the son of a Marquis, and soon
claimed the hand of Sarah Christian, the mutineer's
granddaughter. Bunker tried for her sister, Peggy,
and when she refused, threw himself from a cliff, as
McCoy had done long before. Nobbs built a house out
of the lumber of his boat, and, because he was the best
educated man, took Buffett's place as schoolmaster.
Buffett was angry, but the people chose Nobbs because
Buffett had fallen once into a very terrible sin. Every-
body knew it, and though he had repented bitterly, it
was remembered. Then John Adams died after forty
years on Pitcairn, and thirty of contrition, and Nobbs
became pastor, too.

"A tremendous change came about then. Tahiti was
controlled by the London Protestant missionaries; and
they made an arrangement with the Pitcairners to give
them land, and transportation to Tahiti. Every one
was moved to Tahiti, and Pitcairn left uninhabited. In
Papeete they saw for the first time in their lives, money,
immorality, saloons, vile dances, gambling, and scarlet
women. Buffett and his family returned within a few
weeks, and after fourteen had died of fever, a schooner
was chartered to take all back. It was paid for by
the copper stripped from the Bounty, which had been
carried to Tahiti. Back in their old homes, all was not
as before. Adams had never broken the still used by
McCoy and Quintal, and it began to be more active.
Nobbs and Buffett, though good men, liked a drop of
the ti juice, and there was a let-down in strict morality.
Things were at a pass when Joshua Hill arrived. In

154 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

England he had learned about Pitcairn, and through
Hawaii and Tahiti had come a roundabout route. Hill
pretended to have been deputized by the British Govern-
ment, and declared he was the governor and pastor, both.
He fired out Nobbs from the church and school, and
made no bones of what he thought of Buffett and Evans,
the other Englishmen. Hill was past seventy, but he
had his way. Nobbs, Buffet, and Evans were supported
by Charles Christian, Fletcher's son, but Hill ruled with
an iron hand. He had Buffett beaten with a cat-o'-
nine-tails in public, and announced that he was going
to reform Pitcairn if he had to flog every person. He
quoted Jesus's action in the temple, and when he heard
that several of the women had been talking about his
Qwn dereliction, he called everybody in prayer to judge
them. His own prayer was :

" 'O Lord, if these women die the common death of all
men, thou hast not sent me.' "

"This was going too far, and there were no amens,
which made Hill furious. I have heard this from one
who was present. When he learned about Buffett's
sin, and that it had been concealed from him, he made
up his mind to give Buffett an unforgettable lesson with
a whip. Then he put the three whites on the first
vessel touching Pitcairn, and exiled them. This was
the straw that broke Hill's rule. A schooner captain
brought back the trio, and they and others opposed
Hill. An elder's daughter took some yams that did not
belong to her, and at her trial Hill said she should be
executed for her crime. The father indignantly op-
posed any severe sentence. Hill, who had felt his au-
thority lessening, rushed into his room and returned

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 155

with a sword, and shouted out for the father to confess
his sins as he intended to kill him immediately. A
grandson of Quintal, who had bitten his wife's ear off,
leaped over a table, and though he threw Hill down, he
could not prevent Hill from stabbing him many times.
Others came to his rescue, and Hill was disarmed. He
was soon deported, as the Englishmen had written to
the British admirality in Chile about his madness, and
a war vessel came to quiet things. Nobbs took hold
again, and when our missionary came, they were ready
for the real word of God. Within two weeks they all had
given up Sunday as the Sabbath and were keeping Sat-
urday, the Seventh Day, the Sabbath instituted at the
end of creation, and the day Christ and his apostles
rigidly observed. I loved the Pitcairn brethren.
When my time came to go into other fields, I brought
with me Mayhew December Christian, who had been
selected for his understanding of our beliefs and his
spiritual growth."

The Reverend Mr. Leek stopped, and Nohea, who
had awakened with a start from a fitful slumber, said
loudly, ''Amener

"You should read the account of Pitcairn by Buffett's
granddaughter," said the minister. *'Mayhew, we will
sing before we go to sleep our hymn of Pitcairn, fifth
and last verses!"

The descendant of the arch-mutineer led in a mellow
baritone, which Mr. Leek supported in a firm bass:

((

We own the depths of sin and shame.
Of guilt and crime from which we came;
Thy hand upheld us from despair,
Else we had sunk in darkness there.

156 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

"Thou know'st the depths from whence we sprung;
Inspire each heart, unloose each tongue,
That all our powers may join to bless
The Lord, our strength and righteousness.

»»

When they had said good night, I felt as sinful as
Mary Magdalene; and Nohea, though the words were
Greek to him, sensed their meaning, and before taking
to his mat knelt and groaned deeply.

CHAPTER IX

The fish in the lagoon and sea — Giant clams and fish that poison —
Hunting the devil-fish — Catching bonito — Snarling turtles — Trepang
and sea cucumbers — The mammoth manta.

THE schooner Marara unloaded her cargo of
supphes after several days of riding on and
off the lee of the island, and went on her
voyage to other atolls. McHenry and Kopcke joined
interests for the nonce, and tried to draw me into the
net they said they were spreading for the natives. I
was convinced that I was as edible fish for them as the
Paumotuans, and, besides, I was determined to avail
myself of the leisure of the wise Nohea before the rahui,
to learn all about the fish in the lagoon and sea. An
ignorant amateur of the life of the ocean, I was de-
voured with curiosity to peer into it under his guidance,
and I was resolute to spend my days in such sport
instead of in sleep after roistering of nights with the
traders.

"Nohea," I said, "will you show me what the Creator
has put in the water? In my country I know the fish,
but not here. Soon you will go to the rahui, but we
have a few weeks yet, and you are skilled in these
matters."

The diver replied, "E, I will show you" ; and he kept
his word, with a prideful exactitude. Days and nights
I returned dog-weary, from the sea and the lagoon, but
never once threw myself on my mat and counted my

157

158 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

pains for naught, as scores of times I had on the brooks,
bays, and oceans of America. With our variety of
edibles in islands and continents where there are real
soil and domestic animals of many kinds, we can hardly
appreciate the desperate necessity of the Paumotuans
to comb the waters of their bare atolls for food.

The pig, the only domestic mammifer before the
whites came a century ago, ate only cocoanuts, and,
like fowls, was generally small and thin, as well as too
expensive for other meals than feasts. Few were the
birds in these white islands. In many only the sand-
piper, the frigate, the curlew, and the tern were found,
but in uninhabited atolls others abounded. I saw many
pigeons, black with rusty spots which lived in the tohonu
tree and ate its seeds and also those of the nono. Green
pigeons or doves, called oo, were sometimes seen.
None of these constituted any part of the diet.

Except for cocoanuts, the atoll yielded few growths
of value. The most characteristic was a small tree
or bush with white flowers, the mihimiki, the wood of
which was very dense. It grew even in the most solid
coral blocks, and was formerly much used for the
great shark -hooks, for harpoons, and handles for their
shovels of shells. The huhu, another little tree, with
yellow blossoms and the general appearance of the
mikimiki, was useless for timber, but the kahia, with
deliciously-perfumed flowers, made an excellent fuel.
The geogeo furnished boat-knees, the tou was fit for
canoes, and the pandanus, the screw-pine, filled al-
most as many needs as the cocoanut-palm. Its fruit
was eaten by poor islanders, its wood and leaves formed
their houses, its leaves also made mats and hats and

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 159

the sails of the pahi, the sailing canoes, and, as through-
out Polynesia, the wrappers of cigarettes. All the
clothing was formerly made of this prince of trees
for native wants. The tamanu was scarce, and purmi;
but there were some herbaceous plants, the cassytha
filiformis, which climbed on the huhu and the miJd-
miki; a little lei^tui'us repeiis; a heliotrope; a crucifer-
ous plant, and a purslane that afforded a poor salad,
and was also boiled. I also saw the nono, not here
the arrow of Cupid as in Tahiti, but a sour fruit, eaten
only when hunger compelled.

In Takaroa, particularly favored by absence of cy-
clones, by safety of harbor, breadth and depth of pass
into the lagoon, and plentitude of cocoa-pahns and
pearl-shell, herculean efforts had been made by bring-
ing whole schooner cargoes of soil to grow some of the
food plants and trees of Tahiti, but all such growths
were a trivial item in the daily demand for sustenance.

When Polynesians in their legends spoke of a rich
island, they described it as abounding in fish, as the
Jews, pastoral tribes, sang of milk and honey, the red
Indian of happy hunting-grounds, and Christians of
streets of gold, and harps and hymns.

Shell-fish, mollusks and crustaceans, played as im-
portant a part in their aliment as ordinary fish, and
ia or ika meant both. In some islands the people were
forced to subsist largely on tacloho, the furbelowed
clam or giant tridacna called pahua here and benitier
in Europe, where the shells were used for holy water
fonts. The flesh of the pahua was sold in the Papeete
market but was not a delicacy. The clam itself weighed
up to fifty pounds or more, and the pair of shells

100 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

from a dozen to eight hundred pounds according to
the age of the living clams. The shells were so hard
that they furnished the blades of the shovels with which
the native had anciently dug wells to hold the brack-
ish water.

"The pahua is also a devil," said Nohea. "In the
lagoon he lies with his shells open to catch his prey.
Many a shark has torn off his tail in trying to get free
when the pahua has closed on him, or has died in the
trap. When a young man, I put my hand into a
shell not bigger than your face, and it shut upon it.
I was feeling for pearl-shell under fifty feet of water.
I could not reach the threads that anchor the clam to
the rock because it was in a crevice. If I could have
cut them I could have freed myself, but I was able
after a minute to force my knife beside my hand and
stab the pahua so that it let me go. Paumotuans have
often lost their lives in the pahua s shells, and one cut
off his fingers and left them to the fish. I always
drive my knife into him, and then cut the cord that
ties him to the rock. They are hard to lift, — the big
pahua, — and often we must leave them. Sometimes
they have pearls in them that are very fine — not like
oyster-pearls, but just like the white inside of the clam-
shell itself, which is like the marble of the tombstone
of Mapuhi's wife."

Nohea rubbed me every day with the oil from the
robber-crab's tail, and my wounds healed quickly, al-
though the scars remained. He said that Paumotuans
died of coral poisoning, but usually recovered, unless
their blood was tainted by tona, the syphilis brought
originally by the white, and which the Paumotuan cured

Photo by Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland

A canoe on the lagoon

Photo by Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland

Ready for the fishing

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 161

with native remedies. He pointed to a species of corals
which stung one if touched. The stony branches or
plates when fresh from the water had a harsh feeling
and a bad smell, but were not slimy. They pricked
me when pressed against my arm, and the sting lasted
from a few minutes to half an hour, with different speci-
mens. The sensation was as painful as from nettles
or the Physalia, the Portuguese man-of-war. One
coral, sulphurous or dark in color, Nohea warned me
not to touch, saying it would cause my hand and arm
to swell for days. There was a jellyfish, he said, the
keakea, that in certain months, January, February, and
March, almost filled the lagoon, and they stung so
fiercely, especially about the eyes, that diving ceased as
soon as they appeared.

There were fish, too, that were deadly to eat, some
at one time and some at another, as fish venomous in
one lagoon were innocuous in another. Some isles were
blessed by having no poisonous fish, as Hao, Amanu,
Negonego, Marokau, Hikueru, Vahitahi, Fakahina, and
Pukapuka. Marutea of the north, Raraka, Kauehi,
Katiu, Makemo, Takume, Moruroa, and Marutea of
the south, were cursed by the opposite condition. In
Rangira only the haainea of the pass was hurtful.
The meko was the most feared fish at Marutea of the
south, occasioning a terrible dysentery with cramps,
which ended in vertigo and extreme weakness. Mul-
lets, also, were often harmful in certain lagoons, and
the muraena killed.

What made these fish poisonous? Science guessed
that the larvee of the coral animals were the cause.
These fish ate the coral, and it was noticed that in De-

162 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

cember, January, and February, at the time the corals
expelled then' larvae, — were in blossom, as the expres-
sion went, — the toxicity of the fish was highest. Other
fish were made poisonous by eating the sea-centipede,
curious creatures which looked like yards of black
string and wound themselves around the corals. They
had thousands of minute legs.

While all land-crabs were safe to eat, certain sea-
crabs were injurious, one in particular, a stark white
species, which was death to swallow, and which de-
spairing Paumotuans had bolted as a suicide potion.
Even certain starfish must be avoided, one, a lovely
cone-shaped kind, being deadly, their barbs injecting
a virulent poison which speedily dilated the arm and
then the body hugely, and made the heart stop beat-
ing. To the native such illnesses were awesome mys-
teries, yet he had learned ages ago to distinguish the
baneful fishes by the empire path of pain and death
which all races have trod toward safety from the en-
emies of mankind. His more open foes, whom he
hunted for food, the native met fearlessly, and fought
with adroitness.

The devilfish, or octopus, frequented mostly the out-
side of the reef and preyed on mollusks and crustaceans,
being naturally timid and inoffensive, though capable
of affrighting attack when molested. They commonly
took up their abode in some cavern or crevice, and lay
safely ensconced in the shadow, simulating the color
of their surroundings so artfully that their victims
hardly ever saw them until grasped by the suckers of
the many long, muscular arms.

"In Samoa," said Nohea, when we went to a certain

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 163

spot to seek out the devilfish, "is the Fale o le Fee, the
House of the Octopus. It is very large, with black
basalt walls, and has a pillar in the center. It was
built to guard against the tribe of giants who once
traded with Samoa."

The devilfish was, as I said, at most times sh}^ and
harmless but, when roused, the most dangerous of an-
tagonists. We met one at close quarters the third time
we paddled to the caves or recesses in the coral rock. It
was near sunset, and there were already black shadows
about the ledge, which at low tide disclosed the niches
wrought in it by the action of the water. In one of
these I saw two fiery eyes with white rims as big as din-
ner-plates, and Nohea said to beware, that they belonged
to an enormous fe'e. Nahea had a mighty spear or grain
with three points of solid iron, and a heavy, long shaft, on
a rope attached to the prow of the canoe. Better still
I carried a rifle with bullets that would kill a wild bull.
Nohea steered the canoe up to the nook and thrust out
a long, light stick toward the glittering eyes. The
cuttlefish threw out one tentacle upon it. Nohea
teased him as one might tease a cat, and another ten-
tacle took hold. Again the stick was manipulated,
and finally, after half an hour, ten arms were fastened
tightly upon the rod. Nohea gently drew the rod to-
ward him, and the fe'e emerged from his den, so that,
though the light was growing dim, I was able for a
minute to survey him in the fullest detail, as I sat
with my rifle to my shoulder.

His body, bigger than a barrel, was like a dirty gray
bag, with one end three-cornered for use as a steering-
fin, or rudder. His mouth was like an opening in a

164 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

sack, with a thick, circular hp and a great parrot-like
beak, which was ahnost hidden at the moment. His
tentacles were in a circle around the mouth, and were
large at the trunk and tapering to the ends. Two main
arms with which he supported himself against the rock
were twice as long as the others, and differently formed.
The fiery eyes were serpent-like, and set back of the
arms.

"If he were not so strong I would jump on him
now that I have his tentacles engaged, and would bite
the back of his neck till he died," said Nohea, with
anger. "I have slain many that way. But this one
would destroy me in a moment. Once we hooked one
by mistake when we were fishing for barracuda from
a canoe. My companion hauled him to the side of the
canoe, when the octopus threw his arms about him and
pulled him into the sea. I sprang after him, and put my
thumbs in the eyes of the beast. He moaned and cried,
and covered us with his black fluid; but he let go, and
fled, blinded."

The octopus was regarding us with apparent calm.
The rod he held was twenty-five feet in length, so that
our canoe was more than twenty feet from his eyes.
Nohea now agitated the rod, and the fee retained his
grasp, but began to change from a slaty gray to red,
with black mottlings. ,

"He is enraged," said Nohea, warningly. "Pre-
pare to shoot if the tavero fails!"

He stood up in the canoe, and, resting the bamboo
rod on the gunwale, poised his spear. The devilfish
felt the menace of his attitude, and his two longest
tentacles began to writhe in the air, as he measured

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 165

our distance. Then Nohea, with a step back, launched
the grain, and with so true an aim that it penetrated
the eye of the grisly creature and half unbalanced him.
Instantly the air was filled with the cloud of sepia he
ejected, — a confession of defeat, — and the terrible
arms with their twisting, coiling tips were thrust at us
in lightning movements. But Nohea had seized a
paddle, and parted us by thirty feet. The fe'e was
pulled into the water, but was not yet dead. He
struggled as if drowning, the great arms rising and
falling upon the surface, and a direful groaning issuing
with the bubbles that covered the surface. I fired
twice at his bulk seen clearly in the water, and after ten
minutes it relaxed utterly. A musky, delicious odor
filled the air.

With immense difficulty we brought his abhorrent
corpse partly upon the ledge to measure it, and to cut
off some of the tentacles for broiling. Nohea said it
weighed a thousand pounds, but that he had seen one
that weighed two tons, and whose arms stretched sev-
enty feet. The two longest limbs of our octopus were
rounded from the body to within two feet of their tips,
when they flattened out like blades. Along the edges
were rows of suckers, each with a movable membrane
across it. When these suckers fastened on an object,
the membrane reacted and made a vacuum under each
sucker. Nohea explained that wherever the suckers
touched one's flesh it puckered and blistered, and two
months would elapse before it healed. He showed me
scars upon his own skin. Our octopus had two thou-
sand and more suckers on its tentacles.

"In Japan," I told Nohea, *T have seen the men at

166 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

night sink in the sea earthenware jars, very tall and
stout, and in the morning find them occupied each by
a devilfish, who must have thought them suitable to
its condition in life."

We had other methods of catching the fe'e. One
was to tie many pieces of shell on a large stick with
the pointed ends up, and from our canoe to strike the
water with this. The resulting noise or vibration at-
tracted the octopi, who thought the bait alive, and,
eager to examine, threw themselves upon it and were
killed and hoisted aboard. Nohea would strike the
canoe sometimes with his paddle in a rhythmical man-
ner, and draw them to hear the concert, when he would
spear them.

At the rookeries of the hair seals on Puget Sound,
bounty hunters lure these destroyers of salmon nets
and traps, by the wailing of a fiddle string, the wheeze
of an accordian, a hymn upon a mouth organ, or almost
any musical note. The hair seal rises to the surface to
listen to the entrancing notes, and is shot by the hunter
from his boat.

The smaller devilfish Nohea eviscerated and ate,
or gave to his friends. I could not look at them as
food. The sepia still contained in their sacs he dried
for bait for small-mouthed fish, and we used also the
bellies of hermit-crabs, the tentacles of squid, and the
tails of various kinds of fish. For the larger, scaled
fish, Nohea preferred hooks of mikimiki, which he carved
from the bushes, or of turtle-shell or whalebone, though
the stores had the modern ones of steel. For honito
we used only the pearl-hook without barb, and, of
course, unbaited. The advantage of the barbless hook

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 167

— that is, lacking the backward-projecting point which
makes extraction difficult — could, perhaps, be appre-
ciated only by seeing our way of fishing.

When we came into a school of bonito pursuing fly-
ing-fish, I took the paddle, and Nohea, with a fifteen-
foot purau rod, and a line as long, trailed the pa, the
pearly hook, on the surface, so that it skipped and leaped
as does the marara. When a honito took the lure, Nohea
with a dexterous jerk raised the fish out of the water,
and brought it full against his chest. He hugged it
to him a second and, without touching the hook, threw
it hard into the bottom of the canoe where I could
strike it sharply over the head with the edge of my
paddle. The whole manoeuver was a continuous mo-
tion on Nohea's part. The fish seized the hook, the
rod shot up straight, the bonito came quickly to his
bosom, he embraced it, and, with no barb to release, it
slipped off the bone into his powerful grip, and was
hurled upon the hard wood. Thus no time was lost,
and the Itook was in the water in another instant. Once
or twice* when I failed in my part the bonito raised itself
on the end of its tail, and shot through the air to its
element. That Nohea was not hurt by the fish when
they were brought bang against his chest, can be ex-
plained only by his dexterity, which doubtless avoided
the full impact of the heavy blow. The bonito weighed
from thirty to a hundred pounds.

The turtle-shell for the hooks Nohea got from the
turtles which he caught. They were a prime dish in
the Paumotus, especially the great green turtle. The
very word for turtle, lionu, meant also to be gorged,
associating the reptile itself with feasting. The thought

168 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

of turtle caused Nohea, a fairly abstemious man, to
water at the mouth and to rub his stomach in concentric
circles, as if aiding in its digestion. The honu was
in the days of heathenry sacred to high livers, the
priests and chiefs, and was eaten with pomp and cir-
cumstance; to make sure of their husbanding, they
were, in the careful way of the old Maoris, taboo to
women and children under pain of death. An old can-
nibal chief was called the Turtle Pond because he had
a record of more than a hundi-ed humans eaten by him.
Turtles were of two hundred species, and were found
six feet long and weighing eight hundred pounds, but
more ordinarily in the Paumotus from a hundred to
four hundred. After a feast the pieces of turtle meat
were put into cocoanut-shells, with the liquid fat poured
over them, and sealed with a heated leaf, for a reserve,
as we put up mince-meat.

The best season for turtles was when the Matariki,
the Pleiades, rose in the east, and the time of egg-lay-
ing arrived. Then the turtles came from long journeys
by sea, and looked for a place to deposit their eggs far
from the haunts of humans. They came two by two,
like proper married folk, and, leaving the husband on
the barrier-reef, the wife, alone, dug a hole from one to
two feet in depth in the coral sand, above the high-water
mark, and in it scooped a deeper and smaller pipe, to
lay five or six score eggs, white and rough, like en-
larged golf -balls. The moon was usually full when this
most important deed of the turtle's career was done with
intense secrecy. The sand was painstakingly replaced
and smoothed, and the wife swam back to the reef and

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 169

at high tide touched flippers again with her patient
spouse. The operation occupied less than an hour.

McHenry, whom I met every day when I walked to
the village, said that it was the Southern Cross and not
the Pleiades that governed the dropping of the eggs,
and that the honu did not approach the beach until the
four stars forming the cross had reached a position ex-
actly perpendicular to the horizon.

"Those turtles are better astronomers than Lyin'
Bill," said McHenry. "They savvy the Southern
Cross like Bill does a Doc Funk."

The turtle returned to her eggs on the ninth night,
but if she saw evidences of enemies about, she left im-
mediately, and waited another novendial period and, if
again scared, came back on the twenty-seventh evening.
But when that fatal night had passed she surrendered
to the inevitable. Nohea knew the habits of the honu
as well as she did herself. He knew the broad tracks
she made, which she tried in vain to obliterate, and
he often removed the eggs to eat raw, or freshly cooked.
Nohea could swim to the beach where the mother turtle
was, and land so quietly that she would not have notice
of his coming, and so could not escape to the lagoon or
the moat; or he could swim noiselessly to the reef, and
forelay the uxorious male napping until the arrival of
his consort from her oviposition. To rush upon either
male or female and turn it over on its back was the act
of a moment, if strength permitted, but Paumotuans
seldom hunted alone for turtles, the fencing them from
the water being better achieved by two or more. Even
when we saw one at sea, Nohea would spring from the

170 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

canoe and fasten a hook about the neck and front flipper
which rendered the honu as helpless as if a human were
bound neck and leg. Once fast, the turtle was turned,
and then pulled to the beach. Nohea could attach such
a device to a turtle, and without a canoe swim with him
to the beach or to a schooner. The turtle was put
under a roof of cocoanut-leaves, until desire for his meat
brought death to him.

Nohea often picked up rori to make soup. They
were to me the most repulsive offering of the South
Seas, long, round, thin echinoderms, shaped like cu-
cumbers or giant slugs, and appalling in their hideous-
ness. The Malays called them trepang, the Portuguese
bicho-do-mar, or sea-slug, and the scientists holothurian.
Slimy, disgusting, crawling beings, they were Hke sau-
sage-skins or starved snakes six inches or six feet long,
and stretchable to douWe that length. One end had
a set of waving tentacles by which they drew in the
sand and coral animalculse. They crept along the bot-
tom or swam slowly.

There was a small trade in these dried trepang, or
beche de mer, which were shipped to Tahiti and thence
to San Francisco, for transshipment to China, for pur-
chase by Chinese gourmets. The Chinese usually put
them in their gelatinous soups. I had eaten them at
feasts in Canton and Chifu. They were considered a
powerful aphrodisiac, as swallows'-nests and ginseng.

No race so eagerly sought such love philters as the
Chinese. They had a belief that certain parts and or-
gans of animals strengthened the similar parts or organs
in humans. Our own medical men often verged on the
same theory, making elixirs, as the Chinese had for

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 171

countless centuries. At a Chinese feast where the heart
of a tiger was the jjiece de resistance, I had been assured
that a shce of it would make me brave. There may
have been something in it, for after eating I felt I was
brave to have done so.

The fishing for rori was sometimes on a considerable
scale. McHenry had often taken a score of Paumotuan
men and women on his schooner to one of the unpopu-
lated atolls. They built huts ashore for themselves,
and others for curing the trepang. They searched for
them with long grains or forks, going in calm weather
to the outer edge of the reef where they found the red
rori, which ranked second in the grading by the Chinese,
but the black they had to dive for in the lagoon to great
depths. Some trepang had spicules, or prickles, on their
skin, and some were smooth, while others had teats or
ambulacral feet, in rows ; and these, known to the trade
as teat-fish, and to the Chinese as Se-oh-sum, were
bonnes houches to a Pekinese gourmand. Next in or-
der were the red, the black, and the lolly. These latter
we found in great quantities on the reef at low tide in
shallow places. They exuded, when stepped on, a hor-
rid red liquid, like blood, from all the surface of their
body.

Against mankind these rori had no defense when
stabbed with the fork or grain, but to touch one of the
elongated Blutwursts with any part of one's body was
to rue one's temerity. They were like skins filled with
a poisonous fluid, and this they ejected with force, so
that if contacted with a scratch or sore, or one's eye, it
set up immediate inflammation, and caused hours of
agony. Many Paumotuans had thus suffered serious

172 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

injury to their eyes. The leopard trepang, olive-green
with orange spots, disgorged sticky threads when mo-
lested, and these clung fast to the human skin and
raised painful blisters. Nature had armed them for
protection. The native never gathered the rori in bas-
kets or sacks, but made a box to drag about on land
or float on the water, into which he put them.

The pawky Paumotuan gave no thought to the aph-
rodisiacal qualities of the rori, as did the Chinese. The
filling of his belly or his purse was his sole idea. The
trepang must be cooked as quickly as possible after re-
moval from the water because it quickly dissolved, like
a salted slug, into a jellied mass. If the native had no
caldron in which to boil the rori, he threw them on red-
hot stones, covered them with leaves, and left them to
steam. In an hour they were shriveled and rid of their
poisonous power. They were slit with a sharp knife
and boiled for several hours in salt water until the outer
skin was removed. Taken from the pot, they were
placed on screens made of the spinal columns of the co-
coanut-palm leaves, and underneath the screens was built
a fire of cocoanut-husks. When thoroughly dried and
smoked, the trepang was put in sacks, with great pre-
caution against dampness. If not shipped at once they
were from time to time dried in the sun, because the
presence of any moisture prejudiced them to the palates
of the Chinese epicures. In China they sold for a high
price, having the place in their cuisine that rare caviar
might have in ours.

Nohea and I essayed every kind of fishing afforded
by the atoll. We often went out at midnight, accord-
ing to the moon, and speared swordfish by the light of

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 173

torches, and I also caught these warriors of the sea
on hook and hne. We hooked sharks and many
sorts of fish, and had many strange and stirring
adventures.

For rousing hatred and fear, neither the devilfish,
with his frightful tentacles and demoniacal body and
eyes, nor the swordfish, which could hurl his hundred or
thousand pounds against the body or craft of the fisher-
men, were peers of the mania hirostris, the gigantic ray,
called the "winged devil of the deep passes," which was
seen only in the depths between the atolls, and which
was never fished for because worthless to commerce or
as food.

Nohea, Kopcke, and I were out one day in a cutter.
This was a sailing craft of about ten tons, which was
used to pick up copra at points away from villages and
to bring it to the village or to the waiting schooner. It
was about noon. We had hooked a dozen honito, and
were having luncheon when a sailor shouted to us to
look at a sight near-by. We saw a number of the larg-
est manias any of us had ever seen. A dozen of these
mammoth rays were swimming round and round, in
circles not more than a hundred feet in diameter. They
were about twenty-five feet across, and twenty feet from
head to tip of tail, and each one raised a tip of an outer
fin two feet or so above the water. The fin toward the
center of the circle was correspondingly depressed, and
they appeared like a flock of incredible bats. Every
few minutes one threw itself into the air and turned
completely over, displaying a dazzlingly white belly.
Their long, whip-like tails were armed with dagger
spines, double-edged with saw-teeth. Their mouths were

174 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

large enough to swallow a man, and their teeth, as
they gleamed, flat as jagged stones.

Nohea said they used these fins to wave their prey,
fish and crustaceans, into their maws. He expressed
intense terror of them and urged Kopcke to steer away
from them.

The manta had lifted the anchor of a vessel in harbor
by pushing against the chain, and had towed the vessel
a considerable distance. When harpooned, he had
dragged as many as fourteen catamarans or boats with-
out apparent weariness. Well might the Paumotuan
in his frail fishing-canoe dread the sea-devil! He had
known him rise beneath his pirogue, and with a blow
of his fearful fins shatter fisherman and craft. Not
vicious in pursuit of man as the shark, or lithe and able
to impale his victims as the swordfish, yet more terrible
when aroused by the impotent Paumotuan, the "winged
devil of the deep passes" stood for all that was peril-
ous and awesome among the beasts of the ocean. When
harpooned from a schooner large enough not to be in
danger from the manias strength, the Paumotuan or
Tahitian sa-ilor loved to vent his hate upon the giant
ray, and he had names for him then that he would not
dare to call him from a smaller boat.

CHAPTER X

Traders and divers assembling for the diving — A story told by Llewellyn
at night — The mystery of Easter Island — Strangest spot in the world
— Curious statues and houses — Borrowed wives — Arrival of English
girl — Tragedy of the Meke Meke festival.

THE scene at Takaroa was now remindful in a di-
minutive way of the bustle and turmoil before the
opening of a camp-meeting in the United States.
The traders and pearl-buyers of Tahiti began to assem-
ble, and divers and their families of other islands to ar-
rive. Soon the huddle had the mild disorder and excite-
ment of an old-fashioned southern revival. Chinese, the
cunning Cantonese, two generations in Tahiti, set up
stands for selling sweetmeats and titbits, and the mer-
chants spread out samples of their goods in competition
with Mapuhi's and Hiram Mervin's stores. The whites
developed artful schemes for circumventing one another
in securing the best divers. These, until contracts were
signed, were importuned and made much of as desirable
members are solicited by college clubs. The narrow
strand of the atoll crowded up with new-comers who
every few days alighted from schooner, cutter, and
canoe. All day the moat and sea were alive with boats
unloading the belongings and merchandise of the visi-
tors. The housing problem was settled by each fam-
ily's or group's erecting for itself flimsy abodes of
the scant building material growing on the isle, pieced
out with boards or bits of flattened tin cans or canvas,

I7S

176 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

while others contented themselves with lean-tos or leafy
kennels. All was good nature, anticipation of profits,
and hope of miraculous drafts from the lagoon.

In the evenings on the verandas or about the
bivouacs, there was an incessant chatter. The bar-
gaining, the reuniting of former friends or acquaint-
ances, the efforts of deacons and missionaries, the sly ac-
tions of the traders, the commencements of courtships,
and love-making of the free-and-easy foreigners filled
the balmy night air with laughter, whisperings, and
conversation. A hundred stories were told — jokes, ad-
ventures, slanders, and curious happenings. Religion,
business, mirth, and obscenity vied for interest.

Llewellyn, the Welsh Tahitian vanilla-planter, with
Lying Bill, McHenry, Kopcke, Aaron Mandel, and
others, formed a nightly circle. Sitting on boxes or
reclining on mats under the cocoanut-trees, with a lan-
tern or two above them and pipes aglow, these pilgrims
of the deep recited moving tales of phenomena and
accident, of wanderings and hardships, and small vil-
lainies.

"Sailors are damn fools," said Captain Nimau, whom
I had met in Lacour's shed on Anaa. "There was a
ship's boat passed here some time ago. It was from
the wrecked American schooner El Dorado, and the
three men in it with eight others of the crew had spent
months on a lonely island and were beating up for
Tahiti. They did not reach Papeete for days after I
sighted them from Lacour's, yet they would n't spare
the time to touch at Anaa where they might have gotten
plenty of food and water, and rested a day or two. I

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 177

wondered who they were until O'Brien here told me. I
saw them only through my glass."

''The skipper of the El Dorado who was in the boat
wouldn't let it stop," said McHenry. "He was
hurryin' to Tahiti to find a steamer for America to
report to his owners an' to get a new billet. I saw him
in Papeete, hustlin' his bleedin' boat and dunnage on
the steamer for 'Frisco after three weeks' wait. The
sailors were n't in no rush for they know 'd they be
cheated outa their rights, anyway. The squarehead
capt'in had the goods on the owners of the El Dorado
because they could n't collect insurance for her with-
out his say. He scooted away from Easter Island in
that small boat after four months there, leavin' all but
those two bloody fools who came with him."

"He mentioned to me that he was buying a house on
the instalment plan, and would lose everything if he
did n't get back to make his payment," I said. "So
he ventured 3,600 miles in a small boat to save his
home."

"Any one would have enough of that lonely island
in four months," said Llewellyn, reminiscently. His
deep, melancholy voice came from the shadows where
he sat on a mat. "I lived years there. It is a place
to go mad in. It is n't so much that it is the last bit
of land between here and South America, and is bare
and dry, without trees or streams, and filled with beetles
that gnaw you in your sleep, but there 's something
terrible about it. It has an air of mystery, of murder.
I have never gotten over my life there. I wish I had
never seen it, but I still dream about it."

178 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Llewellyn was a university man. He had drunk
as deeply of the lore of books and charts as he had of
the products of the stills of Scotland and the wine-
presses of France. In his library in Tahiti, his birth-
place, were many rare brochures, manuscripts, and
private maps of untracked parts of the Pacific, and
keys to Polynesian mazes impenetrable by the unin-
structed. Seventy years before, his father had come
here, and Llewellyn as child and man had foamed wide
in his vessels in search of secret places that might yield
gold or power. He had worn bare the emotions of his
heart, and frayed his nerves in the hunt for pleasure
and excitement. Now in his fifties he felt himself
cheated by fate of what he might have been intellec-
tually.

"I suppose I 'm the only man here who has ever been
on Rapa Nui," he went on. "It 's like Pitcairn, far
off steam and sailing routes, and with no cargoes to
sell or buy. Only a ship a year from Chile now, they
say, or a boat from a shipwreck like the El Dorado's.
But the scientific men will always go there. They
think Easter, or Rapa Nui, as the natives call it now,
has the solution of the riddle of the Pacific, of the lost
continent. You know it had the only written lan-
guage in the South Seas, a language the Easter Island-
ers, the first whites found there, knew apparently little
of."

McHenry interrupted Llewellyn, to set in move-
ment about the group a bottle of rum and a cocoanut-
shell, first himself quaffing a gill of the scorching mo-
lasses liquor. Llewellyn downed his portion hastily,
as if putting aside such an appetite while engaged on

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 179

an abstruse subject. He knew that rum made all equal ;
and he was an aristocrat, and now beyond the others in
thought.

''Allez!" said Captain Nimau. "I am curious. Dites!
What did you find out?"

Llewellyn's eyes smoldering in somber-thatched cells
lit a moment as he returned to his enigmatic theme.

"I was a young man not long from a German uni-
versity and travel in Europe when I was sent to Easter
Island," he said, with dignity. "A commercial firm in
Tahiti, a Frenchman and a Scotchman, had control of
the island, which was not under the flag of any country,
and was employed by them to look after their interests.
The firm had a schooner that sailed there now and then,
and with me went a young American. He was a grad-
uate of some Yankee college, and had di'ifted into the
South Seas a few months before. For some reason we
did not know about, he was eager to go to Easter Island.
He could speak none of the lingos hereabouts, and the
firm at first refused him, but on his insistence, and will-
ingness to agree to stay two years and to work for a
trifle, they sent him with me.

"He was about twenty-four, handsome and gay, but a
student. I liked him from the start. Ralph Waldo
Willis was his name, and I was glad that I had such a
companion for there was nobody else but natives to
talk to, except Timi Linder, a half-Tahitian who was
older than us and who was our boss. Our cockroach
schooner was a month in getting there. It 's more than
a thousand miles as the tropic bird goes, but for us it
was sailing the wrong way many days, making half-
circles or beating dead against the wind. We were

180 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

about ready to turn round and sail back when we caught
a breeze and made sight of land. I hated it at first
view. It was nothing like our South Sea islands, with
black, frowning cliffs worn into a thousand caves and
recesses. The ocean broke angrily against the stern
basalt, or entered these huge pits and sprang out of
them in welling masses of foam and spray. An iron-
bound coast that defied the heart, or any sentiment but
wonder and fear. Boulders as big as ships were half
attached to the precipices or lay near-by to attest the
continuous devouring of the land by the sea. Coming
from Tahiti, with its beautiful reefs and beaches, and
the clouds like wreaths of reva-reva, with cocoanut-
palms and breadfruit-trees and bananas covering all
the land, this Easter Island seemed terribly bare and
forbidding. There was n't a flower on it."

Llewellyn halted and lit his pipe. In the glow of
the match his eyes had the inversion of the relator who
is remote from his audience.

McHenry, who had been quiet a few minutes, must
call attention to himself.

"Is there any fightin' or women in this yarn?'* he
burst out, with a guffaw.

Llewellyn came back to the present in a dark fume.

"I '11 chuck it," he said irritably. "You want only
stories that stink!"

Nimau, the Frenchman, took McHenry's arm.

'Worn d' une pipeT he rapped out. "Take that bot-
tle, McHenry, and throw it and yourself into the lagoon.
Monsieur Llewellyn, please go on! The night is just
begun. That lie de P deques is a very curious place."

McHenry, offended, jumped up. "Go to hell, all

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 181

of you!" he blurted. "I '11 go and stir up the Mor-
mons. If they smell my breath, it '11 make 'em jeal-
ous."

Llewellyn took up his narration.

"It 's a cursed place," he assented. "There 's been
nothing but death since the white man found out there
was anything to steal there. They were the healthiest
people in the world, but we whites knew how to destroy
them. Our schooner came into the roadstead of Hanga
Roa at daybreak. I could see the huge, dead volcano,
Rana Roraku, from the masthead. Other extinct vol-
canos were all over the rolling land. Te Pito te Henua,
the old islanders called it; the Navel and the Womb.
That monster crater, Rano Raraku, must have given
it the latter name, for out of it came all those wonder-
ful images of stone. The Navel was one of many
rounded, shallower craters all about. When we landed
at sunrise and the slanting rays shone on them they were
for all the world like the navels of giants. I fancied
each of them belonging to a colossus who had turned
to stone. At first, the island was just a gray bulk, the
surface in several sweeping curves dotted with mole-
hills. As we climbed upon the cliffs and the details of
the land grew in the sunlight, the impression was of
a totally different part of the globe, of a cut-off place
where scenes and people were of an ancient sort, of a
mystery that stunned as thoughts crowded in on one.
That impression never left me. I can feel it now after
these years. The American, Willis, was fair overcome.
He turned pale and put his hand to his stomach as if
sick.

" 'What 's the matter?' I asked, though I really knew.

182 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

" 'I feel like when I was a little boy and saw the wax-
works in New York,' he said. 'All the spirits of the
dead and great seem to be around. But I 've waited
years to come here.'

"As we walked from point to point that first day,
the spectacle was incredible, absolutely bewildering.
The whole island was a charnel-house and a relic shrine.
It seemed to have been furnished by a race whose mind
was fixed on death instead of life, and who worked for
remembrance instead of happiness. Oblivion was their
most desperate fear, or, at least, they must have thought
that the preservation of their bones and the building of
images of the dead were the chief duties of the living.
At intervals all around the coast were immense plat-
forms or High Places of slabs of stone, gigantic stages
for tremendous statues. These bases were called ahu,
and were some three or four hundred feet long, and on
them at regular intervals had been mammoth sculptures.
Scores of these lay half buried in the scrub, and some
were covered over entirely by the growth of the grass.
Some were fifty or even seventy feet high and others
three or four feet, as if the makers sized them by the
power or fame of the dead men they represented. They
were like gray ghosts of the departed.

"I can't quite tell you the sensation we had at our
first stroll about. Our house was at the base of the
volcano, and Timi Linder, who came off to the schooner
in a boat to meet us, took us to it. He was a cousin
of mine — some of you remember him — and a fine fel-
low. He did n't make anything of all those images or
the tombs. Sheep were his gods, and we had twenty
thousand of them to take care of, besides hundreds of

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 183

horses and cattle. Our house, Willis's and mine, was
at Mataveri, at the base of the crater Rana Kao, and
Timi's was five miles away at Vaihu. It used to be a
Catholic mission. We were soon settled down to a reg-
ular routine.

"We were on horseback all day. Some of the going
was so bad it meant hours of barely walking the horses.
The lower part of the island was all broken sheets of
lava, grown over or about with tough grass, and it was
worth your neck to travel fast in it. On the slopes of
the hills it was smoother, the ash from the volcanos
having been leveled more in the thousands of years
since the last eruption. Another horrible thing about
living there was that we had to get all our water like
in these Paumotus by catching rain on our iron roof
into tanks. God! How I used to long for a drink out
of a Tahiti brook ! When we were out in the scrub and
noon came it was salvation to find a piece of shade. It
was not so terribly hot, because Easter is out of the
tropics, and, as I say, the climate is perfectly health-
ful, but the sun came down like lightning on that lava
and the hard grass, and the glare and the heat combined,
with the fatigue of the riding, would lay us out. The
nights were cool, with heavy dews which supplied the
sheep with enough moisture.

"Timi left us much to ourselves and said that he
wanted us to go about without any duties and to learn
the lay of the land. So we did that. The island was
about thirty-four miles around, but it took us many
weeks to make the circuit, because we followed the in-
dentations of most of the inlets or bays, determined to
see everything of the marvels before we got down to

184 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

work. Those were the days we suffered from thirst.
Except for the lakes in the craters which I '11 tell you
about, the so-called puna or springs were far apart, and
then only shoal excavations among the boulders into
which surface water ran and had been protected by
rocky roofs from the sun and animals. Just a few buck-
etsful in each at a time, and rank it was. The queer
thing was the natives drank but little water. They
would be surprised every day at our thirst.

"We ascended the crater Rana Kao near our home.
It was a quarter of a mile high, and nearly a mile across,
a perfect, unbroken circle at its edge except where the
lava had cut through and run down to the sea. The
inside was magnificent, like a vast colosseum, and, at
the bottom, a lake unlike any I had ever seen. Six
hundred feet below the rim it was, and more than three
hundred feet deep by our soundings, and the sides of
the volcano were like a regular cone. We saw many
cattle feeding or drinking in the midst of lush vegeta-
tion, and on getting close to the lake itself we found
that they were standing or walking on a floating garden.
So dense and profound was this matting or raft of
green and brown, in which were bushes and even small
trees, that the cattle moved on it without fear. Yet
in places we saw the water rippled by the wind, and
at times the cows or bulls drew back from their paths
as if they sensed danger. The water was foul with
vegetable and animal matter, but probably once this
lake had been cared for, and its waters had quenched
the thirst of many thousands of people."

"Ah!" said I, "Llewellyn, I v/as going to ask you.
So far you have been on an uninhabited island. What

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 185

about the people you found there. I am more inter-
ested in them even than in the wonderful images and
tombs."

" 'E won't say too bloody much about them," said
Lying Bill, caustically. " 'Is family killed off most of
'em."

Again it seemed that we would hear Llewellyn to no
conclusion. He got on his feet, and shook out his pipe.

"A gentleman has no place in the Paumotus," he
said, bitterly. "Mr. O'Brien, you must not judge
South Sea traders by McHenry or Pincher."

"Judge and be bloomin' well damned!" interrupted
Lying Bill. "I '11 go an' see where McHenry is.
Maybe the bottle '11 'ave a drink in it, an' you can stay
an' spin your yarn your own way. I know the bleedin'
truth."

Captain Pincher retreated, muttering, in the darkness
toward the sound of the surf on the reef. The gentle
breeze agitated the cocoanuts above our heads, and
Kopcke, a child in mentality though a man, begged
Llewellyn to keep on.

"Pay no attention, please, to those bums!" said
Kopcke in his politest French. "Now, me, I want to
learn everything."

Nimau and I apologized for humanity, and insisted
that the scholar proceed. Mollified, and with his pipe
refilled, the quarter-caste graduate of Leipsic resumed
his account.

"I was going to tell about the people, and I '11 begin
at the beginning," he said, thoughtfully. "A Dutch
ship discovered Easter Island two hundred years ago,
and shot some of the natives. Every succeeding dis-

186 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

coverer did the same. Peruvian blackbirders killed hun-
dreds and carried off five thousand of them to die in
the guano deposits of the Chincha Islands and the mines
of Peru. Almost every leading man, the king and every
chief, was killed or captured. The prisoners nearly all
died in slavery, and only Pakomeo came back. He
lived near us, and-told me all about it. Timi Martin be-
lieved there were twenty thousand people on the island
near the time of the Peruvian raid.

"From then on, with all the livest men gone, the
people paid no attention to any authority. There had
been a hereditary monarchy for ages, and while the
clans might go to battle for any reason, no one ever
touched the king or his family. But with Maurata,
the king, kidnapped, and most of the head men, there
was no boss. Then Frere Eugene, a Belgian priest
of Chile, brought back three youths who had been taken
by the Peruvians. One was Tepito, the heir of King
Maurata, and the priest thought maybe he could use
him to convert the islanders. He had a hard time, but
he did it. You must say for those old missionaries that
they stuck to their jobs though "hell popped. He had
fifty narrow escapes from being assassinated by natives
who thought him much like the Peruvians, and just
when he was baptizing the last of the Rapa Nuiis, and
complete peace had settled down, trouble began again.
A Frenchman who was looking about for a fortune ar-
rived there and took up his residence. He saw there
was plenty of land not used for growing yams, the only
crop, and so he went into partnership with a Scotchman
in Tahiti to grow sheep, cattle, and horses. He gave a

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 187

few yards of calico for a mile of land, and started his
ranch with the Scotchman's animals.

"The Frenchman took up with a common woman who
had been the wife of a chief but who was not of the chief
caste, and he had her made queen. Queen Korato was
her name, and she was a caution — like a society woman
and a Jezebel, mixed. She bossed everything but her
husband. She started a row between him and Frere
Eugene, who claimed authority through the church.
There being no regular government, the priest said that,
through God and the pope, he was the ruler. He was a
strong man, and I must say from all accounts kind to
the natives. They started to work and built again, but
the feud between the church and the queen became
fiercer and fiercer, and finally after personal combats be-
tween leaders, and a few deaths, Frere Eugene gathered
all his adherents and, securing a vessel through his
bishop, transported them to the Gambier Islands.

"Now the struggle commenced of getting the land
away from the natives. Without any government, and
the land of each district owned in community by each
clan, the queen and the Frenchman had to get title by
cunning and force. They did not succeed in that without
blood. Booze and guns and meat did it. The remain-
ing head men gave away the land for sheep to eat, for
gin and rum to drink, and for guns to shoot those who
objected to having their land taken. Of course, it was
really a community, with no private property inside the
clans, but the chiefs signed papers they could n't read,
and the firm claimed everything soon. It was legal as
things go, as legal as England taking New Zealand or

188 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Australia, or France taking my Tahiti. The people di-
vided into factions, headed by self-appointed chiefs, and
went to fighting. Some were driven into craters, and
some hid in caves. The crowd that had the upper hand
chased the other groups. They all began to steal the
sheep for food, and the Frenchman hired a band to stop
the marauding and end the war. Then the real mas-
sacres began. Natives were so pressed they took up
cannibalism again, and without fire they ate their meat
raw. Ure Vaeiko told me how he warmed a slice of a
man's body in his armpit to make it better eating.

"In the end a kind of peace was made by the terrible
misery of all. But the Frenchman who had gotten the
land did not live long to enjoy his bargain. They
caught him unawares when he was on a ladder helping
to repair the very house we lived in, and which he built.
They struck him down with a club, and buried him
near-by. Other whites all but lost their lives later when
they tried to prevent the islanders from stealing sheep
when hungry. They were besieged in our house, but
finally were saved by the arrival of a vessel. Now,
with their potato plantations destroyed, their houses
burned, the natives were done for. They consented to
sign contracts to work in the hot sugar-fields of Tahiti.
Five hundred were removed there. I often saw them,
poor devils. They were homesick to death, and they
never were brought back as promised. They died in
Tahiti, crying for their own land.

"It was not long after that I went to Easter with the
American, Willis. Queen Korato had followed the
Frenchman into the grave, and the Scotchman had be-
come the sole owner of the island. No one disputed

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 189

him, and when Willis and I took up our residence in
the former royal residence at Mataveri, Timi Linder
was the virtual king. The entire population either lived
on small plantations which they had to wall in to keep
the cattle and sheep from eating their yams, or they
worked for us looking after the cattle and horses, and
shearing the sheep. The fighting was over, for the spirit
of the wild islanders was extinct as was almost all the
twenty thousand Linder said were there a few years be-
fore. The two or three hundred left lived in the ruins of
the ancient stone houses, cairns, and platforms, the
tombs of the dead Rapa Nuiis for ages. The living piled
up more stones or roofed in the walls with slabs and
earth, and got along somehow. They had lost all rev-
erence for the past, and often brought us the skulls of
their ancestors to trade for a biscuit or two or a drink
of rum.

"Willis and I were young, and though both of us were
intensely interested in the mystery of the island, and the
unknown throngs who had built the gigantic sepulchers
and carved the monoliths, we had many dull hours.
When it rained or at night we thought of the outside
world. The howling of the sheep-dogs, the moaning
of the wind, and the frightful pests of insects made the
evenings damnable. The fleas were by the millions, and
the glistening brown cockroaches, two or three inches
long, flew at our lights and into our food, while mosqui-
toes and hordes of flies preyed on us. We often sat
with nets on our heads and denim gloves on, and on our
cots we stuffed our ears with paper to keep out snap-
ping beetles. Willis was wrapped up in trying to read
the wooden tablets Linder had collected, on which were

190 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

rows and rows of picture symbols. First, he had to
learn the Rapa Nui language. There 's one way to do
that in these islands. We all know that, and it was
easy there. They had always had a custom by which a
husband leased his wife to another man for a considera-
tion. Linder attended to that, and sent over to us two
girls to teach us the lingo. They were beautiful and
merry, being young, and looked after our household.
Taaroa was assigned to Willis and Tokouo to me. We
got along famously until one day, after a year or so, a
schooner arrived to take away wool, and on it was a white
girl and her father. That changed everything for us."

In Llewellyn's air and low, mournful voice there was
confession. In his words there had been anger at Cap-
tain Pincher's accusation, but with Lying Bill and Mc-
Henry, mockers at all decency, missing from the circle,
we others became impressed, I might say, almost op-
pressed, by impending humiliation. In an assemblage,
a public meeting, or a pentecostal gathering, one with-
stands the self reproach and contrition of others, or, per-
haps, experiences keen pleasure in announced guilt and
remorse, but among a few, it hurts. One's soul shrinks
at its own secrets, and there is not the support and excite-
ment of the throng. We moved uneasily, with a strug-
gling urge to call it a night, but Llewellyn, absorbed in
his progress toward unveilment, went on without notic-
ing our disquiet.

"My God ! What a change for Willis and me I The
schooner was in the offing one morning when we got up.
We calculated that the wind would not let her anchor
at Hanga Piko, and started out on horses for Rana
Raraku to photograph the largest image we had found

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 191

on the island. You have been in Egypt, O'Brien?''
I nodded assent, and the lamp threw a spot of light
on Llewellyn's gloomy face.

"You remember the biggest obelisk in the world is
still unfinished in the quarry at Syene. This one, too,
was still in the rough. It lay in an excavation on the
slope of the huge crater, not fully cut out of the rocky
bank, but incredibly big. We measured it as quite
seventy feet long. It was as all those images, a half-
length figure, the long, delicate hands almost meeting
about the body, the belly indrawn — pinched, and the
face with no hkeness to the Rapa Nui face, or to any
of the Polynesians, but harsh and archaic, perhaps show-
ing an Inca or other austere race, and also the wretched-
ness of their existence. Life must have been dour for
them by their looks and by their working only for the
dead. How they ever expected to move this mass we
could not understand. They had no wood, even, to
make rollers, as the Egyptians had, because their thickest
tree was the toromiro, not three inches in diameter, but
they had to depend on slipping the monstrous stones
down slopes and dragging them up hills or on the level
by ropes of native hemp and main strength. Hundreds
or thousands of sculptors and pullers must have been re-
quired for the 555 monoliths we found carved or almost
finished. But they never were of the race the whites
saw there.

"Before we began the descent of Rana Rauraku we
stopped a moment to survey the scene. The sun was
setting over La Perouse Bay, and the side of the crater
on which we were was deepening in shadow. As we
went down the hill the many images reared themselves

192 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

as black figures of terror and awe against the scarlet
light. Willis was in a trance. He was a queer fellow,
and there was something inexplicable in his attachment
to those paradoxes of rock dolls. He thought he had
discovered some clue to the race of men or religious cult
which he believed once went almost all over the world
and built monuments or stonehenges long before metal
was known as a tool. We rode across the swelling plain
past the quarry in the Teraai Hills where the hats for
the images were carved of the red sandstone, and we
stayed a minute to see again a monster twelve feet
across and weighing many tons. It was a proper head-
covering for the sculpture in the quarry. What had
caused the work to stop all of a sudden? There were
hundreds of tools, stone adzes and hammers, dropped
at a moment, statues near finished or hardly begun,
some half-way to the evident place of fixation, and others
almost at them. What dreadful bell had sounded to
halt it all?

"Talking about all that, we came to where we could
see the Hanga Piko landing, and our company schooner
anchored a little offshore. The captain and some of the
crew were engaged in bringing supplies ashore, and it
was not until we rode into the ground of Queen Korato's
palace, our home, that we saw there were white strangers
arrived. Imagine the situation! When we called to
Taaroa and Tokouo to get a man to care for the horses,
out came a beautiful English girl in a white frock, and
apologized for having entered the house in our absence.
Her father joined her, and we soon knew him. Professor
Scotten Dorey, for the greatest authority on Polynesian
languages, myths, and migrations. There he was, by

After the bath in the pool

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 193

the favor of the Tahiti owners, come to stay indefinitely
and to study the Rapa Nui language. His daughter
was his scribe, she said, and saved his eyes as much as
possible by copying his notes. We were up against it,
as O'Brien would say. Our conveniences were scant, —
the queen had not been much for linen or dishes, — and
you know how we fellows live even in such nearer places
like Takaroa.

"Then there was the matter of Taaroa and Tokouo;
borrowed wives, recognized as the custom was. Willis
took one look at Miss Dorey, and went white as when
he first saw the sweep of Easter Island. He was as
sensitive as a child about certain things. There we had
been all alone, I used to doing what I damn please, any-
how, and he without any old havarde to chatter, or even
to see. I won't say, too, that we had n't had some drink-
ing bouts, nights when we had scared away even the
cockroaches and the ear-boring beetles with our songs,
and the love dances of Taaroa and Tokouo. For me,
I 'm a gentleman, and I was a student under Nietzsche
at Basel, but I hate being interfered with. I 've lived
too long in the South Seas. But for the American, a
young chap just out of college, it was like being seen
in some rottenness by a member of his family. You fel-
lows may laugh, but that 's the way he felt. He used to
talk about a younger sister to me on our voyage up.

"We assured the daughter and father we would care
for them. There was room enough, four or five cham-
bers in the place, and we could improvise beds for them,
rough as they might be, but the daily living, the meals
and the evenings, confronted us hatefully. I would
mind nothing but the being so close to probably very

194 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

particular people, the lack of freedom of undress, and
the pretense about Tokouo, but Willis was in a funk.
He wanted to go to live with Timi Linder, but I knew
that he could not endure that. Linder was island-born
and almost a native, insects were nothing to him, and
he made no pretense of regular meals like a white. Be-
sides he was boss, and wanted to live his own life. I told
Willis plainly he had to make the best of it for a few
months. He finally said he would break off his intimacy
with Taaroa, and I said that that was his lookout.

"So we took the Doreys into our menage. We gave
them two rooms together, and WiUis and I doubled up.
Taaroa and Tokouo had their mats in the fourth, and
the fifth was the living- and dining-room. The cook-
house was detached. We improvised a big table for
the professor on which he could spread his dictionaries
and comparative lists of South Seas languages, and
there day after day he delved into the Te Pito te Henua
mystery. Chief Ure Vaeiko and Pakomeo were inter-
preters of the tablets and reciters of legends, but, as the
professor had not yet mastered the Rapa Nui tongue,
a go-between in English was needed. For a few days
Timi Linder volunteered for this job, but soon it was
the American who was called upon. He had made good
use of his year or so and knew the dialect well. It is
only a dialect of the Malayo-Polynesian language, and
the professor himself in three months knew more of it
than any of us because he spoke six or seven other
branches of it from New Zealand Maori to Tahitian.

"The schooner, after a month of unloading supplies
and taking on wool and cattle, sailed for Tahiti, and
Timi Linder went with her, as he had been three years

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 195

away from his relations. This left me in charge, and
as the principal settlement was at Vaihu, the former
mission, I was ordered by Linder to move there, and
Willis to stay at Hanga Piko. You can see easily how
fate was shaping things for the American. I took
Tokouo with me, and, the year's lease of Taaroa expir-
ing, she was demanded back by her husband. An
elderly Tahitian couple replaced them as helpers in the
palace. As I was five miles away, with a poor road,
and had to keep the accounts of births and deaths of
people and animals, look after the warehouse, and be
a kind of chief and doctor, I saw less and less of the
Doreys, and not much more of Willis. He had to run
his gang, attend to the cattle, the water-holes, and sheep
that got in distress in the craters or caves. Of course,
now and then he came over to see me, or I to see him
and the Enghsh people, — I 'm Welsh myself, three-
quarters, — and I met him often in the scrub.

"Everything seemed going along all right after a few
months. The Doreys came in the seventh month of
the Rapa Nui year, Koro, which corresponds to our
January, Timi Linder left in Tuaharo, Febiniary, and
Taaroa returned to her husband the last of that month.
The month is divided in half, beginning with the new
moon and the full moon. On the first of the full moon
in Vaitu-nui, May, we had a party to visit the ahu of
Hananakou. The professor, his daughter, and Willis
joined me at Vaihu as it was on the trail, and in com-
pany with several islanders we started. It so happened
that Taaroa was at my house to visit Tokouo, and when
Willis rode into the inclosure she was the first person
he saw.

196 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

" 'Kdhomaif he said, which is the usual greeting. It
is hke 'Good day' or 'How do you do,' but it actually
means 'Come to me!' You answer, 'Koe!' which is
'Thou!' A dozen times a day you might meet and say
this, pleasantly or automatically, but I heard Taaroa
reply with astonishing bitterness, 'Koe kovau aita pat-
henga!' 'Thou! I am not a dog!' She turned her
back on him as Miss Dorey followed in, and I saw on his
face a look of puzzlement and fear. I was struck for
the first time by the contrasting beauty of the two girls,
Taaroa the finest type of Polynesian, as fine as the best
Marquesan, and the white girl the real tea-tea, the blond
English, the pink-white flesh, the violet eyes and rich
brown hair. I tell you I 'd like to have been lover to
them both. Taaroa looked intently at Miss Dorey, who
spoke to her negligently though kindly, and the inci-
dent was over. Anyhow, for the time being.

"The ahu of Hananakou was a grim sight in the moon-
light. About eighty yards long, and but four wide,
it loomed on the sea-cliff like the fort at Gibraltar, black,
broken, and remindful of the past. The front was of
huge blocks of fire-rocks, all squared as neatly as the
pyramids, and carved in curious faces and figures barely
traceable in the brilliant night. Among these was the
swastika or fylfot. Human remains filled the inner
chambers, and bones were lying loose among the boul-
ders. The professor took my arm — he was in his sixties
then — and led me to where a fallen statue lay prone on
the steep slope toward the sea.

" 'Agassiz guessed it,' he said quietly. 'The Pacific
continent once extended due west from South America
to here, pretty nearly from the Galapagos to the Pau-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 197

motus. The people who built these statues were the
same as the Incas of Peru. In my room now is a draw-
ing made by my daughter of the figures on the rocks at
Orongo. I have its duplicate on a piece of pottery I
dug up in an Inca grave. There is the swastika as in
ancient Troy, India, and in Peru. The Maori legend
known from Samoa to New Zealand was correct. Prob-
ably it came from Rapa Nui people who survived the
cataclysm that lowered the continent under the ocean.

"Instinctively I turned my head towards the great
land of South America now two thousand miles away,
and in the moonbeams I saw Willis clasping the Enghsh
girl's hand. Her face was close to his and her eyes had
happy tears in them. A jealous feeling came over me.
As a matter of fact, I never made love to a white
woman since I left Europe. I 'm satisfied with the
part-native who don't ask too much time or money.
But, by God, I envied him that night, and when we
returned to Queen Korato's palace I hated him for his
luck.

The mood of Llewellyn was growing more self-ac-
cusatory, and his voice less audible. Perhaps Aaron
Mandel, an old pearl-buyer, had heard him tell the story
before, because he interrupted him, and said:

"What the devil 's the good of openin' old graves,
T'yonni?"

He said it, indulgently, calling him by his familiar
Tahitian name, but Llewellyn was set to tell it all. I
felt again and more certainly that it was confession, and
excused my impatient interest by the need of his mak-
ing it.

"Let him finish!"

198 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Llewellyn's gaze was that of a man relieved from im-
minent prison.

"It 's not my grave, Mandel," he said; 'T could not
foresee the future. When I got back to Vaihu, Tokouo
brought me some rum and water, and Taaroa sat on the
mat with us. She had questions in her black eyes, and
I had to answer something after what I had heard her
say to Willis.

" 'We went to Hananakou,' I began.

" 'He does not need me now,' she broke in angrily.
'He has gotten all my words, and gives them to the
Via tea-tea (white woman) . He is a toke-toke, a thief!'

"Remember that Miss Dorey was undoubtedly the
first white female Taaroa had ever seen, and that jeal-
ousy among women or men in Rapa Nui was unknown.
They hated, like us, but jealousy they had no word
for. And because I was amazed at her emotion, I
said:

" 'I saw them hohoi (embrace) .'

"Taaroa showed then the heat of this new flame on
Easter Island. She gave a mocking laugh, repeated it,
then choked, and burst into wailing. You could have
told me that moment I knew nothing of the Maori, and
I would not have denied it. I was struck dumb, and
swallowed my drink. And as I poured another, and sat
there in the old mission-house where Frere Eugene had
gathered his flock years before, Taaroa began the love
song of her race, written in the picture symbols on the
wooden tablet I have in my house in Tahiti now. It
is the Ate-a-renga-hokan iti poheraa. You know how
it goes. I can hear Taaroa now:

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 199

*'Ka tagi, Renga-a-manu — hakaopa ;
Ohiu runarme a ita metua.
Ka ketu te nairo hihi — O te hoa!
Eaha ton tiena — e te hoa — e!

"Ta hi tiena ita have.
Horoa ita have.
Horoa moni e fahiti ;

Ita ori miro;

Ana piri atu ;

Ana tagu atu."

Even a quarter of Maori blood with childhood spent
in Polynesia lends a plaintive quality to the voice of men
and women, and gives them an ability to sing their own
songs in a powerfully affecting manner — the outpour-
ing of the sad, confused hearts of a destroyed people.
Under the cocoanut-trees of Takaroa, the lamps all but
expiring by then, the man who had sat under Nietzsche
at Basel rendered the song of Takaroa, the primitive
love cry of the Rapa Nuiis, so that I was transported
to the Land of Womb and Navel, and saw as he did the
lovely savage Taaroa in her wretchedness.

"Auwe!" Kopcke exclaimed. "She could love!"
"Eialia e ru! You shall see!" murmured Llewellyn,
forebodingly. "After that I did n't meet Taaroa for
two months. She stopped visiting Tokouo, and my girl
said she was heva, which is wrong in the head. Tokouo
couldn't even understand jealousy. But I did, and
I envied the American having two women, the finest on
the island, in love with him. About a month later I was

200 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

at the palace to have supper with them. My word,
Miss Dorey had straightened out things. There were
the best mats, those the natives make of bulrushes, every-
where. The table was spread as fine as wax, and we had
a leg of mutton, tomatoes, and other fresh vegetables.
She said they owed the green things to Willis, who had
hunted the islands for them, and found some wild and
some cultivated by natives who had the seed from war-
vessels that had come years before. The professor had
out my tablets after dinner, and his daughter read the
translation into English of the song Taaroa had sung.
She had brought with her on the schooner a tiny organ
about as big as a trunk, and she had set the ute to music,
as wild as the wind. The words went like this:

"Who is sorrowing? It is Renga-a-manu-hakopa !

A red branch descended from her father.

Open thine eyehds, my true love.

Where is your brother, my love?

At the Feast in the Bay of Salutation

We will meet under the feathers of your clan.

She has long been yearning after you.

Send your brother as a mediator of love between us,

Your brother who is now at the house of my father.

Oh, where is the messenger of love between us?

When the feast of driftwood is commemorated

There we will meet in loving embrace.

"She was dressed all in white, with a blue sash, and
a blue ribbon in her hair, and when she sang I could see
her white bosom as it rose and fell. She was making
love to the American right before me. Her father, with
the tablet beside him, thought of nothing but the trans-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 201

lation, and she had forgotten me. I could see that this
was one of many such evenings. Willis stood and
turned the leaves on which she had written her words
and air, and when she sang the word 'love' their bodies
seemed to draw each other. There was a girl I knew
in Munich — but hell ! After the tablets were put away,
we talked about the yearly festival of the god Meke
Meke, which was about the last of the ancient days still
celebrated. The schooner was due back, and would take
away the visitors, and they hoped that it would not go
before thirty days yet, when it would be Maro, the last
month in the Rapa Nui year, our July. That was the
real winter month, and then the sea-birds came by the
tens of thousands to lay their eggs. Mostly they pre-
ferred the ledges and hollows of the cliffs, but the first
comers frequented two islets or points of rock in the
sea just below the crater Rano Kao. Both Chief Ure
Vaeiko and the old Pakomeo said that always there had
been a ceremony to the god Meke Meke at that time.
We had witnessed the one the previous year, and could
tell the English pair about it.

"All the strong men of the island, young and old,
met at Orongo after the birds were seen to have re-
turned, and raced by land and water to the rocks, Motu
Iti and Motu Nui, to seize an egg. The one who came
back to the king and crowd at Orongo was highly hon-
ored. The great spirit of the sea, Meke Meke, was sup-
posed to have picked him out for regard, and all the year
he was well fed and looked after by those who wanted
the favor of the god. The women especially were
drawn to him as a hero, and a likely father of strong
children. In times gone, said Ure Vaeiko, many were

202 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

killed or hurt in the scramble of thousands, and in the
fights for precedence that came in the struggle to break
the eggs of competitors. Now one or two might be
drowned or injured, but, with the few left to take part,
often no harm was done anybody.

"When I left that night Willis walked a little distance
with me as I led my horse. He was under stress and,
after fencing about a bit, said that he would like to go
away on the schooner. His two years were not com-
plete, but he was anxious to get back to America. He
had gathered material for a thesis on the tablets and
sculptures of Rapa Nui, with which he believed he could
win his doctor's degree. That was really what he had
come for, he said. I was sore because I knew the truth.
I did n't doubt about the thesis. That explained his
being there at all, but his wanting to go on that next
vessel was too plain. I said to him that he was not a
prisoner or a slave, but that I hoped he would stay, un-
less Timi Linder was aboard, when it would be all right,
as only two white men were needed, one at each station.
We left it that way, though he did not say yes or no.

"Well, Linder was on the schooner, and she came into
Hanga Piko Cove two weeks before the Meke Meke
feast, so that her sailing was set for the day after, and
Willis was told by Linder it was all right for him to
go. Linder had letters for everybody, and new photo-
graphic films for Willis. I unloaded the vessel, and
Willis rode over the island with Linder to show him the
changes, the increase of cattle and sheep, and pick out
certain cattle and horses the schooner was to carry to
Tahiti. He made dozens of pictures for his thesis.
Meanwhile the natives had absolutely quit all work and

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 203

moved in a body from their little plantations to the old
settlement at Orongo to prepare for the race. Orongo
was the queerest place in the world. If Rapa Nui was
strange, then Orongo was the innermost secret of it.
It was a village of stone houses in two rough rows,
built on the edge of the volcano Rana Kao, and facing
the sea. There were fifty houses, all pretty much alike.
They were built against the terraces and rocks of the
crater slope, without design, but according to the
ground. The doorways to the houses were not two feet
wide or high, and the rooms, though from a dozen to
forty feet long, never more than five feet wide, and the
roofs not more than that high. They were built of slabs
of stone, and the floors were the bare earth. The door-
posts were sculptured and the inside walls painted, and
the rocks all about marked with hieroglyphics and
figures. There were lizards, fishes, and turtles, and a
half -human, mythical beast with claws for legs and arms,
but mostly the Meke Meke, the god which Professor
Dorey had discovered the likeness of in the Inca tombs
in Peru. The old people said that Orongo had never
been occupied except at the time of the feast of Meke
Meke.

"So there they were, all that were left of the once
many thousands, living again in those damp, squat
tombs, and cooking in the ovens by the doorways that
were there before Judas hanged himself. All knew
that Orongo was more ancient than the platforms or
the images, and those were built by the same folk who
put up the stonehenges in Britain and in the Tonga
Islands. Pakomeo, who had escaped from the slavery
in Peru, was in charge of the Meke Meke event, be-

204 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

cause Chief Ure Vaeiko was in his eighties. We do-
nated a number of sheep, and, with yams, bananas, and
sugar-cane, — we grew a little of these last two, — the
show was mostly of food. A few went to Orongo
several days before the bird-eggs trial, but all slept
there the night before. The moon was at its biggest,
and the women danced on the terrace in front of the
houses. Professor Dorey and his daughter with Willis
were there when Timi Linder and I arrived after sup-
per. They had waited for us, to begin, and the drums
were sounding as we rounded the curve of the crater.

"The English girl was entranced by the beauty of the
night, the weird outhnes of the Orongo camp, the over-
reaching rise of the volcano, the sea in the foreground,
and the kokore torn, the moon that shone so brightly
on that lone speck of land thousands of miles from our
homes. I heard her singing intimately to him an old
English air. The schooner was to leave the next day,
and her lover would go with her.

"When we were seated on mats, Pakomeo struck his
hands together, and called out, 'Riva-riva maitaV/
Two women danced, both so covered with mat garments
and wearing feather hats drooping over their heads that
I did not know them. The tom-tom players chanted
about the Meke Meke, and the women moved about
the circle, spreading and closing their mats in imitation
perhaps of the Meke Meke's actions in the sea or air.
I was bored after a few minutes, and watched Willis
and Miss Dorey. They were in the shadow sitting
close to each other, their hands clasped, and from his
sweet words to her I learned her first name. The father

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 205

always said simply 'daughter,' but Willis called her
Viola. It was a good name for her, it seemed to me,
for she was grave and pathetic like the viola's notes.
The two women were succeeded by others, who put in
pantomine the past of their people, the building of the
ahu and the images, the fishing and the wars, the heroic
feats of the dead, and the vengeance of the gods.
Christianity had not touched them much. They still
believed in the atua, their name for both god and devil.
"Now the heaps of small fuel brought days before by
severe labor were lit, and when the fires were blazing
low a single dancer appeared. She had on a white tapa
cloak, flowing and graceful, and in her hair the plumage
of the makohe, the tropic bird, the long scarlet feathers
so prized by natives. As she came into the light I saw
that she was Taaroa. Her long black hair was in two
plaits, and the makohe feathers were like a coronet.
She had a dancing wand in each hand, the ao, light
and with flattened ends carved with the heads of famous
female dancers of long ago. The three di-ums began a
slow, monotonous thump, and Taaroa a gentle, sway-
ing movement, with timid gestures, and coquettish
glances — the wooing of a maiden yet unskilled in love.
The drums beat faster, and the simulated passion of
the dancer became more ardent. Her eyes, dark-
brown, brilliant, and liquid, commenced to search for
the wooed one, and roved around the circle. They re-
mained fixed an instant on the American in startling
appeal. I glanced and saw Miss Dorey look at him
surprisedly and inquiringly, and then resentfully at
Taaroa. But she was carrying on her pantomine, and

206 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

she ended it with a burst of passion, the hula that we
all know, though even more attractive than Miri's or
Mamoe's in Tahiti.

"I suppose Miss Dorey had never in her life seen such
an expression of amour, and did n't know that women
told such things. Her face was like the fire, and she
moved slightly away from Willis. But now Taaroa
was dancing again, and altogether differently. She
stood in one spot, and as the drums beat softly, raised
her arms as if imploring the moon, and sang the mourn-
ing ute of Easter Island:

*Ka ihi uiga — te ki ati, —
Auwe te poki, e — '

The sail of my daughter,
Never before broken by the force of foreign clans!
Ever victorious ip all her fights,
She would not drink the poison waters in the
cup of obsidian glass.

"We all felt depressingly the sudden reversal of
sentiment, and, when Taaroa had finished, Miss Dorey
said she would like to leave. She shivered. The air
was a little cold, but the Rapa Nuiis built up their fires
and prepared to dance through the night. We whites,
with Timi Linder, went home with a promise to meet at
noon to-morrow for the egg ceremony. As Timi and I
rode to Vaihu, seven or eight miles it was, he remarked
that Taaroa had gotten much handsomer while he was
away. He asked if she was still friendly with Willis,
and I explained things. Timi didn't make much of
those troubles, but 'Anyhow,' he said, 'they '11 all sail

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 207

away to-morrow, and her husband can lease her to me.' "

Llewellyn hesitated. His story had been long. The
lamps were out.

"There is n't much more," he said, apologetically
though pleadingly. "When the race started at Orongo,
we four, the English people, Willis, and I, went to the
sea where we could watch the swimming. Timi Linder
stayed with Ure Vaeiko and Pakomeo to award the
prize. The runners came swarming down the cliff,
some taking paths around and others trying to climb
straight down. They wore loin-cloths only, and were
mad as fighters with the excitement. Some fell but got
up, and away they went, and some leaped into the sea
from the bluff at forty or fifty feet high. The rocks
were about a hundred fathom off shore, and that is a
short swim for Kanakas. But it was the carrying the
egg whole and getting up the bluff again that tested
skill and luck. Well, it was over in a little while, and
when we returned to Orongo, Matatoa, the husband of
Taaroa, had been made the choice of the god Meke
Meke for the year.

"As the passengers had their goods already stowed,
but intended to go aboard the schooner before night-
fall to wait for a favoring wind, Willis proposed that
we all go back to the beach and have a last bath to-
gether. Most of the Rapa Nuiis went with us, and the
victor and Taaroa among them. We all wore parens
and I tell you those two young people made a magni-
ficent pair. That year and a half on Rapa Nui had
done wonders for Willis. He was like a wrestler, and
Miss Dorey in her pareu was a picture.

"Some one spoke of the spring under the sea, and

208 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

proposed that we all drink from it. It was like that one
at Nagone. The fresh water runs into the ocean about
ten feet under the ocean at the bottom of the cliff.
Willis shouted out that he had never had a drink under
the sea, and would try it first. Nobody, they said,
had been down there for years, but in war time it had
been a prized spot. Willis was a good diver, and down
he went while we watched from the rocks twenty feet
above on which we climbed. Now, to stay down there
long enough to drink, some one else had to stand on
your shoulders, and some one else on theirs. Willis
plunged in, and, of those sporting in the water, Taaroa
was first to follow him down. Her husband, the win-
ner, was the second, and we, laughing and joking about
the American's heavy burden, waited for him to come
up spluttering.

"You know how long it seems. We had no watches,
but after about a minute, Matatoa suddenly tottered
and then dived. The water was not very clear there
because of the issuance of the spring, and mud stirred
up, and we could not see beneath the surface. But we
knew something unexpected had happened, and Miss
Dorey seized my arm.

" 'For God's sake, go down and help him,' she
shrieked.

"I hesitated. I did n't think anything was wrong,
but even then I had a feeling of not risking anything to
save him if it was. He had too much already. Rotten!
I know it. But that 's my nature. I could n't have
done any good. Matatoa came up and went down again
and then a half dozen dived to the place where Willis
and Taaroa were out of sight. One came up and yelled

Old cocoanut trees

From'fhe painting by Oscar F. Schmidt

The dark valley of Taaoa

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 209

that he could not find them, and then we knew the worst.
They were gone by this time more than three minutes.
Then I leaped in, too, but there were so many of us
we got tangled up with one another under the water,
and as Matatoa came near me I told every one else to
move aside, and that we two would make the search.

"Well, we found that at the spring a frightful sponge
of seaweed and kelp had grown, and that Willis and
Taaroa had become fastened in it. We had to take
down knives to cut them out, and we brought them up
together. She had him clasped in her arms so tightly
we had to tear them apart. They were like dead. His
heart was not beating, but we carried them up the rocky
path and with as much speed as possible to the fires
which the natives still had for cooking. There Pako-
meo and Ure Vaeiko directed the holding of them in the
smoke which, as you know, does sometimes bring them
back, but they were dead as Queen Korato. We put
the body of the American on a horse and took it to the
palace. Taaroa remained at Orongo, and her tribe be-
gan at once preparations to bury her in one of the bur-
rows. Miss Dorey was quiet. Except that one shriek
I did not hear her cry. I went to Vaihu that night and
left Timi Linder with them. I got drunk, and Timi
said in the morning that the English girl stayed alone
all night with Wilhs in the living room."

I had sat so long listening to Llewellyn that when,
with the tension off, I tried to stand up, I reeled. He
sat with his head bowed. Captain Nimau grasped my
arm to help himself up, and said, ''Mais, mon Dieu! that
was terrible. You buried the American there, and the
Doreys left soon."

210 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

"The next day, after the burial. I remained two
years more, and, by the great Atua of Rano Roraku,
I was n't sober a week at a time."

Kopcke lit a cigarette, and, as we prepared to sepa-
rate, said sententiously : "Mon vieuoo, I know women
and I know the Kanaka, and I do not think Taaroa
drowned the American for love. She did n't know
about the sea-grass being there."

Llewellyn did not answer. He only said, vexedly,
"Well, for heaven's sake, let 's get a few drinks be-
fore we go to sleep!"

I left them to go to Nohea's shack. On my mat I
pitied Llewellyn. He had a real or fancied contri-
tion for his small part in the tragedy of Rapa Nui.
But my last thought was of the violet eyes of Miss
Dorey. Those months to England must have been
over-long.

CHAPTER XI

Pearl hunting in the lagoon — Previous methods wasteful — Mapuhi shows
me the wonders of the lagoon — Marvelous stories of sharks — Woman
who lost her arm — Shark of Samoa — Deacon who rode a shark a half
hour — Eels are terrible menace.

THE lagoon of Takaroa Was to be the scene of
intense activity and of incredible romance for
the period of the open season for hunting the
pearl-oyster. Eighty years or more of this fishing had
been a profitable industry in Takaroa, especially for
the whites who owned or commanded the vessels trad-
ing here. A handful of nails would at one time buy
the services of a Paumotuan diver for a day. Trifles,
cheap muskets, axes, and hammers, were exchanged
for shells and pearls, often five dollars for five hundred
dollars' worth. The Paumotuan was robbed uncon-
scionably by cheating him of his rights under contracts,
by intimidation, assault, and murder, by getting him
drunk, and the usual villairious methods of unregulated
trade all over the world. The Sons of Belial were
hereabouts. They had to haul down the black flag
under compulsion, but they sighed for the good old
days, and did not constitute themselves honest guard-
ians for the natives even now.

The piratical traders of the early decades sailed
from atoll to atoll, bartering for pearls and shells, or
engaging the Paumotuans to dive for them, either by
the month or season, at a wage or for a division of

211

212 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

the gains. For their part, the traders supplied fire-
arms, salt meat, and biscuit or flour, though rum or
other alcoholic drink was their principal merchandise.
The average native would continue to sell his soul for
the godlike exaltation of the hours of drunkenness,
and forget the hell of the aftermath. He did sell his
body, for often the diver found himself in debt to the
traders at the end of the year. If so, he was lost, for
he remained the virtual slave of the creditor, who gave
him still enough rum to make him quiescent, and to
continue in debt till he died from the accidents of his
vocation, or from excesses.

The lagoons were emptied of their shells in improvi-
dent manner, shells of any size being taken, and no
provision made for the future nor for the growth and
propagation of the oysters. The industry was the
usual fiercely competitive struggle that marks a new
way of becoming rich quickly. The disorder and
wasteful methods of the early days of gold digging
in California, and later in Alaska, matched the reck-
less roguery and foolish mishandling of these rich pearl-
fisheries before the French Government tardily ended
the reign of lawlessness and prodigality. Gambling be-
came a fever, and the white man knew the cards better
than the brown. Driven by desire for rum and for
more money to hazard, the Paumotuan risked terrible
depths and killed himself, or ruined his health by too
many descents in a day. Atoll and sea must soon
have been deprived of people and oysters.

Thirty years ago, the secretary of the College de
France, summoned to Tahiti to find a remedy, reported
that, if laws were not made and enforced against the

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 213

conditions he found, the industry would speedily pass.
Schooners of many nationalities frequented the atolls.
Pearls were not rare, and magnificent shells were found
in many of the eighty lagoons. Their size surpassed
all found now. The continuous search had impover-
ished the beds, which were the result of centuries, and
had robbed them of shells of age and more perfect
growth, as war took the strongest and bravest men of
a nation, and left the race to be perpetuated by cowards,
weaklings, and the rich or pohtic who evaded the front
of battle.

It took five years to grow a fine shell. The sixth
year often doubled the value in mother-of-pearl, and
the seventh year doubled it a!gain. The Chinese, in a
certain famous fishery off their coast, sought the shells
only every ten or fifteen years ; but those yellow people
had the last word in conservation of soil and every
other source of gain, forced to a sublimated philosophy
by the demands of hundreds of millions of hungry
bellies.

Warned by the Parisian professor, the French Gov-
ernment made strict regulations to prevent the extinc-
tion of the pearl-oyster, and, incidentally, of the Pau-
motuan. For the oyster they instituted the closed
season or raJiiii, forbidding the taking of shells from
certain atolls except at times stated. Experts ex-
amined the lagoons, and upon their recommendations
a schedule of the rahui was drawn out, so that while
diving might be permitted in one lagoon for succes-
sive seasons it might be prohibited in another over a
term of years. This had caused a peripatetic school
of divers, who went about the group from open la-

214 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

goon to open lagoon, as vagrants follow projects of
railroad building. But the lagoons would never be
again what they had been in wealth. The denuding
had been too rapacious. However, the oysters were
now given time to breed, and their food was taken
care of to a degree, though France, the most scien-
tific of nations, with the foremost physicists, chemists,
and physicians, did not send her genius to her colo-
nies.

To protect the divers and their families, alcohol was
made contraband. It was unlawful to let a Paumo-
tuan have intoxicants. The scenes of riotous debauch-
ery once common and which always marked the diving
season, in the merciless pitting of pearl- and shell-
buyers against one another, were rare, but surrepti-
tious sale and donation of drink were still going on.

Mormonism, Josephitism, and Seventh Day Advent-
ism, strict sects as to stimulants, had aided the law,
and the Lying Bills and McHenrys, the Mandels and
the Kopckes, had a white god against them in their
devil-take-the-hindmost treatment of the natives.
France also confined the buying and selling in the
Paumotus to French citizens, so that the non-Gauls
by blood had been driven to kiss the flag they con-
temned. But business excused all subterfuges.

One day when the diving term was almost on, Ma-
puhi and I were talking on his veranda about the ven-
tures of his life, and especially of his experiences un-
der the sea.

"Come!" he said, with an indulgent smile upon his

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 215

flawed but noble face, "American, you and I will go
upon the lagoon, and I will show you what may be
strange to you."

Going to the end of his spit of land, we entered a
canoe, and, with the chief paddling swiftly, moved
towards the other side of the lagoon, away from the
habitations of the Paumotuans. When a hundred
yards or two offshore, JNIapuhi shipped his paddle and
let the outrigger canoe lie idly on the water.

"Look!" he said, appraisingly, "See the wonders of
God prepared for his children!"

I took the titea mata he handed me, the four-sided
wooden box with a pane of ordinary glass fixed in it,
about fifteen inches square, and notched for the neck
of the observer. Putting the glass below the surface
and gazing through it, I was in fairy-land.

The floor of the lagoon was the superbest garden
ever seen by the eye of man. A thousand forms of
life, fixed and moving, firm and waving, coral and
shells, fish of all the colors of the rainbow, of beauteous,
of weird, and of majestic shape and size, decorated
and animated this strange reserve man had invaded
for food and profit. The giant furbelowed clams,
largest of all mollusks, white, or tinged with red and
saffron or brown-yellow, a corruscating glare of blue,
violet, and yellow from above, reposed like a bed of
dream tulips upon the shining parterre.

The coral was of an infinitude of shape: emerald
one moment and sapphire the next, shot with colors
from the sun and the living and growing things be-
neath. Springing from the sea-floor were cabbages

216 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

and roses, cauliflower and lilies, ivory fans and scarlet
vases, delicate fluted columns, bushes of pale yellow
coral, bouquets of red and green coral, shells of pink
and purple, masses of weeds, brown and black sponges.
It was a magic maze of submarine sculpture, fret-
work, and flowers, and through all the interstices of
the coral weaved in and out the brilliant-colored and
often miraculously-molded fish and crustaceans. There
were great masses of dark or sulphur-hued coral into
which at any alarm these creatures darted and from
which they peeped when danger seemed past. Snakes,
blue, gold, or green bars on a velvet black-brown, glided
in and out of the recesses, or coiled themselves about
branches.

Big and small were these denizens of the lagoon.
The tiny hermit-crab in a stolen mollusk-shell had on
his movable house his much smaller paramour, who,
also in her appropriated former tenement of a dead
enemy, would spend the entire mating season thus wait-
ing for his embrace. And now and again as I looked
through the crystal water I saw the giant bulks of
sharks, conger-eels, and other huge fish. These I
pointed out to Mapuhi.

He peered through the titea mata.

"Er he exclaimed. "For fifty years I have fought
those demons. They will take one of us this rahui
as before. It may be God's will, but I think the devil
fights on the side of the beasts below. I myself have
never been touched by them though I have killed many.
When I think of the many years I entered the water
all over these seas, and in blackest sin, I understand
more and more what the elders say, that God is ever

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 217

watching over those He intends to use for His work.
I have seen or known men to lose parts of themselves
to the sharks, but to escape death. They prayed when
in the very jaws of the mao, and were heard."

Mapuhi blew out his breath loudly, as if expelling
an evil odor.

"Tavana, tell me about some of the bad deeds of
sharks," I said.

"Aue! There are no good ones," he replied. "In
Raiatea, near Tahiti, they were fishing at night for
the ava, the fish something like the salmon. They had
a net five meters high, and, after the people of the
village had drawn the net round so that no fish could
escape, a number of men dived from their canoes. You
know they try to catch the ava by the tail and make
it swim for the air, pulling the fisherman with it. That
is an arearea [game] . The torches held by the women
and children and the old people were lighting the water
brightly when Tamaehu came up with his fish. He
was baptized Tamaehu, but his common name was
Marae. Just as he brought the ava, or the ava brought
Tamaehu, to his canoe, and the occupants were about
to lift the ava into the canoe, a shark caught Tamaehu
by the right foot. He caught hold of the outrigger
and tried to shake it off. It was not a big shark, but
it was hungry. He shouted, and his companions
leaned over and drove a harpoon into the shark, which
let go his foot, tore out the harpoon, and swam away.
Poor Tamaehu was hauled in, with his foot hanging
loose, but in Raiatea the French doctor sewed it on
again. You can see him now limping about, but he
praises God for being alive."

218 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

"He well may; and there are many others to join
with him?" I ventured, inquisitively.

"Do you know Piti, the woman of Raroia, in these
Paumotu islands?" he asked. "No? If you go there,
look for her. You will know her, for she has but one
arm. Raroia has a large door to its lagoon. The
bigger the door the bigger the sharks inside. The la-
goons to which only small boats can enter have small
sharks only. Piti was diving in the lagoon of Raroia
during the season. She was bringing up shell from
fifty feet below, and had several already in her canoe.
She dived again, and, after seizing one shell, started
to come up. Suddenly she saw a shark dart out of a
coral bank. She became afraid. She did not pray.
She forgot even to swim up. A man like me would
not have been afraid. It is the shark that takes you
when you do not see him that is to fear. Piti did
nothing, and the mao took her left arm into his mouth.
He closed his teeth and dragged off the flesh down
to the elbow where he bit her arm in two. You know
how when a shark bites, after he sinks his teeth into
the meat, he twists his mouth, so as to make his teeth
cut. That is the way God made him. This shark
twisted and stripped off Piti's flesh as he drew down
his teeth. When he bit off her lower arm he swam off
to eat it, and she rose to the top. She put her good
arm over the outrigger, and those other women paddled
to her and pulled her into the canoe. The bone stuck
out six inches below the flesh the shark had left. There
were no doctors, but they put a healing plant over
the arm. The wound would not heal, and ate and ate

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 219

inside for several years until the upper arm fell off
at the shoulder- joint. Then she got well."

"Is the shark himself never frightened? A human
being must seem a very queer fish to a shark. They
do not always attack, do they?" I said. "I have swum
where they were, and Jack of the Snark, Monsieur
London, told that at Santa Ana in the Solomon
Islands, when they were putting dynamite in the water
to get a supply of fish, the natives leaped into the water
and fought with the sharks for the fish. He said that
the sharks had learned to rush to the spot whenever they
heard dynamite exploded. The Solomon people had
to grab the stunned fish away from the sharks, and
one man who started for the surface with a fish came
to the boat with only half of it, as a shark had taken
away the head."

"ET answered Mapuhi, "Sharks are devils, but the
devils are not without fear, and sometimes they become
neneva, and do things perhaps they did not think about.
At Marutea Atoll, Tau, a strong man, caught a shark
about four feet long. They had a feast on the beach,
and Tau, to show how strong he was, picked up the
shark and played with it after it had been on the sand
for some minutes. The mouth of the mao was near
his arm, and it opened and closed, and took off the
flesh of the upper arm. He got well, but he never
could use that arm. Right here in Takaroa, in the
rahui of seven years ago, a man, diving for shell, met
a shark on the bottom. He was crawling along the
bottom, looking for a good shell, when the shark turned
a corner and struck him square in the mouth. The

220 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

shark was a little one, not more than three feet long,
but so frightened was he that he bit the man's two
cheeks right off, the cheeks and the lips, so that to-day
you see all his teeth all the time. He has become a
good Mormon."

Mapuhi laughed. I looked at him, and his face was
filled with mirth. He was not deceived as to the heart
of man. Devout he was, but he had dealt too long
with brown and white, and had been too many years
a sinner — indeed, one of the vilest, if rumor ran true
— not to have drunk from the well-springs of the pas-
sions. Mapuhi wore a blue loin-cloth and a white shirt.
The tails of the latter floated in the soft breeze, and
the bosom was open, displaying his Herculean chest.
We could see his house in the distance across the la-
goon, and now and then he kept it in his eyes for a
minute. He had gone far for a man whose father had
been a savage and an eater of his enemies. The Mor-
mon tenets permit a proper pride of possession, like the
Mohammedan philosophj^ One can rejoice that God
has signaled one out for holding in trust the material
assets of life. The bankers of the world have long
known this about their God. Mapuhi had become
thoughtful, and, as I was sure he had other and more
astonishing facts about the sharks not yet related, I
suggested that other archipelagos were also cursed by
the presence and rapacity of the mao.

"In Samoa," said Mapuhi, "the shark is not called
mao or mako as in Nuku-Hiva, but mdlie. There are
no lagoons in Samoa, for there are no atolls, but high
mountains and beaches. Now the malie is the shark
that swims around the islands, but the deep-sea shark,

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 221

the one that lives out of sight of land, is the mdlietua.
The Samoans are a wise people in a rich country.
They are not like us poor Paumotuans with only cocoa-
nuts and fish, but the Samoans have bananas, bread-
fruit, taro, oranges, and cocoanuts and fish, too. They
are a happy people. Of course, I am a Paumotuan,
and I would not live away from here. Once, a woman
I had — when I was not a Mormon — wanted me to take
my money and go and live in Tahiti, which is gay.
I considered it, and even counted my money. But
when I thought of my home and my people, I thrust
her out as a bad woman. Now in Manua in Samoa
was a half-caste, and his daughter was the queen of
Manua. The half-caste's name was Alatua lunga,
and he was one day fishing for bonito in the way we
do, with a pearl-shell hook, when one of the four or
five Samoans with him said, 'There is a small shark.
Put on a piece of honito, and we will catch the mdlie/
They did so, and then they let their canoe float while
they ate boiled taro and dried squid.

"Then one of the Samoans said, T see a shark.'
Others looked, and they said, also, 'A shark is rising
from the deep.' Now a deep-water shark, as I said,
is a mdlietua and is not to be smiled at. lunga said,
'Get the big hook and bait it!' Then the shark
rose, twenty feet of its body out of the water, and its
jaws opened. They closed on the outrigger of the
canoe, and bit one end clear off. lunga said again,
'Get the hook!' He thought the shark would take the
baited hook, and then they could throw the rope at-
tached to the hook overboard, and the mdlietua would be
troubled with the rope at the end of his nose and would

222 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

cease to attack them. They could see the shark all
this time. He was a blue shark with a flat tail, and
was forty feet long at least. Their canoe was just
half as long, and they thought of lona [Jonah]. The
perofeta was swallowed by a shark, because a whale can
swallow only little fish. The malietua would not take
the hook, and, leaving the outrigger, rammed the stern
of the canoe. The shock almost threw them into the
water. All were paddling hard to escape, for they knew
that this shark was a real devil and sought to destroy
them. lunga, who was steering the va aalo, rose up and
struck the shark many times on his nose. This angered
him, but lunga kept it up, as their one chance of safety.
There is a saying in Samoa, 'O le malie ma le tutu'
which is, 'Each shark has its pay.' lunga and all the
Samoans were religious men, though not Mormons, and
they sang a hymn as they paddled hard. They made
their peace with the Creator, who heard them. For over
two miles the race was run. The malietua pursued the
va aalo, and lunga jabbed him with the big paddle.
At last they were nearly all dead from weariness, and
so lunga sheered the canoe abruptly to the right, in-
tending to smash on the reef as a chance for their lives.
But just as the va aalo swerved, to strike upon the
coral rocks, they rested on their paddles, and they saw
that the shark had disappeared. If that shark had
kept on for another minute it would have killed itself
on the reef."

"Mapuhi," I verified, "I, too, have been to Manua,
and heard the story from the kin of Alatua lunga,
whom I knew as Arthur Young, the trader. He be-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 223

came very pious after that, and was a great help to
the mitinare"

The repubhcan king of the atolls may have thought
he detected in my voice or manner a raillery I did not
mean to imply, for he inspected my countenance se-
riously. He had long ago discovered that white men
often speak with a forked tongue. But I was sincere,
because I had never known a joyous, unfrightened
person to become suddenly religious, while I had wit-
nessed a hundred conversions from fear of the devil,
hunger, or the future. However, Mapuhi, who was
an admirable stoiy-teller, with a dramatic manner and
a voice of poesy, had reserved his chef d'ceuvre for
the last.

"American," he said, "If I were a scoffer or unbe-
liever to-day and I met Huri-Huri and he informed me
of what God had done for him, and his neighbors who
had seen the thing itself brought their proof to his words,
I would believe in God's goodness. Have you seen
Huri-Huri at Rangiora? He lives at the village of
Avatoru. He has a long beard. Ah, you have not
seen him. Yes, very few Paumotuans have beards,
but no Paumotuan ever had the experience of Huri-
Huri. He was living in his village of Avatoru, and
was forty years old. He was a good diver but get-
ting old for that work. It takes the young to go deep
and stay down long. As we gi'ow older that weight of
water hurts us. Huri-Huri was lucky. He was get-
ting many large shells, and he felt sure he would pick
up one with a valuable pearl in it. He drank the rum
the white trader poisons my people with, and he spent

224 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

his money for tobacco, beef, and cloth. He had a
watch but it did not go, and he had some foolish things
the trader had sold him. But here he was forty years
old, and so poor that he had to go from atoll to atoll
wherever there was a rahui because he wanted all these
foreign goods.

"This time he was diving in the lagoon of Rangiroa.
He was all alone in his canoe, and was in deep water.
He had gone down several times, and had in his canoe
four or five pairs of shells. He looked again and saw
another pair, and plunged to the bottom. He had the
shells in his sack and was leaving the bank when he
saw just above him a shark so big that, as he said, it
could have bitten him in half as a man eats a banana.
The shark thrust down its nose toward Huri-Huri, and
he took out his shells and held them against the beast.
He kept its nose down for half a minute but then was
out of breath. He was about to die, he believed, un-
less he could reach the air without the shark follow-
ing him. He threw himself on the shark's back, and
put his hands in the fish's gills, and so stopped or partly
stopped the shark's breathing. The shark did not
know what to make of that, and hurried upward, headed
for the surface by the diver. Huri-Huri was afraid to
let go even there, because he knew the inao would turn
on him and tear him to pieces. But he took several
long breaths in the way a diver understands, and still
held on and tore the shark's breathing-places.

"Now the shark was angry and puzzled, and so
rushed to the bottom again, but with the man on his
back. The shark had not been able to enjoy the air
at the top because he breathes water and not air.

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ATOLLS OF THE SUN 225

Huri-Huri closed his gill openings, and piloted him,
and so he came up again and again descended. By
pulling at the gills the shark's head was brought up
and he had to rise. All this time Huri-Huri was think-
ing hard about God and his own evil life. He knew
that each second might be his last one in life, and he
prayed. He thought of lona who was saved out of
the shark's belly in the sea where Christ was born, and
he asked lona to aid him. And all the while he jerked
at the gills, which are the shark's lungs. He knew
that the shark was dying all the time, but the question
was how long could the shark himself hold out, and
which would weaken first. Up and down they went
for half an hour, the shark's blood pouring out over
Huri-Huri's hands as he minute after minute tore at the
gills. Now he could direct the shark any way, and often
he guided him toward the beach of the lagoon. The
shark would swim toward it but when he felt the shal-
low water would turn. But after many minutes the
shark had to stay on top altogether, because he was too
far gone to dive, and finally Huri-Huri steered him
right upon the sand. Huri-Huri fell off the mao and
crawled up further, out of reach of him.

"When the people on shore who had watched the
strange fight between the mao and the man came to
them both, the fish could barely move his tail, and Huri-
Huri was like dead. Every bit of skin was rubbed off
his chest, legs, and arms, and he was bleeding from doz-
ens of places. The shark's body is as rough as a file.
When Huri-Huri opened his eyes on his mat in his
house, and looked about and heard his wife speak to
him, and heard his friends about say that he was the

226 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

bravest and strongest Paumotuan who ever lived, he
said: 'My brothers, praise God! I called on lona, and
the prophet heard me, and taught me how to conquer
the devil that would have killed me in my sin!' They
listened and were astonished. They thought the first
thing Huri-Huri would say would be, 'Give me a drink
of rum !' American, that man is seventy years old now,
and for thirty years he has preached about God and
sin. lona was three days and nights in the shark's
belly, but nobody could ride a shark for a half -hour,
and conquer him, except a Paumotuan and a diver."

Mapuhi was glad to be corroborated bj^ Linnseus in
his opinion that a white shark and not a whale had been
the divine instrument in teaching the doubting Jonah
to upbraid Nineveh even at the risk of his life. The
great Swedish naturalist says:

Jonam Prophetum ut veteris Herculem trinoctera, in hujus
ventriculo, tridui spatro baesisse, verisimile est.

Also, Mapuhi was deeply interested by my telling
him that at Marseilles a shark was caught in which was
a man in complete armor. He had me describe a suit
of armor as I had seen it in the notable collection in
Madrid. He was struck by its resemblance to the
modern diver's suit.

"In the Paumotus," he said, "the French Govern-
ment forbids the use of the scaphandre because it
cheated the native of his birthright. The merchants, the
rich men of Tahiti, could buy and use such diving ma-
chinery, but the Paumotuan could not. The natives
asked the French government to send away the scaph-
andre, and to permit the searching for shells by the

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 227

human being only. I had one of the machines. I
could go deeper in it than any diver in the world, so
the merchants said. I would go out in my cutter with
my men and the scaphandre. I did not put on the
whole suit, but only the rubber jacket, on the brass
collar of which the helmet was screwed. I fixed this
jacket tightly around my waist so that no water could
enter, and fastened it about my wrists. Then, with
my legs uncovered, I jumped into the lagoon. I had
big pieces of lead on my back and breast so as not to
be overturned by the weight of the helmet, and an
air-hose from the helmet to the pump in the cutter.
I would work three hours at a time, but had to come
up many times for relief from the pressure.

"One day I was in this suit at the bottom of the
lagoon of Hikueru. I had filled my net with shells,
and had signaled for it to be hauled up. I was ex-
amining a ledge of shells when I felt something touch
my helmet. It was a sea-snake about ten feet long
and of bright color. It had a long, thin neck, and it
was poisonous. I snatched my knife from my belt,
and before the snake could bite me I drove the knife
into it. It was attacking the glass of my helmet, and
not my legs, fortunately. That snake has its enemy,
too, for when it lies on the surface to enjoy the sun
the sea-eagle falls like a thunderbolt from the sky,
seizes it by the back of the head, and flies away with it.

"Another time when I was in the suit, a puhi, a very
big eel, wrapped itself about me. I had a narrow es-
cape but I killed it with my knife. In the olden days
in Hikueru I would have perished, for that puhi eel,
the conger-eel, was taboo, sacred as a god, here and

228 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

in many islands. To eat that eel or harm him was
to break the taboo. More than eighty people of
Fakaofa were driven from that island for eating the
puhi, and they drifted for weeks before they reached
Samoa. The vaaroa, the long-mouthed eel, is danger-
ous to the diver. It is eight feet long, and Amaru, of
Fakarava had the calf of his leg bitten off by one."

A week I could have listened to Mapuhi. I was
back in my childhood with Jules Verne, Ballantyne,
and Oliver Optic. Actual and terrifying as were the
harrowing incidents of the diving related by the giant,
they found constant comparison in my mind with the
deeds of my boyish heroes. After all, these Paumo-
tuans were children — simple, honest, happy children.
The fate that had denied them the necessaries of our
environment, or even the delicious foods and natural
pleasures of the high islands, Tahiti and the Marquesas,
had endowed them with health, satisfaction with a rigid
fare, and an incomparable ability to meet the hard-
ships of their life and the blows of extraordinary cir-
cumstance with fortitude and persistent optimism.
They had no education and were happier for the lack
of it. The white man had impressed their instincts and
habits but shallowly. Even their very austerity of
surroundings had kept them freer than the Tahitians
from the poisonous gifts and suicidal customs of the
foreigner. Their God was near and dear to them, and
a mighty fortress in time of trouble.

While Mapuhi talked the canoe had returned with the
currents nearer to his house, from which we had em-
barked. It was conspicuous over all the other homes
on the motu, though it was a very ordinary wooden

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 229

structure of five or six rooms. It was not a fit frame
for Mapuhi, I thought. This son of the sea and lagoon
was suited better to a canoe, a cutter, or the deck of a
schooner. He had a companionship with this warm salt
water, with the fish in it, and the winds that blew
over it, exceeding that of any other man. He drove
the canoe on the sand, and we stepped ashore. I lin-
gered by the water as he walked on to his store. In his
white, fluttering shirt, and his blue pareu, bare-legged
and bareheaded, there was a natural distinction and
atmosphere of dignity about him that was grandeur.
Kingship must have originated in the force and bearing
of such men, shepherds or sea-rovers.

CHAPTER XII

History of the pearl hunger — Noted jewels of past — I go with Nohea to
the diving — Beautiful floor of the lagoon— Nohea dives many times —
Escapes shark narrowly — Descends 148 feet — No pearls reward us —
Mandel tells of culture pearls.

MUCH of the mystery and myth of these
burning atolls was concerned with the quest
of pearls. In all the world those gems had
been a subject of romance, and legend had draped their
search with a myriad marvels. Poets and fictionists
in many tongues had embroidered their gossamer fabric
with these exquisite lures, the ornament of beauty, the
treasures of queen and odalisque, mondaine and dancer,
image and shrine, since humans began to adorn them-
selves with more delicate things than the skins and teeth
of animals. A thousand crimes had their seed in greed
for the possession of these sensuous sarcophagi of dead
worms. A milhon men had labored, fought, and died
to hang them about the velvet throats of the mistresses
of the powerful. Hundreds of thousands had perished
to fetch them from the depths of the sea. History and
novel were filled with the struggle of princes and Cy-
prians, merchants, adventurers, and thieves for ropes
of pearls or single specimens of rarity. Krishna dis-
covered pearls in the ocean and presented them to his
goddess daughter. The Ethiopians all but worshiped
them, and the Persians believed them rain-drops that
had entered the shells while the oysters sunned them-
selves on the beach. Two thousand years before our

230

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 231

era, a millennium before Rome was even mud, the
records of the Middle Kingdom enumerated pearls
as proper payments for taxes. When Alexander the
Great was conquering, the Chinese inventoried them
as products of their country. The "Url-Ja," a
Chinese dictionary of that date, says "they are very
precious."

Solomon's pearls came from the Persian Gulf, India,
and Ceylon, and the queen of Sheba's too. Rivers of
Britain gave the author of the "Commentaries" pearls
to dedicate to Venus Genetrix, and to present to that
lovely assassin who melted two, costing ten million
sesterces, for a love philter, and seduced two Caesars.
Who can forget the salad Philip II of Spain, the uxori-
ous inquisitor, set upon the royal table for his wife,
Elizabeth of Valois, the leaves of which were of
emeralds, the vinegar of rubies, the oil of topazes, and
the salt of pearls? What more appetizing dish for
a royal bride? The Orientals make medicine of them
to-day, and I myself have seen a sultan burn pearls to
make lime for chewing with the betel-nut.

The New World offered fresh preserves to pearl-
hunters ; primeval grounds drew a horde of lusty blades
to harry the red men's treasure-house. South and Cen-
tral America fed the pearl hunger that grew with the
more even distribution of wealth through commerce,
and the rise of stout merchants on the Continent and the
British Islands. The Spanish king who gave his name
to the Philippines got from Venezuela a pearl that
balanced an eighth of a pound. I saw it in Madrid.
These Paumotus and Australasia were the last to an-
swer yes to man's ceaseless demand that the earth and

232 ATOLLS OF THE SUX

the waters thereof yield hini more than bread for the
sweat of his brow. On many maps these atolls are yet
inscribed as the Pearl Islands. About their orlorious
lagoons was a mist of obscurity and of wonder for
centuries. Besides dano-ers to vessels, the cannibalism
of savages, the lack of any food except cocoanuts and
fish, and stories of strange happenings, there were ac-
comits of divers who sank deeper in the sea than science
said was possible, and of priceless pearls plundered or
bought for a drinkinCT-sono^.

Custom-houses and organized commerce had rung
down the curtain on the extravaganza of the past, but
the romance of man wrestling with the forces of nature
in the element from which he originally came, now so
deadly to him. was yet a supreme attraction. The day
of the opening of the raliui came none too soon for me.
Xohea. my host, was to dive, and we had arranged that
I was to be in his canoe. I was assured by Mapuhi,
and by Captain Ximau and Kopcke, that despite the
fact that his vouth was orone. Xohea was the best diver
in Takaroa, and especially the shi'ewdest judge of the
worth of a piece of diving ground.

All the village went to the scene of the diving in a
fleet of cutters and canoes, sailing or paddhng accord-
ing to the goal and craft. Xohea and I had a largish
canoe, which, though with a small sail woven of j^an-
danus straw, could easily be paddled by us. He had
staked out a spot upon the lagoon that had no recogniz-
able bearinsfs for me. but which he had long a^o selected
as his arena of action. He identified it by its distance
from certain points, and its association with the sun's
position at a fixed hour.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 233

We had risen before dawn to attend the Mormon
church service initiating the raliui. The rude coral
temple was crowded when the young elders from Utah
began the service. JMapuhi, Nohea, and leaders of the
village sat on the forward benches. The prayer of
elder Overton was for the physical safety of the elected
in the pursuit they were about to engage in.

"Thou knowest, O God," he supplicated, "that in
the midst of life we are in death."

"E! E! Parau mau!" echoed the old divers, which
is, "Yea, Verily!"

"These, th}^ children, O God, are about to go under
the sea, but not like the Chosen People in Israel, for
whom the waters divided and let them go dry-shod.
But grant, O God, who didst send an angel to Joseph
Smith to show him the path to Thee through the Book
of INIormon, who didst lead thy new Chosen People
through the deserts and over the mountains, among wild
beasts and the savages who knew Thee not, to Thy
capital on earth. Salt Lake City, that thy lo\^ng wor-
shipers here assembled shall come safely through this
day, and that Thy sustaining hand shall support them
in those dark places where other wild beasts lie in wait
for them!"

''Parau mau!" said all, and the eyes of some of the
women were wet, for they thought of sons and lovers,
fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters, who had gone
out upon the lagoon, and who had died there among the
coral rocks, or of whom only pieces had been brought
back. They sang a song of parting, and of commend-
ing their bodies to the Master of the universe, and then
with many greetings and hearty laughter and a hun-

234 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

dred jests about expected good fortune, we parted to
put the final touches on the equipment for la peche des
huitres nacrieres. Forgetting the quarter of an hour
of serious prayer and song in the temple, the natives
were now bubbling with eagerness for the hunt. Mapuhi
himself was like a child on the first day of vacation.
These Paumotuans had an almost perfect community
spirit, for, while a man like Mapuhi became rich, actu-
ally he made and conserved what the duller natives
would have failed to create from the resources about
them, or to save from the clutches of the acquisitive
white, and he was ready to share with his fellows at
any time. He, as all other chiefs, was the choice of the
men of the atoll at a quadrennial election, and held
office and power by their sufferance and his own merits.
None might go hungry or unhoused when others had
plenty. Civilization had not yet inflicted on them its
worst concomitants. They were too near to nature.

After a light breakfast of bread and savory fried
fish, to which I added jam and coffee for myself, Nohea
and I pushed off for our wonder-fishing. In the canoe
we had, besides paddles, two titea mata, the glass-bot-
tomed boxes for seeing under the surface of the water,
a long rope, an iron-hooped net, a smaller net or bag
of coir, twenty inches deep and a foot across, with three-
inch meshes, a bucket, a pair of plain-glass spectacles
for under-water use, a jar of drinking-water, and food
for later in the day.

The sun was already high in the unclouded sky when
we lifted the mat sail, and glided through the pale-blue
pond, the shores of which were a melting contrast of ala-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 235

baster and viridescence. All about us were our friends
in their own craft, and the single motor-boat of the
island, Mapuhi's, towed a score of cutters and canoes
to their appointed places. A slender breeze sufficed
to set us, with a few tacks, at our exact spot. We
furled our sail, stowed it along the outrigger, and were
ready for the plunge. We did not anchor the canoe
because of the profundity of the water and because it is
not the custom to do so. I sat with a paddle in my hand
for a few minutes but laid it down when Nohea picked
up the looking-glass. He put the unlidded box into
the water and his head into it and gazed intently for a
few moments, moving the frame about to sweep the bot-
tom, of the lagoon with his wise eyes.

The water was as smooth as a mirror. I saw the
bed of the inland sea as plainly as one does the floor of
an aquarium a few feet deep. No streams poured
debris into it, nor did any alluvium cloud its crystal pur-
ity. Coral and gravel alone were the base of its floor
and sides, and the result was a surpassing transparency
of the water not believable by comparison with any other
lake.

"How far is that toa aau?" I asked, and pointed to a
bank of coral.

Nohea sized up the object, took his head from the
titea mata, and replied, "Sixty feet."

At that distance I could, unaided, see plainly a piece
of coral as big as my hand. The view was as variegated
as the richest landscape — a wilderness of vegetation,
of magnificent marine verdure, sloping hills and high
towers with irregular windows, in which the sunshine

236 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

streamed in a rainbow of gorgeous colors ; and the shells
and bodies of scores of zoophytes dwelling upon the
structures gleamed and glistened like jewels in the flood
of light. About these were patches of snow-white
sand, blinding in refracted brilliancy, and beside them
green bushes or trees of herbage-covered coral, all beau-
tiful as a dream-garden of the Nereids and as imaginary.
Even when I withdrew my eyes from this fantastic
scene, the lagoon and shore were hardy less fabulous.
The palms waved along the beach as banners of seduc-
tion to a sense of sheer animism, of investiture of their
trunks and leaves with the spirits of the atoll. Not
seldom I had heard them call my name in the darkness,
sometimes in invitation to enchantment and again in
warning against temptation. The cutters or canoes of
the village were like lily-pads upon the placid water,
far apart, white or brown, the voices of the people
whispers in the calm air. I wished I were a boy to
know to the full the feeling of adventure among such
divine toys which had brought glad tears to my eyes
in my early wanderings.

The canoe had drifted, and Nohea slipped over its
side and again spied with the glass. I, too, looked
through mine and saw where he indicated a ridge or
bank of coral upon which were several oyster-shells.
Nohea immediately climbed into the canoe and, resting
upon the side prayed a few moments, bowing his head
and nodding as if in the temple. Then he began to
breathe heavily. For several minutes he made a great
noise, drawing in the air and expelling it forcibly, so
that he seemed to be wasting energy. I was almost con-
vinced that he exaggerated the value of his emotions and

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 237

explosive sounds, but his impassive face and remem-
brance of his race's freedom from our exhibition con-
ceit, drove the foolish thought away. His chest, very-
capacious normally, was bursting with stored air, a
storage beyond that of our best trained athletes; and
without a word he went over the side and allowed his
body to descend through the water. He made no splash
at all but sank as quietly as a stone. I fastened my
head in the titea mata and watched his every move-
ment. He had about his waist a pareu of calico, blue
with large white flowers, — the design of William Morris,
— and a sharp sailor's sheath-knife at the belt. Around
his neck was a sack of cocoanut-fiber, and on his right
hand a glove of common denim. Almost all his robust
brown body was naked for his return to the sea-slime
whence his first ancestor had once crawled.

Down he went through the pellucid liquid until at
about ten feet the resistance of the water stopped his
course and, animated bubble as he was, would have
pushed him to the air again. But Nohea turned in a
flash, and with his feet uppermost struck out vigor-
ously. He forced himself down with astonishing speed
and in twenty seconds was at his goal. He caught hold
of a gigantic goblet of coral and rested himself an in-
stant as he marked his object, the ledge of darker rocks
on which grew the shells. There were sharp-edged
shapes and branching plant-like forms, which, appear-
ing soft as silk from above would wound him did he
graze them with his bare skin. He moved carefully
about and finally reached the shells. One he gripped
with the gloved hand, for the shell, too, had serrated
edges, and, working it to and fro, he broke it loose from

238 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

its probable birthplace and thrust it into his sack. Im-
mediately he attacked the other, and as quickly de-
tached it. He stooped down and looked closely all
about him. He then sprang up, put his arms over his
head, his palms pressed one on the other, and shot
toward the surface. I could see him coming toward
me like a bolt from a catapult. I held a paddle to
move the canoe from his path if he should strike it,
and to meet him the trice he flashed into the ether.

The diver put his right arm over the outrigger boom,
and opening his mouth gulped the air as does the bonito
when first hauled from the ocean. I was as still as
death. In a seance once I was cautioned not to speak
during the materializations, as the disturbance might
kill the medium. I recalled that unearthly silence, for
the moment of emergence was the most fatal to the
diver. His senses after the terrible pressure of such a
weight upon his body were as abnormal and acute as
a man's whose nerves have been stripped by flaying.
The change in a few seconds from being laden and
hemmed in by many tons of water to the lightness of
the atmosphere was ravaging. Slowly the air was re-
spired, and gradually his system, — heart, glands, lungs,
and blood, — resumed its ordinary rhythm, and his
organs functioned as before his descent. Several
minutes passed before he raised his head from the out-
rigger, opened his eyes, which were suffused with blood,
and said in a low tone of the deaf person, ''E tau Atua
el" He was thanking his God for the gift of life and
health. He had been tried with Meshach, Shadrach,
and Abednego, though not by fire.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 239

Nohea lifted himself into the canoe, and took the sack
of coir from his neck. I removed the two pairs of
shells with the reverence one might assume in taking the
new-born babe from its first cradle. They were Holy
Grails to me who had witnessed their wringing from
the tie-ribs of earth. They were shaped like a stem-
less palm-leaf fan, about eight inches tall and ten wide,
rough and black; and still adhering to their base was
a tangle of dark-green silky threads, the byssus or
strong filament which attaches them to their fulcrum,
the ledge. It was the byssus which Nohea had to
wrench from the rock. I laid down the shells and re-
stored the sack to Nohea, who sat immobile, perhaps
thoughtless. Another brief space of time, and he
smiled and clapped his hands.

"That was ten fathoms," he said. "Paddle toward
that clump of trees" (they were a mile away), "and we
will seek deeper water."

A few score strokes and we were nearer the center
of the lagoon. With my bare eyes I could not make out
the quality of the bottom but only its general configura-
tion. Nohea said the distance was twenty fathoms.
The looking-glass disclosed a long ledge with a flat shelf
for a score of feet, and he said he made out a number
of large shells. It took the acutest concentration on my
part to find them, with his direction, for his eyes were
twice as keen as mine from a lifetime's usage upon his
natural surroundings. We sacrificed our birthright of
vivid senses to artificial habits, lights, and the printed
page. Nohea made ready to go down, but changed
slightly his method and equipment. He dropped the

240 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

iron-hooped net into the water by its line and allowed
it to sink to the ledge. Then he raised it a few feet so
that it would swing clear of the bottom.

"It will hold my shells and indicate to me exactly
where the canoe is," he explained. "At this depth,
120 feet, I want to rest immediately on reaching the
surface, and not to have to swim to the canoe. I have
not dived for many months, and I am no longer young."

He attached the line to the outrigger, and then, after
a fervent prayer to which I echoed a nervous amen, he
began his breathing exercises. Louder than before and
more actively he expanded his lungs until they held a
maximum of stored oxygen, and then with a smile he
slid through the water until he reversed his body and
swam. In his left hand now he had a shell, a single side
of a bivalve; and this he moved like an oar or paddle,
catching the water with greater force, and pulling him-
self down with it and the stroke of the other arm, as
well as a slight motion of the feet. The entire move-
ment was perfectly suited to his purpose, and he made
such rapid progress that he was beside the hoop-net in
less than a minute. He had a number of pairs of shells
stripped from the shelf and in the swinging net in a few
seconds more, and then, drawn by others he discerned
further along the ledge, he swam, and dragged himself
by seizing the coral forms, and reached another bank. I
paddled the canoe gently behind him. I lost sight of
him then completely. Either he was hidden behind a
huge stone obelisk or he had gone beyond my power
of sight.

A gigantic black shape swam into view near the oscil-
lating hoop, and a horror swept over me. It disap-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 241

peared, but Nohea was still missing. The time beat in
my veins like a pendulum. Every throb seemed a
second, and they began to count themselves in my brain.
How long was it since Nohea had left me? A minute
and a half? Two minutes? That is an age without
breathing. Something must have injured him. Slowly
the moments struck against my heart. I could not
look through the titea mata any longer. Another sixty
seconds and despair had chilled me so I shook in the
hot sunshine as with ague. I was cold and weak. Sud-
denly I felt a pull at the rope, the canoe moved slightly,
and hope grew warm in me. I perceived an agitation
of the water gradually ascending, and in a few instants
the diver sprang out of the lagoon to his waist. He
threw his arm over the outrigger, and bent down in
agony. His suffering was written in the contortion
of his face, the blood in his eyes, and a writhing of his
whole body. He gasped madly at his first emergence,
and then his bosom rose and fell in lessening spasms.
The cramp which had convulsed his form relaxed, and,
as minute after minute elapsed, his face lost its rigidity,
his pulse slackened to normal, and he said feebly, ''E
tau AtuaeT With my assistance he hauled himself
into the canoe and lay half prone.

"You saw no shark?" I asked.

"I saw his shadow, but it was not he that detained me.
I saw a bank which might hold shells and I explored
it. We will see what I have."

We pulled up the hoop-net, and in it were thirteen
pairs of shells. These were larger than the others,
older, and, as he said, from a more advantageous place
for feeding, so that their residents, being better nour-

242 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

ished had made larger and finer houses for themselves.
Some of the thirteen were eighteen inches across. He
said that he had roamed seventy feet on the bottom, and
he had been down two and a half minutes. He had
made observation of the ledges all about and intended
going a little deeper. I had but to look at the rope of
the net to gage the distance for it was marked with
knots and bits of colored cotton to give the lengths like
the marks on a lead-line on shipboard. I wanted to
demur to his more dangerous venture, but I did not.
This was his avocation and adventure, his war with the
elements, and he must follow it and conquer or fail.

Again he dived, and this time at 148 feet. This was
almost the limit of men in suits with air pumps or oxy-
gen-tanks, and they were always let down and brought
up gradually, to accustom their blood to the altering
pressure. Half an hour or an hour was often con-
sumed in hauling a diver up from the depth from which
Nohea sprang in a few seconds. His transcendent cour-
age and consummate skill were matched by his body's
trained resistance to the effect of such extreme pres-
sure of water and the remaining without -breathing for
so long a time. I could appreciate his achievements
more than most people, for I had seen the divers of
many races at work in many waters. Ninety feet was
the boundary of all except the Paumotuans and those
who used machines. But here was Nohea exceeding
that by sixty feet in my view, and I knew that greater
depths must be attained. Impelled by an instantane-
ous urge to contrast my own capabilities with Nohea's,
I measured off thirty feet on the line, and, putting it
in his hands to hold, I breathed to my fullest and leaped

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 243

overboard. At three lengths of my figure, less than
eighteen feet, I experienced alarm and pain. I un-
loosed the hoop and it swayed down to the end of the
five fathoms of rope, while I kicked and pulled, and
after an interminable period I had barely touched it
again before I became convinced that if I did not
breathe in another second I would open my mouth.
Nohea knew my plight, for he yanked at the rope, and
with his effort and my own frantic exertion I made the
air, and humbly hugged the outrigger until I was my-
self. Thirty feet! And Nohea had brought up the
shells from 148.

He paid dearly. Several times of the score that he
probed the deeper retreats of the oysters, he was pros-
trated for minutes upon his egress and in throes of severe
pain during the readjustment of pressure; but he con-
tinued to pursue his fascinating and near-fatal employ-
ment until by afternoon a heap of heavy, darkish bi-
valves lay in the canoe. My curiosity had been heated
since I had lifted the first shell, and it was with increas-
ing impatience that I waited for the milder but not less
interesting phase of his labor, the scrutiny of the interior
of the shells for pearls.

There are two moments in a diver's life ;
One, when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge ;
Then, when, a prince, he rises with his pearl.

The poet visioned Nohea's emotions, perhaps, but he
had schooled himself to postpone his satisfaction until
the day's harvest was gathered. When we had paddled
the canoe into shallow waters, and the sun was slanting
fast down the western side of earth, Nohea surrendered

244 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

himself to the realization or dissipation of his dream.
He knew that a thousand shells contain no pearls, that
the princely state came to few in decades. But the
diver had the yearning and credulous mind of the gold
prospector, and lived in expectation as did he. The
glint of a pebble, the sheen of yellow sand, set his pulse
to beating more rapidly; and so with the diver. He
knew that pearls of great value had been found many
times, and that one such trove might make him rich for
life, independent of daily toil, and free of the traps and
pangs of the plunge.

Nohea thrust his knife between the blades of a bivalve
and pried open his resisting jaws. True pearls lie in
the tissues of the oyster, generally in the rear of the
body and sealed in a pocket. Nohea laid down the
parted shell and seized the animal, and dissected his
boneless substance in a gesture of eager inquiry. I
watched his actions with as sharp response, and sighed
as each oyster in turn was thrown into the bucket, in
which was sea-water. When all had been submitted to
the test and no pearl had flashed upon our hopeful
eyes we examined the shells, trusting that though the
true pearls had escaped us we might find blisters, those
which, having a point of contact with the shell, are thus
not perfect in shape and skin, but have a flaw. These
often have large value, if they can be skinned to advan-
tage; and the diver put his smaller hopes upon them.

With pearls, orient or blister, eliminated, the pri-
mary and actually more important basis of the industry
appealed to Nohea. He estimated the weight and value
of the shells, which would be transported to London for
manufacture in the French Department of the Oise

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 245

into the black pearl buttons that ornament women's
dresses. These Paumotuan shells were celebrated for
their black borders, nacre a hord noir, more valuable
than the gold-lipped product of the Philippines, but a
third cheaper than the silver-lipped shells of Australia.
With at least the comfort of a heavy catch of this less re-
munerative though hardly less beautiful creation of the
oj'^ster, Nohea pointed out to me that the formation of
the mother-of-pearl or nacre on the shells was from left
to right, as if the oyster were right minded.

"When the whorls of a shell are from right to left,"
he said, "that shell is valuable as a curiosity. The peo-
ple of Asia, the Chinese, pay well for it, and a Chinese
shell-buyer now here told me that in Initia [India]
they weighed it with gold in old times. In China they
keep such shells in the temples to hold the sacred oil,
and the priests administer magic medicine in them."

Nohea completed the round of the day's undertaking
by macerating the oysters and throwing them into the
lagoon that their spawn might be released for another
generation. He cut off and threaded the adhesive
muscle of the oyster, the tatari ioro, to eat when dried.
It was something Hke the scallop or abalone abductor
muscle sold in our markets. The shells would be put
into the sheds or warehouses to dry and to be beaten and
rubbed so as to reduce the bulk of their backs, which
have no value but weigh heavily.

After we had supped, Nohea and the older divers
gathered at Mapuhi's for a discussion of the day's luck,
and I went along to the coterie of traders by Lying Bill's
firm's store. A cocoanut-husk fire was burning, and
about it sat Bill, McHenry, Llewellyn, Nimau, Mandel,

246 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Kopcke, and others. Mandel was the most notable
pearl-buyer and expert here, with an office in Paris and
a warehouse in Papeete. He was huge and with gross
features, and was rated as the richest man in these South
Seas. His own schooner had dropped anchor off Taka-
roa a few days before with Mrs. Mandel in command.
He might make the bargain for pearls, but she would
do the paying and squeeze the most out of the price
to the native. She ruled with no soft hand, and in her
long life had solved many difficult problems in money-
grubbing in this archipelago. Her husband was the
head of the Mandel tribe, but sons and daughter all
knew the dancing boards of the schooner and the intrica-
cies of the pearl-market. LTsually Mandel stayed in
Tahiti or visited Paris, but the rahui in Takaroa was
too promising a prize for any of them to remain away,
and all of the family were diligent in intrigue and ne-
gotiation. Mandel had handled the finest pearls of the
Paumotus for many years. I had seen Mrs. Mandel
come ashore, in a sheeny yellow Mother-Hubbard or.
Tahitian ahu vahine and a cork helmet; but she made
her home on her schooner, to which she invited those
from whom her good man had purchased shell or pearls.

Pearls were, of course, the subject of the talk about
the fire. Toae, a Hikueru man, had found one, and
Mandel had it already. He showed it to me, a pea-
shaped, dusky object, with no striking beauty.

"I may be mistaken," said Mandel, "but I believe
this outside layer is poorer than one inside. In Paris my
employees will peel it and see. It is taking a chance,
but we have a second sight about it. You know a pearl
is like an onion, with successive skins, and we take off

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 247

a number sometimes. It reduces the size but may in-
crease the luster. Also we are using the ultra-violet
ray to improve color. I saw a pearl that cost a hun-
dred thousand francs sold for three hundred thousand
after the ray was used on it. You know a pearl is pro-
duced only by a sick oyster. It is a pathological prod-
uct like gall-stones, and it is mostly caused by a tape-
worm getting into the oyster's shell, though a grain of
sand is often the nucleus. The oyster feels the grating
or irritating thing and secretes nacre to cover it. The
tapeworm is embalmed in this mother-of-pearl, and the
sand smoothed with it. The material, the nacre, is
the same as the interior of the shell, and the oyster
seems not to stop covering the intruder when the itching
has stopped but keeps on out of habit. And so forms
small and big pearls. Now a blister is generally over
a bug or snail, though sometimes it is a stop-gap to keep
out a borer who is drilling through the shell from the
outside. The blisters are usually hollow, whereas a
pearl has a yellow center with the carbonate of lime in
concentric prisms. An orient or true pearl is formed
in the muscles of the oyster and does not touch the
shell ; but the blister, which generally is part of the shell,
may have been started in the oyster's sac or folds, and
have dropped out or been released to hold between the
oyster and the shell. With these we cut away the out-
side down to the original pearl. A blister itself is only
good for a brooch or an ornament, but I have gotten
five or ten thousand francs for the best."

Captain Nimau, who was only less clever than Mandel
in the lore of pearls, said that, as the lagoons were often
three hundred feet or deeper in places, it was probable

248 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

that larger pearls than ever yet brought up were in
these untouched caches.

"The Paumotuan has descended 180 feet," said
Nimau. "I have plumbed his dive. A diver with a
suit cannot go any deeper, and so we never have ex-
plored the possible beds 'way down. The whole face
of the outer reef may be a vast oyster-bed, but the surf
prevents us from investigating. I have seen in Decem-
ber and March of many years millions of baby oysters
floating into the lagoons with the rising tide, to remain
there. They never go out again but prefer the quiet
life where they can grow up strong and big. The singu-
lar thing about these pearl-oysters is that they can
move about. When you try to break them loose from
the ledge they prove to be very firmly attached by their
byssus, but they travel from one shelf to another when
they need a change of food. It is not sand they are most
afraid of. They can spit their nacre on it if it gets in
their shells ; but it is the little red crab that bothers them
most. You know how often you find the crab living
happily in the pearl-shell because when the oyster feeds
he gets his share, and he is too active for the oyster to
kill as it does the worm, by spitting its nacre on him and
entombing him. Some day divers in improved suits
will search for the thousands of pearls that have fallen
upon the bottom from dead oysters, and maybe make
millions. Mais, apres tout, pearls may soon have little
value, for they say that the Japanese and other people
are growing them like mushrooms, and, though they have
not yet perfected the orient or ti"ue pearl, they may some
day. One man, some kind of foreigner, who used to be
around here, discovered the secret, but it 's lost now."

CHAPTER XIII

Story of the wondrous pearls planted in the lagoon of Pukapuka —
Tepeva a Tepeva, the crippled diver, tells it — How a European scien-
tist improved on nature — Tragedy of Patasy and Mauraii — The
robbed coral bank — Death under the sea.

THE palace of the governor was within half a mile
of my abode in the vale of Atuona, on the island
of Hiva-Oa, the capital of the Marquesan Archi-
pelago. It was a broad and deep valley, "the most
beautiful, and by far the most ominous and gloomy, spot
on earth," said Stevenson. Umbrageous and silent,
it was watered by a stream, which, born in the distant
hills, descended in falls and rills and finally a chatter-
ing brook to the bay. Magnificent forests of many
kinds of trees, a hundred vines and flowers, with rarest
orchids, and a tangled mass of grasses and creepers,
lined the 'banks of the little river, and filled the rising
confines of the dell, which, as it climbed, grew narrower
and darker, and more melancholy of aspect, the poignant
melancholy of a sad loveliness past telling or analyzing.
A huge fortress of rocks rose almost sheer above my
cottage, lowering in shadow and terrible in storm, the
highest point in the Marquesas. In sunshine it was the
brilliant rampart of the world-god's battlement, reflect-
ing his flashing rays, and throwing a sheen of luminosity
upon the depths of the strath. This lofty peak of Te-
metiu, nearly a mile in the sky, was the tower of a vast
structure of broken hills, gigantic columns, pinnacles,

249

250 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

tilted and vertical rocks, ruins of titanic battles of fire
and water in ages gone. I had but to lift my eyes and
lower them to know that man here as in the Paumotus
had but triflingly affected his environment. From the
castellated summits to the beach where I had landed, the
dwelhngs of humans seemed lost in the dense foliage
dominated by the lofty cocoanuts and the spreading
breadfruits.

The palace of the young French administrator was in
a garden in which grew exotic flowers brought by prede-
cessors who sought to assuage their nostalgia by familiar
charms. The palace had large verandas, and they were
most of it, as in all tropical countries where mosquitoes
are not too menacing. The reading and lounging, the
eating and drinking, took place there, and generally
a delicious breeze cooled the humid air and drove away
any insects that might annoy. Almost daily I was the
guest of the governor at a meal, or in the evening after
dinner, for a merry hour or two. We might be alone,
or with Andre Bauda, the tax collector, postmaster, and
chief of police, or not seldom with one or more of the
fairest of the Marquesan girls of the island of Hiva-Oa.
For the governor was host not only to the beauties of
our valley of Atuona, but sent Flag, the native mutoi,
or policeman, of the capital, to other villages over the
mountains, to invite those whom Flag thought would
lessen his ennui. Far from his beloved Midi, the gov-
ernor retained a Gallic and gallant attitude toward
young women, and never tired of their prattle, their
insatiable thirst for the beverages of France, and their
light laughter when lifted out of their habitual gravity
by these. Determined to learn their tongue as quickly

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 251

as possible, being no longer resident than I in the Mar-
quesas, he kept about him a lively lexicon or tM^o to fur-
nish him words and practice. Midnight often came
with the rest of the village already hours upon their
sleeping-mats, but on the palace porches a gabble of
conversation, the lilt of a chant, or perhaps the patter
of a hula dance of bare feet upon the boards. The
Protestant and Catholic missionaries, though opposed to
each other upon doctrinal and disciplinary subjects,
united in condemnation of the conduct of the high rep-
resentative of sovereignty. But, like the governor of
the Paumotus, he replied: "La vie est triste; vive la
hagatalle." Life is sad ; let joy be unconfined.

The governor's menage had only one attendant, Song
of the Nightingale, and he served only because he was
a prisoner, and preferred the domestic duties to repair-
ing trails or sitting all day in the calaboose by the beach.
There was no servant in the Marquesas. Whatever civ-
ilization had done to them, — and it had undone them
almost entirely, — it had not made them menials. There
was never a slave. Here death was preferable. In
Tahiti one might procure native domestics with extreme
difficulty through their momentary craving for gauds,
or through affection, but one bought no subservience.
The silent, painstaking European or American or Asi-
atic, the humble, sir-ring butler and footman, could not
be matched in the South Seas. If they liked one, these
indolent people would work for one now and then, but
must be allowed to have their own way and say, and, if
reproved, it must be in the tone one used to a child or a
relative. The governor himself was compelled to en-
dure Song of the Nightingale's lapses and familiarities,

252 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

because he was the only procurable cook in the islands.
He could not buy or persuade one of his lovely guests,
clothed as they were but in a single garment, to wash
a plate or shake a mat. I, it was true, was assisted by
Exploding Eggs, a boy of fourteen years, but I made
him an honored companion and neophyte whom I initi-
ated into the mysteries of coffee-making and sweeping,
and he, too, often wandered away for a day or two with-
out warning.

The table was spread on the veranda when at seven
o'clock I opened the garden gate of the palace. Flag
had delivered to me an enveloped card with studious
ceremony, the governor sometimes observing the ex-
treme niceties of official hospitality, and again throwing
them to the winds, especially in very hot weather. Flag,
barelegged and barefooted as always, wore the red-
striped jacket of the mutoi and a loin-cloth, and carried
a capacious leather pouch from which he had extracted
the made-in-Paris carte d'invitation. To him it was a
mysterious summons to a Lucullan feast which he might
not even look upon. The governor was dressing when
I mounted the porch, and I was received by Song of the
Nightingale. He was a middle-aged desperado, with a
leering face, given a Mephistophelian cast by a black
whisker extending from ear to ear, and by heavy lines of
blue tattooing upon his forehead. He had white blood
in him, I felt sure, for he had a cunning wickedness of
aspect that lacked the simplicity of the Marquesan.
He had been a prisoner many years for various of-
fenses, but mostly for theft or moon shining, at which
he was adept, and he was the one Marquesan I would
not trust ; he had been too much with whites. One won-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 253

dered at times whether one's life was not the pawn of a
mood of such a villain, but the French had hammered
their dominion upon these sons of man-eaters with lead
and steel in the early days, though they were easy and
negligent rulers over the feeble remnant.

The handsome governor came from his boudoir as
Vehine-hae and Tahia-veo said "Kaohar Vehine-hae
and Tahia-veo were their names in Marquesan, which
translated exactly Ghost Girl and Miss Tail. The
latter was a petite, engaging girl of seventeen, a bru-
nette in color, and modest and sweet in disposition.
Ghost Girl was the enigma of her sex there, nineteen
or twenty, living alone in a detached hut, and singularly
beautiful. She was as dark as a Nubian, with a volup-
tuous figure, small hands and feet, and baggage eyes
of melting sepia that promised devotion unutterable.
Her nose was straight and perfect, and her sensual
mouth filled with shining teeth. Of all the Marquesan
girls she wore a travesty of European dress. They in
public wore a tight-fitting peignoir or tunic, and in pri-
vate a parew, but Ghost Girl had on a silk bodice open
to disclose her ripe symmetry, and a lace petticoat about
which she wore a silk kerchief. In her ebon heap of hair
she wore the phosphorescent flowers of the Rat's Ear.
Her mind was that of a child of ten, inquisitive and ac-
quisitive, exhibitive and demanding.

The governor seated us, the ladies opposite each other,
and the dinner began with appetizers of vermouth.
The aromatic wine, highly fortified as it was, burned
the throat of Miss Tail, but Ghost Girl drank hers with
zest, and said, "Motahi! That's fine!" Neither of the
girls spoke more than a few sentences of French, though

254 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

they had hoth been in the nuns' school, but we were able
with our knowledge of Marquesan and Song's fragmen-
tary French to carry on a lively interchange of words,
if not of thought.

. The governor had shot a few brace of huhu, the green
doves of the forest, and Song had spitted them over a
purau wood fire. With the haunch of a wild goat from
the hills we had excellent fare, with claret and white
wine from Sauterne. We two palefaces wielded forks,
but as no Polynesians use such very modern inventions
the ladies lifted their meat to their mouths without arti-
ficial aid. Ghost Girl, as befitting her European attire,
tried to use a fork, but shrieked with pain when she suc-
ceeded in putting only the tines into her tongue. We
hardly realize the pains our mothers were at to teach us
table-manners, nor that gentlemen of Europe ate with
their fingers at a period when chop-sticks were in com-
mon use in China and Japan, except in time of mourn-
ing.

Song of the Nightingale, who, doubtless, had in-
dulged his convict hankering for alcohol in the secret
recesses of the kitchen, laughed loudly at Ghost Girl's
pain, and when he placed a platter of the kuku on the
cloth, and she refused to accept one of the grilled birds
his snigger became derisive. He took up the carving-
fork and stuck it deep into a kukus breast and put it
on her plate. She shuddered and started back, with
her hands covering her long-lashed eyes. The gover-
nor demanded in a slightly angry tone to know what
Song had done to frighten her. The cook explained
that Ghost Girl was of Hanavave, on the island of Fatu-
hiva, a day's journey distant, and that the hon dieu or

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 255

god — he said pony -too — of Fatu-hiva was the kuku.
She had been appalled at his suggestion that she should
eat the symbolic tenement of her mother's deity, though
she herself ate the transubstantiated host at communion
in the Catholic church at Atuona. Not content with
his insult to her ancestral god, and, taking his cue from
the governor's roar of laughter at his French or his ex-
planation, the cruel Song said a bitter thing to Ghost
Girl.

"Eat the kuku!" he said. "It will taste better than
j^our grandmother did."

"'Tuitui! Shut your mouth!" retorted Vehine-hae.
"There were no thieves in our tribe."

That was a hot shot at Song's crimes and penal record,
and so 'animated became their repartee that the gov-
ernor had to call a halt and demand mutual apologies.
The chef informed him that his father in a foray upon
Hanavave had taken as a prize of war the grandmother
of Ghost Girl, and had eaten her, or at least, whatever
tidbit he had liked. It was history that she had been
eaten in Taaoa, Song's home, in the next valley to
Atuona. No more vindictive remark than this, nor
more hateful action than his offering the kuku to Ghost
Girl, could be imagined in the rigid etiquette of Mar-
quesas society. The tears were in the soft eyes of
Vehine-hae, and the alarmed governor dismissed Song
from further service that evening and took the weeping
Fatu-hivan in his arms to console her.

"Tapuf Tapu!" sobbed Ghost Girl. The kuku was
tapu to her teeth, as the American flag would be to the
feet of a patriot. Song was without other belief than
in the delight of drink, but Ghost Girl was a woman,

256 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

the support of every new cult and the prop of every old
one. Superstition the world over will die last in the
breast of the female. She survives subjugated races,
and conserves the past, because her instincts are stronger
and her faculties less active than man's, and her need
of worship overwhelming.

That word tapu was still one to conjure with in the
Marquesas. Flag, the policeman, and sole deputy of
Commissaire Bauda on the island of Hiva-Oa, had in-
voked it a few days before, after an untoward incident.
Bauda and I had returned on horseback from a journey
to the other side of the island, and, at the post-tax-
police office near the beach where Bauda lived, encount-
ered Flag, drunk. Son of a famous dead chief, and
himself an amiable, bright man of thirty, he had not re-
sisted the temptation of Bauda's being gone for a day,
to abstract a bottle of absinthe from a closet and con-
sume the quart. Bauda upbraided him and ordered him
to his house, but Flag seized a loaded rifle and sounded
an ancient battle-cry. It had the blood-curdling qual-
ity of an Indian whoop.

Neither Bauda nor I was armed, and I was for shelter
behind a cocoanut-tree. That would not do for Bauda,
nor for discipline.

"Me with six campaigns in Africa! Moi qui parleT
exclaimed the former officer of the Foreign Legion, as
he tapped his breast and voiced his astonishment at
Flag's temerity. He strode toward the staggering
mutoi, and, with utter disregard of the rifle, reached his
side. He wrenched the weapon from him, and with a
series of kicks drove him into the calaboose and locked
the door on him.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 257

"That means ten years in Noumea for him," said the
commissaire, savagely. But after dinner, which I got,
when he had meditated upon Flag's willingness as a cook
and his ability to collect taxes, he lessened the sentence
to a year at hard labor. I was not surprised to meet
Flag at noon the next day with his accustomed white
jacket with its red stripe upon the arm. Man cannot
live without cooks, and perhaps I had aided leniency by
burning a bird.

Flag explained to me, though sheepishly, that, over-
come by the litre of absinthe as he was, he would not
have injured a hair of Bauda's head.

"Bauda is tapu. I would meet an evil fate did I
touch him," said Flag, when sober and sorry.

I stumbled on tapus daily. Vai Etienne, my neigh-
bor, gave me a feast one day, and half a dozen of us,
all men, sat at table. Vai Etienne, having lived
several years in Tahiti had Frenchified ways. His
mother, the magnificent Titihuti, who was splendidly
tattooed from toe to waist, and who was my adopted
mother, waited upon us. Offering her a glass of wine,
and begging her to sit with us, I discovered that the
glass her son drank from and the chair a man sat in
were tapu to her. She took her wine from a shell, but
would not sit at table with us. Of course, she never sat
in chairs, anyhow, nor did Vai Etienne, but he had pro-
vided these for the whites.

The subject of the tapus of the South Seas was end-
less. The custom, tabu or hapu in Hawaiian, and
tambu in Fijian, was ill expressed in our "taboo," which
means the pressure of public sentiment, or family or
group feeling. Tapus here were the conventions of

258 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

primitive people made awe-inspiring for enforcement be-
cause of the very willfulness of these primitives. The
custom here and throughout society dated from the
beginning of legend. Laws began with the rules laid
down by the old man of the family and made dread in
the tribe or sept by the hocus-pocus of the medicine
man. Tapus may have been the foundation of all penal
laws and etiquette. The Jews had a hundred niceties
of religious, sanitary, and social tapus. Warriors were
tapu in Homer's day, and land and fish were tapu to
Grecian warriors, according to Plato. Confucius in
the "Li Ki," ordained men and women not to sit on the
same mat, nor have the same clothes-rack, towel, or
comb, nor to let their hands touch in giving and receiv-
ing, nor to do a score of other trivial things. The old
Irish had many tapus and totems, and many legends of
harm wrought by their breaking, a famous one being
"The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel."

In the Marquesas tapus were the most important part
of life, as ceremony was at the court of the kings of
France. They governed almost every action of the
people, as the rules of a prison do convicts, or the
precepts of a monastery monks. Death followed the
disobedience of many, and others preserved one from
the hands of enemies. There being no organized gov-
ernment in Polynesia, tapus took the place of laws
and edicts. They were, in fact, spiritual laws, super-
stition being the force instead of a penal code. They
imposed honesty, for if a man had any dear possession,
he had the priest tapu it and felt secure. Tapus pro-
tected betrothed girls and married women from rakes.

A young woman who worked at the convent in

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 259

Atuona, near me, was made tapu against all work.
She was never allowed to touch food until it had been
prepared for her. If she broke the tapu the food was
thrown away. From infancy, when a taua had laid
the prohibition upon her, she lived in disagreeable idle-
ness, afraid to break the law of the priest. Only in
recent years did the nuns laugh away her fears, and set
her to helping in their kitchen. She told me that she
could not explain the reason for her having been tapu
from effort, as the taua had died who chained her, with-
out informing her.

If a child crawled under a house in the building, the
house was burned. If I were building a boat, and, for
dislike of me, some one named aloud the boat after my
father, I destroyed the boat. Blue was tapu to women
in Nuku-Hiva, and red, too. They could not eat bonito,
squid, popii, and koehi. They might not eat bananas,
cocoanuts, fresh breadfruit, pigs of brown color, goats,
fowls and other edibles.

Females were forbidden to climb upon the sacred
paepaes, to enter the men's club-houses (this tapu was
enforced in America until the last few years), to eat
with men, to smoke inside the house, to carry mats on
their heads, and, saddest of all, to weep. Children
might not carry one another pickaback. The kuavena
fish was tapu to fishermen, as also peata, a kind of
shark.

To throw human hair upon the ground was strictly
prohibited. It might be trodden on, and bring mischief
upon the former wearer. So the chiefs would never
walk under anvthinff that miffht be trodden on, and
aboard ships never went below deck, for that reason.

260 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Perhaps our superstition as to walking under ladders
is derived from such a tapu. To stretch one's hand
or an object over the head of any one was tapu. There
were a hundred things tapu to one sex. Men had the
advantage in these rules, for they were made by men.

The earthly punishments for breaking tapus ran from
a small fine to death, and from spoliation to ostracism
and banishment. Though there were many arbitrary
tapus, the whims and fantasies of chiefs, or the wiles
of priests, the majority of them had their beginning in
some real or fancied necessity or desirability. Doubt-
less they were distorted, but, like circumcision and the
Mosaic barring of pork to the Jews, here was health or
safety of soul or body concerned. One might cite the
Ten Commandments as very old tapus.

The utter disregard for the tapus of the Marquesans
shown by the whites eventually had caused them to fall
into general disrepute. They degenerated as manners
decayed under the influx of barbarians into Rome, as
Greek art fell before the corruption of the people. The
Catholic, who bowed his head and struck his breast at the
exaltation of the host, could understand the veneration
the Marquesans had for their chief tapus, and their hor-
ror at the conduct of the rude sailors and soldiers who
contemned them. But when they saw that no gods re-
venged themselves upon the whites, that no devil de-
voured their vitals when they ate tapu breadfruit or
fish or kicked the high priest from the temple, the
gentle savages made up their minds that the magic had
lost its potency. So, gradually, though to some people
tapus were yet very sacred, the fabric built up by thou-
sands of years of an increasingly elaborate system of

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 261

laws and rites, melted away undei* the breath of scorn.
The god of the white man was evidently greater than
theirs. Titihuti, a constant attendent of the Catholic
church, yet treasured a score of tapus, and associated
with them these others, the dipping of holy water from
the henitier, the crossing herself, the kneeling and stand-
ing at mass, the telhng of her beads, and the kissing of
the cross.

The abandonment of tapus under the ridicule and
profanation of the whites relaxed the whole intricate
but sustaining Marquesan economy. Combined with
the ending of the power of chiefs of hereditary caste,
the doing away with tapus as laws set the natives hope-
lessly adrift on an uncharted sea. Right and wrong
were no longer right or wrong.

This fetish system was very aptly called a plague of
sacredness.

"Whoever was sacred infested everything he touched
with consecration to the gods, and whatever had thus
the microbe of divinity communicated to it could com-
municate' it to other things and persons, and render
them incapable of common use or approach. Not till
the priest had removed the divine element by ceremonies
and incantations could the thing or person become
common or fit for -human use or approach again."

The Marquesan priests strove with might and main
to extend the tapus, for they meant power and gain.
Wise and strong chiefs generally had private confer-
ences with the priests and looked to it that tapus did
not injure them.

Allied with tapuism was what is called in Hawaii
hahunaism, that is the witchcraft of the priests, the

262 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

old wizards, who combined with the imposing and lifting
of the bans, the curing or killing of people by enchant-
ment. Sorcery or spells were at the basis of most
primitive medicine. At its best it was hypnotism, mes-
merism, or mind power. After coming through thou-
sands of years of groping in physic and surgery, we
are adopting to a considerable degree the methods of the
ancient priests, the theurgy, laying on of hands, or in-
voking the force of mind over matter, or stated Christly
methods of curing the sick. In Africa witchcraft or
voodooism attains more powers than ever here, but
even in Polynesia the test of a priest's powers was his
ability to kill by willing it. In the New Zealand witch-
craft schools no man was graduated until he could make
some one die who was pointed out as his subject. A
belief in this murderous magic is shared by many whites
who have lived long in Polynesia or New Zealand. It
was still practised here, and held many in deadly fear.
The victims died under it as if their strength ran out
like water.

The most resented exclusion against women in the
Marquesas, and one of the last to be broken, was from
canoes. Lying Bill, as the first seaman who sailed their
ships here, had met shoals of women swimming out miles
to the vessel as it made for port. In his youth they did
not dare enter a canoe in Hiva-Oa. They tied their
parens on their heads and swam out, clambered aboard
the ships miles from land with the parens still dry.

"They'd jump up on the bulwarks," said Lying Bill,
"an' make their twilight before touchin' the deck. The
men would come out in canoes an' find the women had
all the bloomin' plunder."

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 263

This tapu, most important to the men, was maintained
until a Pankhm'st sprang from the ranks of complain-
ing but inactive women. There being many more men,
women had always had a singular sex liberty, but, as I
have said, the artful men had invoked rigid tapus to keep
them from all water-craft. The females might have
three or four husbands, might outshine an Aspasia in
spell of pulchritude and collected tribute, and the por-
tioned men must submit for passion's sake, but when
economics had concern, the pagan priests brought orders
directly from deity.

The dread gods of the High Place, the demons of
the Paepae Tapu, had centuries before sealed canoes
against women. In canoes women might wander ; they
might visit other bays and valleys, even other islands,
and learn of the men of other tribes. They might go
about and fall victims to the enemies of the race. They
might assume to enter the Fae Enata, the House of
Council, which was on a detached islet.

And they certainly would catch other fish than those
they now snared from rocks or hooked, as both swam
in the sea. Fish are much the diet of the Marquesans,
and were propitiations to maid and wife — the current
coin of the food market. To withhold fish was to cause
hunger. The men alone assumed the hazard of the toss-
ing canoe, the storms, the hot eye of the vertical sun,
and the devils of the deep who grappled with the fisher;
and theirs was the reward, and theirs the weapons of
control.

But there were always women who grumbled, women
who even laughed at such sacred things, and women who
persisted. Finally the very altar of the Forbidden

264 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Height was shaken by their madness. How and what
came of it were told me by an old priest or sorcerer, as
we sat in the shade of the great banyan on the beach
and waited for canoes to come from the fishing.

The sorcerer and I passed the ceremonial pipe, and
his words were slow, as becoming age and a severe out-
look on life.

"There were willful women who would destroy the
tapu against entering canoes?" I asked, to urge his
speech.

''E, it was so!" he said.

"Me imvi? What happened?" I queried further.

"A long time this went on. My grandfather told me
of a woman who talked against that tapu when he was a
boy."

"And she—?"

"She enraged the gods. She corrupted even men. A
council was held of the wise old men, and the words
went forth from it. She was made to keep within her
house, and a tapu against her made it forbidden to listen
to her wildness. In each period another woman arose
to do the same, and more were corrupted. Some women
stole canoes and were drowned. The sharks even hated
them for their wickedness. We pointed out what fate
had befallen them, but other women returned boasting.
We slew some of these. But still it went on. You
know, foreigner, how the pokoko enters a valley. One
coughs and then another, and from the sea to the peak
of Temetiu, many are made sick by the evil. It was so
with us, and that revolt against religion."

He sighed and rubbed his stomach.

"Is it not time they came?" he asked.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 265

"Epo, by and by," I answered. "Why did you men
not yield? After all, what did it really matter?"

"'O te Etna e! The gods of the High Place forbade,
for the women's own sake!" he said indignantly, and
muttered further.

To break down every sacred relation of centuries!
To shatter the tradition of ages ! To unsex their beloved
mothers, wives, and sisters by the license of canoe rid-
ing! The dangers and the hardships of the carven tree
were to be spared the consolers of men's labor and perils.

"Did the gods speak out plainly and severely?"

The taua looked at me quizzically. Foreigners mock
holy things of nature. The bishop here had kicked the
graven image of the deity of the cocoanut-tree.

''Ea! Po, the god of night, who rules the hereafter,
spoke. The priest, the high priest, received the message.
You know that grove by the Dark Cave. He heard the
voice from the black recesses. Tapu haa, it said. A
double tapu against any woman even lifting a paddle,
or putting one toe, or her heel, or her shadow within a
canoe. All the women were not wicked. Many be-
lieved their place was in the huaa, the home. These re-
fused to join the brazen hussies, the deserters of the po-
poi pit. But the dance was dull, and there was strife.
The huona, the artists, the women who rejoice men when
they are merry, the women with three or more husbands,
they all seemed to have the madness. They gained
some of the younger men to their side, and they built
that long house by those breadfruit-trees. They held
their palaver there, and they refused to lie under their
own faa, their roofs of pandanus. They would not
dance by the light of the blazing candlenuts the mad

266 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

hura-hura, nor let those braver s of the sea share their
mats on the paepae of the valley. Many husbands
fought one another when their wife did not return.
The tribe grew apart."

He sighed and took a shark's tooth from his loin-
cloth, with which he scraped our pipe.

I went and lay where the curling sea caressed my
naked feet. I was within easy distance of the tauas
voice. One must not hurry even in speech in these Isles
of Leisure. The old man blew through the bowl and
then the stem, and, taking pieces of tobacco from his
pareu, he packed the pipe and lit it. He drew a long
whiff first, as one pours wine first in one's own glass,
and handed it to me.

He responded when I put the pipe again between his
trembling fingers.

"The gods grew weary. Messages but few came
from them. Priests' wives even ceased to cook the
breadfruit on the hot stones, and went to live in that
accursed haa ite/'

"We esteem such a long house, and call it a club,"
I interposed in subconscious defense of my own habits.

^'Oti! Maybe. Your island forgot wisdom early.
You even cook your fish. We will make the fire
now."

I rose and shook off the warm salt water from my
body. My pareu of blue with white stars was on a de-
scending branch of the banyan. I put it about my
thighs and folded it for holding. Then arm in arm we
walked to our own house on the raised paepae of great
basalt stones.

I heaped the dried cocoanut fiber in a hollow of a

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 267

rock, and about it set the polished coral of our kitchen.
A spark from the pipe set it afire, and, heaped with
more fiber and wood of the hibiscus, before long
the stones blushed with the heat, and, growing redder
yet, were ready for their service.

The priest of old had withdrawn to make a sauce of
limes and seawater, which he brought out within the
half-hour from the penthouse in which we stored our
simple goods. It was in a tanoa formerly used for
kava, a trencher of the false ebony, black in life, but
turned by the years of decoction of the mysterious
narcotic to a marvelous green. It was like an ancient
bronze in the open. Here we were both ready for our
delayed food, I, beside the glowing coral stones, the
bones of once living organisms, and the old man, with
his bowl of sauce. But the food tarried.

He fluttered about the paepae and chewed a bit of the
hibiscus wood to stay his hunger. In the breadfruit-
grove the komako, the Marquesan nightingale, deceived
by a lowering cloud or perhaps impelled by a sudden
passion, was early pouring his soul into the shadowy
air. I tended my fire and wondered at man's small
relation to most of creation.

"Go, my son," said the taua impatiently, "to the open-
ing of the forest, and see if they do not come over the
waves !"

I strolled to where the beach met the jungle. An
outrigger canoe was coming through the surf. A faint
shout from it reached me. I ran back to him where he
still chewed an inedible splinter.

"Epo/^ I said, and made the fire fiercer. He stirred
his mitiaroa, the sauce, and watered his lips.

268 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

"How was the tapu broken finally?" I asked, casu-
ally.

"They are long away," he observed with his eyes on
the break in the trees.

"They are just now beaching the canoe," I said sooth-
ingly. "We will eat in a moment. But taua, you
leave me hungry for that last word.

"The women of Oomoa tried to break down your tapu
of time immemprial against their entering canoes, and
there was trouble. The gods were against them, and
yet to-day — "

"The gods got tired," he interrupted me. "The
chiefs became afraid of the continuous hakapahi i te
faufau, the excitement and turmoil. You know the
chiefs and priests decided all things. Now the women
cried out for a vavaotina, for each one of the tribe to
lay a candlenut in one of two popoi troughs. One was
assent to the tapu, and the other against it."

There was argument first, said the taua. After the
priests had called down the curse of Po and other gods
of might on all who would invoke a popular judgment
of a sacred and time-webbed commandment, the chiefs
pictured the dangers to women and to canoes, to the
tribe and the valley, if women broke loose from the
centuried bonds that forbade canoeing. Older women
and some younger beauties, the latter fearing hurt to
their prestige by less luxurious belles, urged the in-
violability of the tapu.

The women of the Long House, the rebels, merely
demanded instant casting of the amn nuts into the
hoana. He himself, the tau^ said, then made the great
error of his life. He swiftly counted in his mind those

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 269

for and against, and, convinced that he had a huge ma-
jority for the prevailing law and order, shouted out that
the vavaotina, though long disused, was just and truly
Marquesan.

The troughs were brought from a near-by house to
the beach, and the trial was staged.

"At that moment," said the old priest, "a canoe which
had been cunningly making its way to the shore, as if
by a prearranged signal, suddenly took the breakers and
came careening upon the sand. Out of it stepped
Taipi, a woman of that red-headed tribe of Tahuata,
arranged her kilt of tapa, and advanced. She was like
an apparition, but fatal to my count. She was a mot
kanahau, beautiful and strong, and the first woman who
had ever come except as a prisoner from that fierce
island. But she was stronger in her desires than any
man. She was unbelieving and unafraid of sacred
things. A hundred men sprang forward to greet
Taipi. American, she was as the red jasmine, as the
fire of the oven, odorous and lovely, but hot to the touch
and scorching to know. That woman laughed at the
men, and, as if word had been sent her, took her place
among the women. She seized a candlenut and threw
it exactly into the unholy hoana.

" 'O men of Oomoa,' she cried, *so you fear that
women may paddle faster and better than you ! Haame-
tau hae! You are cowards. Look, I have come a
night and a day alone, and no shark god has injured me
and I am not weary.'

"There followed a shower of candlenuts into the de-
mon trough, as the stones from the slings in battle.
We were beaten, as youth ever defeats age when new

270 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

gods are powerful. Our day and the power of all tapus
waned and ended soon. Once in the canoes those
women made us release the tapu against their eating
bananas and, later, pig. In a thousand years no Mar-
quesan woman had tasted a banana or eaten pig. They
were for the men and there were good reasons known
to the gods. But let woman leave ever so little way the
narrow path of obedience and of doing without things
that are evil for her, and she knows no limits. She is
without the koekoe, the spirit that is in man. The race
has fallen on sorrow."

He sat down on his powerful haunches and chanted
an improvisation about the lost splendor. Low and
mournful, the psalm of a Jeremiah, his deep voice rum-
bled as he fixed his dark eyes on the great globes of the
breadfruit hanging by the plaited roof of the hut.

And through an opening of the forest came the two
women of his household. Very White and Eyes of the
Great Stars, heavily laden with their morning's catch
of fish. They came tripping over the green carpet of
the forest, laughing at some incident of their fishing, and
threw down beside him the strung circles of shining ika,
large and brilliant bonito, the mackerel of brilliancy,
and the maoo, the gay and gaudy flying-fish.

"Oh, ho! sorcerer," said I. "Did ever men match
with the cunning of these scaly ones with greater luck?
The stones are ready for their broiling."

The taua made a wry face and stirred his sauce. He
dipped a popo into it and ate it greedily, bones and all.

^'E, er he said and spat out the words. "Piau!
The women catch their own fish now."

CHAPTER XIV

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

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

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

"I agree with you," replied Mandel, "that nothing
of money can balance what you Paumotuans go through
to gather shells, but in many parts of the world divers
of other races are doing the same. They don't go as
deep as you do, because their waters are shallower, but

271

272 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

they fix the price for pearls. I have seen them from
Ceylon to Australia, and I have to meet their compe-
tition when I take these pearls to Paris where the
market is. Also, Mapuhi, the culture pearl is every
year hurting our trade more and more, and some day
may make pearls so cheap that you will get a third of
what you do now. You remember the Taote of
Pukapukar

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

Mandel smiled.

"Yes the Taote got a rough deal," he admitted.
"But his pearls made another man's fortune, and as-
tonished all who saw them in Paris. Let me tell you!
Last year I visited three culture fields, and they are
doing wonderful things. The Japanese for many years
only copied the methods of the Chinese. They forced
the fresh water mussel and the abalone to coat with na-
cre substances they inserted within their folds, but they
got no pearls of the best size, shape, or luster. Now,
Kokichi Mikimoto has gone much further than any-
body. I spent a week with him at his pearl farm in the
bay of Ago in the Inland Sea of Japan. The bay is
a dozen miles long and five wide, with an average depth
of sixty feet, but it is remarkably free from currents
and severe storms. Mikimoto is a scientist as was the
Taote, He opens a three-year-old shell and lays a
bead of nacre on the outer, shell-secreting skin of the

From the painting by Oscar F. Schmidt

A young palm in Atuona

From the painting by Oscar F. Schmidt

Atuona valley and the peak of Temetiu

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 273

oyster. This skin is then dissected off the oyster and
fitted about the bead like a sac. This sac is then trans-
planted into the tissues of another oyster in its shell, an
astringent is sprinkled on the wound, and the second
oyster is planted in the prepared bed at anywhere from
twenty-five to eighty feet. It stays there from three
to seven years, and then his girl diver brings it up.
Mind you, he has laid down suitable rocks in certain
shallow places, and when they are covered with oyster
spat they are removed to deeper beds and set out in
order. It is these which are dissected at three years of
age, and the nuclei inserted in them. These beads are
of all colors, mother-of-pearl or pink or blue coral, and
the pearls are of the color, white or pink or blue, of the
beads. The oysters often spit them out, the starfish
and octopus ravage the beds, and the red current some-
times spoils everything for a year. They have similar
farms in other parts of Japan, and in Australia and
Ceylon, but Mikimoto has done most. He sells mil-
lions of pearls every year. Of course they are blisters
and so not orient or perfect, ^because the bead has
touched the shell while growing, and has not remained
in the folds of the oyster. But I am afraid, for I was
told a few months ago that Mikimoto and others were
making perfect pearls. If they do they will ruin the
market."

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

"Mais oui! If you cut open the grafted pearl you
find the center a bead or bit of coral, but in the true
pearl the center is a grain of sand, or a hollow formerly
occupied by the tapeworm or parasite. Well, you

274 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

won't make any money cutting pearls open, so we use
the ultra-violet ray. Most of Mikimoto's pearls are
about as big as French peas, and, as I say, lack spheri-
city because of attachment to the inner shells. But,
mind you, his oysters are merely the avicule or wing-
shelled kind, and small. Here are these Paumotu shells
from six to eighteen inches across and the oj^sters in pro-
portion. Think of what they might do, if they were put
to work by science and — "

"They were once," broke in Kopcke. "My girl's
father knows all about it."

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

"The Empress Eugenie's necklace came from here,
and so did Queen Victoria's five-thousand-pound pearl,
but these were said to be finer."

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

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

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

That the fixing of a price for the twenty-five pearls
was not to be concluded in public was evident, and so
Kopcke, Lying Bill, and we others sauntered to
Kopcke's hut. Nowhere do whites despise one an-
other as feelingly as in the South Seas. Their compe-
tition in business and in love is so intimate and so acute

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 275 y

that there are no distances nor withholdings of emotion.
The finesse and impersonal euchering of rivals practised
on mainlands is not copied in this hotter and more prim-
itive mart where adversaries are of ruder breed, and
courtesy is considered weakness. As we strolled under
the palms to Kopcke's house, McHenry said to me,
"This Taote, this doctor or magician they gab about,
I knew better than anybody else, an' he was a bloomin'
queer 'un. I kept a store at Penrhyn for years, and
this fellow was around there studyin' the lagoon.
Everybody called him Doc, but whether he was a M. D.
I don't know. He had a tool-chest, though, like a
jbloody sawbones, and could fix a cut or saw off an
arm fine. He had michaelscropes and all sorts o' pro-
fessor junk, an' he was good-hearted, and had money
enough, too."

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

276 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

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

"I '11 go and hunt up the old man to spin you the
yarn," said Kopcke, and disappeared in the dark-
ness of the outside. Mandel came before he returned,
and as the talk was still on the Taote he gathered up
his thread of it.

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

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 277

it by repeating it, and anyhow, here he is 1 nself!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'^^Ea^ that ramu is good. I do not drink it as a Mor-
mon but because I am weak. It is mdkivi, this thing I

278 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

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

"I came to Takaroa, my home. Months afterward
the Taote arrived here in a ten-ton cutter. He had
but one sailor, a Tahitian, Terii. They lived in that
house over there. I would not go into that house
now for ten tons of shell. It is ihoiho. When the
moon is dark a spirit dances there, the spirit of Mauraii.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 279

He was my cousin, and the Taote hired him to help
the other man. One day the Taote began to buy pro-
visions, a great quantity which were stored in the cut-
ter with other big boxes, as if for a long voyage. They
sailed away, Terii and Mauraii, too. 'Nuku-Hiva
will see me next,' said the Taote to us all. That was
a lie, but I did not know it then. Thev went to Puka-
puka. It is a little atoll, toward the Marquesas, and
far from any other island. Mauraii had dived there,
and the Taote knew that. Five moons later the cutter
sailed into this lagoon. Mauraii was with the Taote,
but Terii was not. The Taote paid Mauraii, and left
in the cutter with another sailor. For two years
Mauraii lived without labor. For two years his jaws
remained tight as the jaws of the pahua. He spoke
well of the Taote, but he was afraid. When I asked
him more about Terii, he would not talk. Terii had
eaten poisonous fish, he said once. He had trodden on
the nohu, he said another time. I knew Mauraii had
not been to the Marquesas. He was a Mormon, Mau-
raii, and he prayed like a man with a secret.

"We forget soon, and it was four years when Patasy
came in the Potii Taaha, his own cutter. He was of
Irelani, and drank much ramu. The cutter was leaky,
and Mauraii worked to calk the seams. Patasy gave
him hardly any money, but food, and night rum. Mau-
raii, with rum in him, would now make many words
to Patasy, and to me. He spoke of a secret that lay
between him and the Taote. He spoke of an oath he
had sworn on the book of Mormon and the picture of
Birigahama Younga. He spoke of something at
Pukapuka that was growing bigger and bigger. The

280 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Taote was in his native land, and would return soon,
and they would both be very rich. Mauraii's talk was
like a cloudy day that does not let one see far. Some-
times I would ask him about Terii, who had gone with
Mauraii, and who had not come back. That would still
his big word-making. He would shake a little then,
all over. He would say: 'I must not talk, Tepeva
a Tepeva; I must not talk.' But with more rum he
would talk. He was worried, though. He stopped
going to the temple ; he lived on Patasy's cutter. Often
I saw him lying on the deck, full of drink.

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

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

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

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 281

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

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

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

" 'Let us go to see Mauraii !' he said. He was angry,
and I was afraid, and I went with him. I knew where
Mauraii would be, and I pointed him out. He was
sitting in the shade of a purau tree, looking at the la-
goon. The Taote went to him and spoke to him.
Mauraii fell flat, and then he crawled about the sand,
and shouted to me not to let the Taote kill him, too.
This made him more angry, and he said that Mauraii
was really maamaa^ and that nothing could be done
for him. Mauraii ran to his house when he had turned

282 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

his back. After the Moana had gone on her way to
Nuku-Hiva, the Taote asked me if I could go with him
to another island. I did not want to go. If I had not
gone, I would not be ajs I am, but then I would not have
my house, and all the debts paid of my family.

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

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

"We steered and trimmed sail by turn. The wind
was fair, and we reached Pukapuka in five days. We
had a hard time to get the boxes ashore. There is no

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 283

pass, and you cannot reach the lagoon from the sea.
We had brought a small boat lashed on the deck, and
this we carried to the lagoon. It took us a day to
move it, and we made Mauraii help. The man had
changed since we landed on Pukapuka. He was not
wild, but taata ravea paari. He was cunning. He
smiled to himself sometimes in an evil way. We were
no sooner on the lagoon than the Taote ordered me and
that madman to build a hut and to rest ourselves for
a day.

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

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

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

<< <-l

<<1

284. ATOLLS OF THE SUN

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

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

" 'Do you see shell, large shell?' he asked quickly,
like a man who knows what is in a place.
'I see shell,' I said.
'Then dive and bring it up,' he commanded.

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

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

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 285

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

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

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

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

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

286 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

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

" 'There are no more shells in that bed,' I said. 'This
was the only one there.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Taote breathed hard. 'Tepeva a Tepeva,' he

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 287

said, 'go down again. It is possible that this is not the
bed. We placed a small anchor beside it. Look for
that. I worked seventeen years for this day.'

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

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

"He cursed me, and said I was trying to steal his
wealth. What he saw through the titea mata was the
gleam of the 'pahua, the great shell the priests use for
holy water. I said no more, and with Mauraii went to
the beach. It was night when we had brought the
machine to the boat, and we returned to the cutter for
food. I shall not forget that night. The foreigner
could not sleep, and he talked to me. He talked as if he
had a fever. He said he had tried for years to find out
what made pearls in oysters, and to do the work of God.
While others had made small ones that clung to the
shell, he alone had found the way to put in the shells

288 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

large beginnings for the oysters to cover. He had
chosen Pukapuka because it had a lagoon without a
pass, and so free from currents, and because it was
closed to diving and no one lived there. No one knew
of it, he said — no one but himself and Mauraii.

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

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

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

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

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 289

At last a signal came on the rope, and I had to let them
pull me up."

Tepeva a Tepeva's voice was weak. He poured him-
self the last drink of rum. Kopcke had gone to at-
tend to the loading and Lying Bill was snoring on the
floor.

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

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

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

"The madman laughed. 'A hundred and six more/
he replied; 'and to hell with Patasy.'

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

" 'Give me the helmet!' he ordered. 'Help me put it
on. I will know. I will know!'

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

"Mauraii fed the pump as I let out the line, and when
I felt the weight of the line, I took the pump myself.

290 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Now, a man like me, who has dived with the machine
for years, knows every motion of the hne.

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

^'AueoT I thought. He has found the robbed bank,
and the anchor. He knows the truth. He will come
up now. What will I dor? He will be terrible.

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

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

" 'Mauraii,' I said, 'yon man the pump alone. Go
smoothly ! If you fail, I will kill you !'

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

"A diver thinks quickly. I could not bring him to
the top unless Mauraii aided. I signaled by the rope.
There was no reply. The air was not being pumped.
It had stopped as I lifted him. Mauraii had left his
duty. I had one chance. I might unscrew the heavy
helmet, and cut the leads and carry him, with the aid of
the line, to the surface. He might not be dead yet. I
seized the helmet, cut the hose, and began to turn the
metal helmet. As I did so, I saw a shadow over my
head, and laid hold of my knife. It was not a shark.
It was Mauraii. He was dancing and smiling, dancing

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 291

and smiling, as in the Cocoanut House in Papeete. He
slowly settled down in the water. He took hold of me
as I twisted at the helmet, and he smiled at me, and
danced on a ledge of coral. Below this, I saw one
of those giant pahua. Aue! Marite! This pair was
as long as I am, and as deep as my legs. The great
animal in it had opened his doors to eat, and as Mauraii
leaped about in his mad dancing from rock to rock, he
stepped into the jaws of the pahua. Aue! They
closed as the jaws of the turtle upon the fish, and held
the fool as if he was buried. He was fast to the knees,
and fell over upon me as I worked at the helmet, his
head hanging down by my feet.

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

"Minutes it was before I could crawl into the boat.
I lay there many minutes before I could stand up. The
blood was upon my leg, and the marks of teeth. They
were not the teeth of a fish, but of a man. I prayed for
guidance. The Taote was dead, and Mauraii, too.
What could I do for them? Nothing! Yet I heard
a whisper in my ear to go down. I slipped into the
water and swam to the bottom. I never touched the
sand. I saw the bodies of the Taote and Mauraii
fought over by a dozen sharks. I had prayed, and I
had a knife in my hand. Even a shark fears a bold man.
tl struck at them right and left and reached the ledge
where the Taote lay. I slashed at the coat and cut

292 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

away the pocket. The water was red with blood about
me, but I shot up past the sharks with the purse, and
reached the boat. I took the oars and rowed as fast
as I could to shore. There I knelt and thanked Adam
and letu Kirito for my life.

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

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

Lying Bill had been awake for several minutes.

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

Tepeva a Tepeva, the man stricken by the bends, was
still squatting on the floor inmiersed in his pregnant
memories when I shook his hand, and went to bid good-
by to my friends of the atolls where life is harder but
simpler and sweeter than elsewhere in the world.
Mapuhi and Nohea rubbed my back, and commended
me to God. The wind was fluttering wildly the fronds
of the cocoanut-trees, and the surf was heavy as we
rowed through the passage and moat and struck the

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 293

breakers on the outer reef. From the sea for a few
minutes the lanterns in the houses were Hke fireflies in
the cane, but soon the darkness hid them, and I saw only
the black shadow of the inotus, and the gleam of the
foaming crests of the waves in the faint starlight. I
lay down on a mat by the steering-wheel of the Fetia
Taiao, and dreamed of the Taote and the dancing
Maurai in the trap of the giant pahua.

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

CHAPTER XV

The dismal abode of the Peyrals — S^tark-white daughter of Peyral — Only
wMte maiden in the Marquesas — I hunt wild bulls — Peyral's friend-
liness— I vii^it his house — He strikes me and threatens to kill me — I
go armed — Explanation of the bizarre tragi comedy.

AS I walked up from the beach of Atuona, where
I had touched the shore of the Marquesas for
the first time, I had remarked a European
dwelling, squalid, forbidding and peculiarly desolate.
Painted black originally, the heat and storms of years
had worn and defaced it, the sun had shrunk the boards
from one another, and posts and beams had gone awry.
It was set in a cocoanut-grove, the trees so close to-
gether that their huge fronds joined and roofed out sky
and light. The narrow road along the grove had been
raised later, and formed a dike so that with the heavy
rains of the season the land all about was a gloomy
marsh to which the sun seldom penetrated. The dingy
gallery of the house fronting the road had a broken rail
and dilapidated stairs, and in the shallow swamp and
about the entrance were cast-off articles of household
and plantation. A dismaying mingling of decayed
European inventions with native bareness framed a dis-
mal and foreboding scene, contrasting with the bril-
liancy of nature in the open.

I had felt a sudden fear of the possibilities of degra-
dation, as if the dreary house were a symbol of the
white man's deterioration in these wild places. A sense

294

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 295

of physical and spiritual abandonment to alien environ-
ment, without fitness of soul or habit, depressed me.

As we passed, I saw on the veranda a girl of sixteen
or seventeen, with a white face and light blue eyes. Her
long yellow hair was slightly confined by a piece of rib-
bon, but hung down loose on her rounded shoulders.
She wore a blue cotton gown, becoming and not in keep-
ing with her soiled and frayed surroundings. She
seemed not to notice us until we were opposite her,
when she raised her head and glanced at us a moment.
Those off the schooner she must have known, for she
fixed her eyes on me the fleeting instant of her gaze.
They had the innocence and appeal of a fawn and the
melancholy and detachment of a cloistered nun. There
was no curiosity in them, though we were the only white
visitors in months, and had come with the new governor,
who had landed but the day before. A second or two
her eyes met mine and conveyed an unconscious message
of youth and sorrow, of^ budding womanhood that had
had no guidance or companionship, and only sad
dreams.

From the room opening on the gallery a man came
and shouted to us "Bon jourr in a raven-like croak.
He was in soiled overalls, barefooted, and reeling drunk.
His brown hair and beard had not been cut for months
or years, and rudely margined his bloated, grievous face,
of rugged strength, in which grim despair contended
with fierce pride.

"That is Peyral," said Ducat, the second mate of the
Fetia Taiao. He is always half-seas over, except when
he sews. He is the village tailor, and makes the priest's
gowns and clothes for any one who will buy them.

296 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

That daughter of his is the only white girl in the Mar-
quesas. She is all white, and he keeps her chained in
that dark house as if he was afraid some one would eat
her."

"You know bloody well why 'e keeps 'er there," said
Lying Bill. " 'E knows you an' me and 'Allman and
'earty bucks like us is not to be trusted ; 'at 's why ! I
knew 'er mother and 'er grandparents. 'E was a Brit-
ish calvary officer 'oo 'ad served in Injia, an' come 'ere
with 'is wife, an Irish lady, to take charge of the store
an' plantation now owned by the Germans at Tahaaku.
They 'ad one daughter. Peyral was a non-com. on a
French war-ship that come 'ere to shoot up the natives,
an' 'e was purty good to look at then. 'E could do any-
thing, an' when 'e got 'is papers from the French navy
'e went to work for the plantation, courted the girl, an',
when 'er parents were n't lookin', married 'er. They
died, an' 'e set up a proper 'ouse 'ere, an' was bloomin'
prosp'rous till 'is wife died o' the pokoko, this gallopin'
consumption that takes off the natives. Then he give
in, and went to 'ell. 'E 'as three girls, two little ones,
an' 'ow they live I don't know. When 'is wife died 'e
painted that 'ouse black, an' 'e ain't touched it since.
'E gathers 'is copra, an' makes a few clo's now an' 'en,
an' spends all the money on absinthe. The girl looks
after 'er sisters, but 'e guards 'er like a bleedin' dragon.
She never goes off the veranda there now except to
church on Sundays and 'ohdays. I don't know what '11
'e do with 'er, but 'e '11 kill any one that goes too near
'er like Ducat 'ere or meself."

When I was settled in the House of the Golden Bed,
as the Marquesans called the cabin I had rented from

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 297

Apporo, the wife of Great Fern, in exchange for my
brass bed at my departure, I went almost every day with
Exploding Eggs to the beach to fish or swim or to ride
the surf on a board. The road wended from my house
past the garden of the palace and thence to the sea.
Between the governor's and the beach was only Peyral's
noisome residence, and twice a day I passed it within
a few feet. Sometimes he was at his sewing-machine
on the veranda, or gathering the cocoanuts that had
fallen and drying them in the sun, but generally the
shaggy Breton was in a stupor or murmurously intox-
icated, sitting on a bench or lying on the ground, and
talking to himself in the way of morose, unsocial men
when inebriated. His daughter was usually on the ve-
randa sewing by hand, or apparently wrapt in thoughts
which obscured her consciousness and painted despond-
ence on her countenance. I tried not to stare at her,
but when I made sure that she was oblivious of me, or
intentionally not seeing, I observed her narrowly.

How could she have preserved that miraculous blond-
ness in these islands? It was amazing. Her skin was
like the inside of a cocoanut, smooth as satin. The
years in that shadowy house had bleached her white flesh
until it was pearl-like in transparency, the blue veins as
in fine marble. Though hardly seventeen her figure
was the luxuriant one of these latitudes, rounded as the
breadfruit, curving in opulency under her single gar-
ment, a diaphanous tunic. Her hair that I had judged
yellow at first sight was silver-gold, almost as white as
her flesh, but with glints of topaz and amber. Silky, glis-
tening, as fine as the filament of a web, it did not hide her
shapely ears and fell in profusion almost to her waist.

298 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

I never saw her smile. Her azure eyes had wept
until their fountains were dried. She was numb, mute,
never having seen aught in sleep but ghosts. She was,
in this voluptuous atmosphere, herself voluptuous in
contour and color, but frozen. A thousand brutal
words from Peyral must have made her so. In drunk-
enness he was harsh, and in less violent hours sullen and
suspicious. The children feared him as Nancy had
Bill Sykes, but there was a powerful attachment
between them. He must have described to her horrible
things that he guarded her against, and have threatened
unspeakable punishments if she disobeyed him.

Daughter of Europeans, granddaughter of Celt and
Anglo-Saxon, this girl did not know her father's or
mother's language but feebly, and had no more knowl-
edge of or contact with the world of her forefathers than
if she were all Marquesan. I fancied her spirit infi-
nitely confused by her blood and her surroundings,
vague aspirations perhaps stirring her to desire for other
things than the savage and stupid ones about her. In
the church she must have had some respite. I watched
her there a number of times, bowed over her Marquesan
book of the ritual, reciting the prayers, and beating her
sweet breast at the mea culpa as might the most repen-
tant sinner or worst hypocrite.

No one called on Peyral save a very occasional buyer
of copra or an infrequent customer for clothes. These,
prevalently, met him on the trail or at church, and dealt
with him there. Either his jealous solitude was re-
spected, or disagreeable experiences had caused the vil-
lagers to shun his dwelling. He himself infrequently
dropped in at the store of Le Brunnec, or the German's

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 299

establishment at Tahaaku where he had wooed the,
daughter of the English officer and the Irish exile. At
the Catholic church only was he a regular attendant,
sitting in the rear by the pahua shell holy-water font,
and mumbling the responses. The children were in the
pews, the sexes separated, and I, the few times I was
there, at the door where the breeze was freshest and I
might go out unseen. One Sunday he spoke to me. I
was as astonished as if Father David had begun a hula
at the altar.

"You are American," he said in French, his voice
hoarse and broken.

I said I was and that I had come to the islands to stay
an uncertain length of time. We exchanged the day's
greetings after that, and when Painter Le Moine and
I were examining the remains of the studio of Paul
Gauguin, whx) had died here ten years before, it was
Peyral who showed us how everything had been and who
told me of his daily intercourse with the famous sym-
bolist. Thus we struck up a real acquaintance, if not
friendship, and he would tarry a quarter of an hour on
my paepae to drink a shell of rum -and to talk about
copra and the coming and going of schooners. He
drew me out about my plans, whether I was going to
settle in the Marquesas or return to my own country,
and evinced a flattering interest in my future. And I
was flattered, as I am easily by the friendhness of un-
friendly people, and did not question his genuine liking
for me.

Ah Suey, the Chinese baker and storekeeper, who had
been tried for the murder of an American, and who
spoke English he had learned at Los Angeles and at sea,

300 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

might have enhghtened me, but that I was beyond
doubt. I was at Ah Suey's to dance a jig and to sing
"The Good Old Summertime" to amuse him. The sat-
urnine Chinese, after a drink of rum, said :

"Peylalee all time come you housee takee dlinkee.
He no good. More better you tell him poponihoo go
hellee! Makee tlubble for you his daughtah."

Ah Suey puzzled me, but I do not like advice or
warning, and I shunted the subject.

Peyral was a hunter. He would wander, always
alone, in the upper valleys, to shoot huku, or along the
beach for salt-water birds, walking slowly and not
alertly ; but he was a crack shot and hardly ever failed to
bring back a bag of game. He had learned marksman-
ship at sea, or perhaps in his native Brittany, and his
cartridges went far. He was not contented with birds,
but also tramped to the mountains to kill goats or even
the wild bulls that were growing scarce there under a
promiscuous use of firearms. Le Brunnec, the trader,
an amiable and intelhgent Breton, and I met him there,
fortunately, at a critical moment for me. We had,
Le Brunnec and I, climbed on horses in the late after-
noon to a plateau high up in the hills and camped there
the night. In that altitude it was cool after the sun
had set, and we sat about a fire of twigs and branches
until we were sleepy. We were considerably past the
line of cocoanut-palms, and in a rich and vaned flora.
Magnificent chestnut, ironwood, rose-apple, and other
tropical trees formed dark groups about us, and masses
of huetu or mountain plantains lined the slopes. We
had washed down our dinner with a bottle of ^loselle,
and had a mellow and philosophical hour before sleep.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 301

Far above us we could see a pair of ducks, a kind of
non-migratory mallard. They lived only in the lonely
valleys or woods, and nested on the tops of distant
ridges where they laid a half dozen eggs. The duck-
lings must be carried by their parents to the feeding
grounds hundreds of feet below.

We talked about the decimation of the Marquesans
— Le Bi-unnec in ten years had seen them depopulated
almost 50 per cent.

"They are unhappy and soul-sick," he said. "They
are animals, and, when they had freedom under their
own rule, prospered enormously. Now there are a
couple of thousand instead of the hundred thousand
the whites found. They are in the cage of civilization
and cannot stand the bars. We are adaptable because
we are an admixture of many races, and have had to
exist in changing environments or die. Millions must
have died from the same thing that destroys the Mar-
quesans, but there were enough to keep on and build up
again. The quality of adaptabihty, of making the best
of it, is wonderful. One time in Tahiti I was at the
Annexe lodging-house of Lovaina when a Frenchman
arrived by steamer from Martinique. He had with
him his four children. The mother, a native of that
island, was dead, and the oldest child was a girl of thir-
teen, a child-woman, naive but clever, and very charm-
ing. For four years she had been mother to the other
three, since she was nine, and they were as neat as
a gunboat. She was tiny and undeveloped physically,
but necessity had adapted her perfectly to her task.
The father was looking for work, and, not finding it in
Tahiti, was off to Dacca, in Africa, leaving the babies

302 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

in her care. Mon Dieu! It was brave to see her bath-
ing them, brushing their hair, reproving them, and feed-
ing them. If she had been five years older I would
have tried to marry her, and the whole flock. Now, you
see, she could keep on because she was continuing the
white race customs and ideals, and understood them,
hard as it was; but these poor people have been told to
do something they don't understand, and that is not
their ideal. Now take that girl of old Peyral! Her
mother spoke English, and her father is French, and she
went to the nuns' school here for four or five years.
Yet she can hardly speak anything but Marquesan, and
in that tongue she replies to her father, and talks to her
sisters. She is almost a Marquesan, and as they are
unhappy in their prison so is she. She is the only white
woman here, and she has no companions, and her father
won't let her be a native. Pauvre enfant! Now, her
I would n't many for all the cocoanuts on this island.
There is one other. Mademoiselle Narbonne, who is the
richest person in the Marquesas, for she, too, is fit
neither for native life nor for white. The nuns have
spoiled her, as her mother spoiled the Peyral girl."

And so to bed on the grass with a blanket about us.

In the morning we were up at daybreak, and, after
coffee and hardtack, we rode toward the sea. There
was a faint trail, but Le Brunnec was a skilled tracker
and picked up the spoor in a few minutes. After half
an hour we saw fresher traces of our prey, and began
to make plans for the attack. We felt sure we were
the only ones on the plateau, and so were safe, for Mar-
quesans are reckless with guns, and when we heard a
horse coming toward us we halted and waited. It was

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 303

Peyral. We could see his frowsy head a quarter of a
mile away as it bobbed in the trot.

"Eh hienr said Le Brunnec, philosophically. "He is
not so bad here. It is curious that when Peyral has been
drunk for a month, and reforms so as not to die, he goes
to the mountains for a week and shoots an animal."

We said hon jour, and he joined us. Le Brunnec
proposed that we try to kill two bulls, share the labor
of carrying the meat to Atuona, and divide it there.
Peyral gruffly assented, and, as he was the more skillful
chasseur, gave us our stations. We were to start up
one or more taureaux sauvages and to endeavor to re-
frain from firing at them until they were as near as
possible to the cliff. We were successful and had felled
one, when another appeared.

"Prennez garde!" shouted Le Brunnec. *'That haki-
uka has blood in his eye."

"Go around to the left and drive him toward me,"
commanded Peyral.

I was riding fast about his flank when my horse put
his foot in a rat's hole. I had my rifle on my right arm
and I must have used it as a vaulting-pole unwittingly,
for I struck the earth about ten feet from my mount.
I was struggling to my feet when I became aware that
the hakiuka was approaching with malice in his snort-
ings. My horse had got up but too late to bear me to
security, and my rifle was choked with mud. I rushed
for a tree but could see none with low branches. I had
a big knife in my belt, a kind of Bowie, and, as I felt
the hot breath of the animal on me and saw his horns
magnified to elephant's tusks, I drew the weapon. The
beast was within five feet of me when he dropped. Pey-

304 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

ral had put a Winchester bullet in his heart. His head
was at my feet as he gave it a mighty toss, and laid it
on the sward of maidenhair ferns in submission to man's
invention.

When I had made sure of the poor hakiukas being
absolutely dead, and had shaken myself together, find-
ing no injuries, I thanked Peyral, whom Le Brunnec
was already extoUing for niarksmanship and quickness
of thought.

"men! It is nothing!" replied the shaggy man. "I
like to kill."

We put ropes over the horns of the victims, and
forced our horses to drag them to a certain spot at the
edge of the cliff. Below -was a wide shelf of rocks at
water-level. We pushed the stiffening bodies over the
edge and let them fall. Then we rode back to Atuona,
and in a big canoe with three Marquesans, Great Fern,
Mouth of God, and Exploding Eggs, went for the car-
casses. To retrieve them into the craft was a difficult
task.

The sea surged against the rocks so that we could not
tie up close to them, but several of us jumped on them
while others remained in the canoe, with a line ashore
and a kedge-anchor aft. The Marquesans cut up the
bulls into quarters, and each we tied to a rope and
dragged through the water into the canoe. Over our
heads a cloud of heron and sea-gulls shrieked for their
share, and when we had left the rocks these birds
screamed and fought for the entrails. They had been
attracted when the bulls were killed, and for hours had
pecked vainly at the carcasses. The dragging them over
the land and hurling them to the ledge, and their hours of

Malicious Gossip, Le lirunncc, and his wife, at peace

Photo by Dr. Malcolm Douglas

*'!& -^

Exploding Eggs and his chums packing copra

■4-1

eS
«

o
Q

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 305

lying there, had drawn an immense concourse of the sea-
birds. There were many thousands before we got away,
and so rapacious were they that they circled over our
heads and snatched at the bloody meat in the canoe. We
had to wave our shirts at them to frighten them away.
Sharks smelling the blood swam about the canoe, and we
were not a little afraid. We had brought no guns in the
canoe, and we were forced to strike at them with pad-
dles, and shout imprecations at them. They did not
enter the breakers, which we ran to the sand. At the
beach near Commissaire Bauda's residence and offices,
we turned over to Peyral his third, and, taking the
remainder into the village. Great Fern with saw and
knife provided every household, including the Catholic
and Protestant clergy and the nuns, with ample for a
meal or two. Peyral threw his part over his horse's
back and left us, muttering that he would salt it down
for the uncertain future.

Peyral became increasingly friendly, and a number
of times stopped me on my way to and from the shore
to invite me to drink with him. Le Brunnec said that
this was something new for Peyral, and that he must
be "going crazy." But, like Ah Suey, Le Brunnec hid
his real thought from me when I defended Peyral and
said that he was sinned against overmuch. Peyral's
daughter — I hardly ever caught sight of the younger
two — would desert the veranda if I came upon it, but
once he called her, and when she did not respond imme-
diately added a "sacre" to his order for her to come and
be presented to me.

"She is a fine girl, but shy," he said, and patted her
clumsily.

306 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Mademoiselle Peyral trembled under his heavy
caress, and with merely a slight, awkward bow to me
hurried into the sombre chamber.

"She is shy," he repeated as he drank his absinthe
with mouthing and grimacing. "She needs a man to
train her right, a husband, eh, a gentleman, mon g argon.
Is not that right?"

Peyral's voice was almost gentle, but his mood
changed in a breath. He struck the board hard with
his shell, and yelled, "Do you understand, American,
I said a gentleman. Her mother was aristocrat. Do
you get that into your noddle?"

Exploding Eggs, who had waited for me on the road
with my towels, laughed as we ran toward the surf.

"Peyral paed" he said. "Too much drink, too much
fight."

I did not stop after that when he bade me have a
goutte with him, for I was sensible of a deep pity for
the girl and an ardent desire to save her embarrassment,
the deadly unreasoning shame or perplexity that over-
whelmed her at her father's gross attitude and my pres-
ence. After a few weeks, Peyral did not sing out to
me any more, and I was conscious of a coldness, of a
return of his first relation to me, and then of fits
and starts of friendship. I felt oppressed by his
changing tempers, and attributed them to his varying
degrees of inebriety.

I split my rain-coat one day, and, after making a bad
job of repairing it, thought of Peyral and his skill as a
tailor. With the coat on my arm I climbed the stairs
to his porch, and, finding no one there, called out Pey-
ral's name. My voice echoed through the house, and,

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 307

with the intention of scribbling a note and leaving the
coat, I entered the nearest room. Mademoiselle Peyral
was sitting near the machine but was not sewing. She
trembled as I approached her, and looked frightened. I
am timid with women, and her nervousness communi-
cated itself to me. I wished I was not there. She was
half uncovered, having on only a chemise, and her dis-
habille added to my confusion, though that very morn-
ing I had bathed in the river nude with Titihuti and
others.

"Please give your father this coat, and ask him to re-
pair it," I said, and put it down. Her downcast eyes
and heaving bosom, her evident extreme timidity, and
her pitiable situation overcame me. She was of my own
race, and she was so white and so fair. Before I
could restrain myself, I said in English, "Don't be
afraid of me! I am very sorry for you," and I patted
her shoulder as I might have a child's.

She shrank from me in apparent horror, and ran from
the room into a farther one, screaming in Marquesan.
I started to follow her to explain or to appease her, but
reconsidered.

Though I was conscious of no wrong, the familiar
incidents in newspapers and gossip of misinterpreted
gestures and of false allegations rose to my mind as her
cries resounded through the black and tristful house.
I moved toward the porch to leave, and deliberated, and
awaited some one's coming. Better to tell the fact and
make a stand there and then, said common sense. But no
one answered her alarm, and after a few minutes I left,
with the coat, and returned to my own cabin. For half
an hour my mind was actively going over the affair to

308 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

find out what might be at the bottom of it, and, of course,
to make certain of my clearance of the least onus of
guilt.

Perhaps I was the first man other than her father
who had put his hand on her, and I had done that, no
matter how innocently! The nuns had overbalanced
her standard of modesty, and her father's brutal admo-
nitions had made her hysterical! I tried myself and,
having found myself not guilty of even forwardness or
discourtesy, I cooked my dinner, poured myself a shell
of Munich beer that had been cooled in the river, and
dismissed the trifle.

The next afternoon as I passed the governor's garden
on the road to the beach, I saw Peyral on the veranda
with the official. I thought of the rent in my rain-coat,
and entered the grounds to speak to him about it. As
I approached the steps I heard the tailor speaking
loudly and vehemently to Monsieur I'Hermier, and
spilling the absinthe in the glass in his hand.

"Kaohar I said, and Pevral turned and saw me.
His face purpled, and he shouted in French something
I did not understand, and appealed to the governor for
corroboration. A twinge of privity with his emotion
swept over me, and I am sure I flushed and looked the
culprit. I hadn't much time for analysis, for Peyral
stood up and flung his glass at my head. It went wide.
I took a step toward him' and asked:

"What's the matter with him, Monsieur VAdminis-
trateur? Is he drunker than usual?"

''Je ne sais pas/' replied the governor, with a shrug
of his shoulder. "He has come here to lodge a com-
plaint against you of maltreating his daughter. He

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 30»

wants you tried and sent to prison, and he wants to in-
stitute a suit against you for damages. I have told him
to return when he is sober. He is bitter, Monsieur, and
he is, after all, a Frenchman."

Peyral got up from his chair, unsteadily. The gover-
nor discreetly left the veranda and entered his study.
I sat down in sheer weariness, when suddenly the fren-
zied drunkard confronted me.

"Sacre Americain!" he yelled. "You will insult the
daughter of a French patriot. Cochon! I will show
you what I do to such people as you!"

He flung himself upon me and struck me in the face.
Peyral was fifty pounds heavier than I, but he was verj'-
drunk. I drove my fist into his chin, and, following the
blow with another, sent him sprawling. I regretted
my violence as I saw the poor devil staggering to his
feet unsteadily, but when, with the most blasphemous
profanity and the basest epithets in the dialect of Brest,
he lurched at me again with his two hundred pounds of
rank bulk, charity fled from my panting heart, and I
realized that I must fight or retreat. Years of addic-
tion to alcohol had not made my assailant anything but
tough and strong physically, and I was no match for
him if he was not reeling. He plunged toward me as
a drunken elephant might go to combat. I decided not
to run, because I wanted to continue to live in Atuona
underided, and so I sprang to meet him, and hitting him
full tilt in the chin and chest, carried him hard down to
the boards, where we grappled and exchanged power-
less blows.

We had knocked over table, bottle, glasses, and
chairs, and the uproar was immense. Song of the

310 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Nightingale, Exploding Eggs, Ghost Girl and Many
Daughters, the little leper lass, had come scurrying
from the kitchen. Maybe the governor had a plan, or
his dignity was offended, for, without appearing, he
gave an order to Song, and the quartet of natives threw
themselves on us, and disentangled us. Song, who later
confessed to me that he had a grudge against the tailor,
took the opportunity in the hurly-burly to deal him
vicious blows, and then drove the cursing, struggling
Breton through the garden and out the gateway. Pey-
ral's last words were a threat to kill me the next time
we met. The village had gathered, and Apporo, my
landlady, Mouth of God, Malicious Gossip, his wife,
and a dozen others were running toward the palace.
Song dismissed them with a grandiloquent gesture, and
his obscene badinage dissolved their curiosity in gales
of laughter.

With the disturbance abated, the governor joined me,
his ordinary merry self again, and we drank a libation
to Mars. My clothes were torn, my jaw ached, and
my body was bruised from the clutches of the tailor.

"Do not molest yourself!" said the executive. "I do
not entertain any evil of you. When the allegation is
formally made, I, as magistrate, will hear the evidence.
According to his own statement, no one was there but
his daughter and you. I believe you a man of honor.
And women? Mon vieuoo, I have known and loved
many of them. I am a doctor, and a student of life.
They are incomprehensible. But we must take precau-
tions. He has said he will kill you, so you must be on
guard. You have no pistol? Eh hienl I will lend
you my Browning automatic I had in Senegal. It is

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 311

loaded. Defend yourself, but do not step on his prop-
erty. Nous verronsT

The governor was dramatic, not to say melodramatic,
and, to my nervous conception, he took too lightly the
(crime upon my person. I was the one to bring a
charge, not Peyral. Assaulted in the palace, at the
throne of justice, in the presence of the judge, I was
handed a deadly firearm by the arbiter, and told to pro-
tect myself. It was like the Wild West, or a stage
farce. But I had come a thousand miles with him on a
small vessel, and knew his delight in the least diversion
that would relieve his ennui in a monotonous period of
service. This was but a scherzo in a slow program.
However, I thanked him and, with the heavy pistol,
went to the House of the Golden Bed. The girl was
uppermost in my unstable reflections.

What had possessed her to lie so? She must have
distorted my ingenuous action damnably to cause her
father to beset me before the governor, and to swear to
kill me ! I pictured her as I had last seen her, and try
as I would I could not hate her. I lay down with the
Browning beside me, and dreamed that she was testify-
ing against me at the seat of judgment, and that an aus-
tere God pointed downward. Exploding Eggs was
cooking a rasher of bacon on my improvised stove on the
paepae the next morning, when Flag, the mutoi, brought
a note, he acting as general messenger of the island. It
was in a strange hand and on dirty paper. I could not
make out the language except a few French words, and
the signature not at all, an so after breakfast I took it
to Le Brunnec at his store.

Le Brunnec glanced over it and looked puzzled.

312 ATOLLS OF THE SUX

Then he spoke low, in French, so that the natives in
the room might not glean a word.

"Mais," he said, "it is from Peyral, and it is written
in Breton and absinthe. I translate it for vou into
TOUT EngHsh:

" 'Monsieur: You cannot eviter' — what you say? —
escape — 'from your insult \o ma fille. You have in-
sulted and struck me, too. I will not seek the tribunal
to make your apology. The governor has told me you
are Irishman, and so vou are of the same blood like the
grandparent of my child. In France what you have
done must be paid for in blood or by marriage. Even
if you make intention to return to vour own countn^ no
matter. You must marry my daughter or you will be
buried in Call' aire cimetiere — what you say — grave-
yard?— Tt is necessary that you send me word by to-
morrow or I will make justice on you.' He says he is
yours respectful. Well, by gar, it is a situation, my
friend, but I say to you one thing: do not be afraid.
He slip back already. You have a revolver? Yes?
Keep it in the hand or the pants."

The merchant took up his sugar scoop to begin busi-
ness. My wholeness or health seemed not to interest
him seriously. I sauntered up the path in meditation.
My feet took me into the mission churchyard, and I sat
on the roots of a gigantic banian-tree near the colossal
crucifix brought from France by the priests for the ju-
bilee of 1900. The mad note of Pe^Tal had stunned me,
and, instead of thinking hard and clearly upon my situ-
ation, I fell into fatuous reverie.

A gentle and lovely savage she was, and unspoiled by
civilization. "VMiat a singular and perhaps entrancing

ATOLLS OF THE SUX 313

task to teach her only the best in it, to unfold through
English or French the music and Hterature of the world,
to take her perhaps to the great cities? Or if I myself
was done with civilization, as I sometimes persuaded
myself I was, what more dehghtful companion than this
simple virgin of Atuona? To fish, to swim, to roam
the plateaus; to have a library" and to get the reviews
and the new books by the schooners, to create a living
idyll! Love would undoubtedly be the response of
kindness, of sjTiipathy, of tenderness, of love itself. But
could I love her? There would be children. And they
would grow up here. I remembered her own white feet
in the mud of this village. Their mother! And with
Pevral's blood in them! Pevral! Damn him! ^Miat
had I done to make him attack me, to say he would kill
me? To spoil my peace? I would wear the Browning
about mv waist, and if he winked an eyelash I would
shoot first. He had brought it on himself. She had
lied to him. I had no liking to be in Calvary with Gau-
guin. My grave would be forgotten like his. A man
here was a bubble in the breeze. It burst and was
nothing.

All these ideas rushed through my head as I returned
to my house. I had concluded not to pass Pe^Tal's
house unarmed, so I tied a string about my middle over
my pareu and fastened the revolver to it. With one
pull the knot undid and the gun came loose into my
hand. I wore a light Hnen coat over my bare body,
and no one was the wiser.

Thus ready for mv would-be murderer or father-in-
law, I whistled to Exploding Eggs the next forenoon,
and, he with towels in hand, we walked toward the

314 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

sands. There was no one on the veranda of the palace.
Except for the residence of the lepers by the cemetery
there was no other house toward the beach but that of
my enemy.

Obscure under the heavy-leaved palms, I could not be
sure that Peyral was not ensconced on his gallery with
a bottle of absinthe and a shotgun or rifle waiting to
pot-shot me. He knew my habit of bathing every day,
and maybe was chuckling over scaring me from the spot.
I walked boldly and briskly past his house. There was
no figure on the porch but that of a girl. I glimpsed
her only, for an emotion of shame — inexplicable shame
— directed my eyes away from her. I continued on to
the water, and, hiding my revolver in the trailing pahue
with its morning-glory blossoms, I took up my surf-
board and forgot Peyral in that most exhilarating of
sports.

Exploding Eggs dragged his tiny canoe from the
bushes, and we launched it and pushed it through the
surf. With rare dexterity he paddled it seaward, I
with my board on my knees, a calm admirer of his mar-
velous control of the little craft: he and it the first
Marquesan and the first canoe I had seen in this archi-
pelago. When we were out half a mile or so we lay still
for the right breaker. He watched and after a few
minutes began to paddle with intense energy until the
wave caught him. We swung to its crest and clung
there as we dashed in at a fast pace without motion on
our part. But, when half-way. Exploding Eggs took
my board from me, and, handing me the paddle, he sud-
denly plunged with it from the canoe and, extended full

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 315

on the board in rhythm with the billow I rode, accom-
panied me to shore.

The sun was dropping down the western sky when
we dressed to leave the beach. Exploding Eggs in his
loin-cloth and I in mine, with my coat over the Brown-
ing. The hours in the salt water with the exercise and
the laughter had cleared the cobwebs of blame from my
brain. My innocent blood would be on the guilty head
of Peyral did he kill me. That was comforting. How-
ever, I made sure that the knot slipped easily, and with
my valet beside me I made the start.

I had gained half-way when I saw Peyral coming
toward me, a thousand feet away, with a shot-gun over
his shoulder. He was silhouetted against the setting
sun and could not be mistaken. His burly form, his'
beard, his general shagginess made him unmistakable,
as was also the outline of the weapon.

There was no stopping. The swamp was on either
side of the ten-foot road, the beach behind me. Fleeing
was out of the question. I might have taken a side road
had there been one, but just such conditions as presented
themselves then must be met daily. I kept on, and, as
we came nearer, our eyes joined and remained steadily
fixed. I do not know how Peyral felt, but I was as fas-
cinated as the proverbial bird by the snake. I moved
as if by magnetic power toward my probable slayer, and
he toward me. Neither of us made a movement except
that of our legs and stiff bodies.

There came a second when we were about four feet
apart, each hugging the edge of the road. Our eyes
were held straight ahead, and mine remained so. We

316 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

appeared to hesitate as if we might whirl and seize each
other or draw our weapons. The shot-gun was on his
shoulder but in the flash of an eye might be brought
down to the level of my vitals. But the eye did not
flash. The gun swayed only with his footfalls, and we
continued our mechanical advance away from each
other.

Prudence whispered to me to turn and protect myself
from a rear attack, but the message did not affect my
legs. I winced momentarily for the expected load of
shot in my back, but I walked stiffly as if a great ray of
light were penetrating my cerebellum. Exploding
Eggs, who knew only about our fight upon the palace
balcony and nothing of my having the Browning, was
chanting about the god of night, Po, and paid no
attention to Peyral, except to say quite audibly, ''Pey-
rale aoe metai! Peyral is no good !" That did not add
to my surety, and the imagined missile or missiles from
behind did not become less vivid until I was beyond
shooting distance. Just as I calculated with incredible
rehef that the crisis was past, Peyral's gun roared out.

My muscles squirmed, my heart leaped, my knees
bent, and my chin touched my bosom. Exploding
Eggs laughed.

"PeyraU puhi kuku'' he said regretfully; "Peyral
has shot a kuku" — as if I should have shot it. I
laughed heartily with him. The joke was on me, but
I enjoyed it to the echo. I recalled that often of an
evening my enemy replenished his larder with an ex-
penditure of Number Four shot. It was funny, and
when I reached the palace I was trembling with the
reverberations of the absurd climax to my fears.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 317

L'Hermier des Plantes was dancing opposite Many
Daughters a hura-hura, and Song of the Nightingale
was fetching cold water from the brook to water the
wine, in the temperate French way.

"Holar called out the governor. **Come in, mon
ami! Sit down and have a goutte de Pernod. You
are jolly. What? Ybu met Peyral, and he shot not
you but a kuku? O lalala! You give me back the
Browning? All right. You could not have done much
harm with it. See, the cartridges are blanks for firing
a salute on the Fall of the Bastille fete, O sapristi!
It is droll! I will die I"

He held his stomach while he laughed and laughed.
I grinned with fury.

"What the devil is the drolerie?" I questioned,
earnestly.

The governor wiped his eyes, and emptied his glass.

"Attendez!" he answered. You were not in any
great danger or I would have come to your rescue.
You know I have here a dossier of every one in these
islands who has been complained against, or has com-
plained. The first week I was here Peyral declared
that Commissaire Bauda had insulted his daughter, and
that he must marry her or he would kiU him. Bauda
denied the charge, and Peyral did nothing. Then I
opened his dossier, and in two years he had made three
such charges, one against a professor who was here a
month, and one against Le Brunnec. C^est curieuoc.
The man is mad with alcohol, but more so with a deter-
mination to marry that stark daughter of his to a white
man who might take her away. Others have been elim-
inated after such foolishness as this. See, there was no

318 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

one but you. Lutz is after higher game, and besides he
is a German, and Peyral hates him. Voila, mon
gar f on. You were the parti inevitable. It is strange
the way he goes about getting a son-in-law. One
might expect a dot, or a Httle hospitality, but no, he
runs true to type, and he is not a chic type. But,
c'est fini. He has tried and failed. You have met him,
and knocked him down, and now you know his gun is
for kuku. Well, we will drink to the health of the
pauvre diable, and a good husband for the girl. But
not you, eh?"

I drank with as much grace as I could, but when I
walked in the upper valley at dusk, and was alone by
the paepae tapu, the shattered and grown-over temple
of the old Marquesan gods, I could have cried for pity
for that girl.

CHAPTER XVI

In the valley of Vaitahu— With Vanquished Often and Seventh M&n He
Is So Angry He wallows in the Mire — Worship of beauty in the South
Seas — Like the ancient Greeks — Care of the body — Preparations for
a belle's d^but — Massage as a cure for ills.

ACROSS the Bordelaise Channel from Atuona,
many hours of sailing in an outrigger canoe,
lay the island of Tahuata. Its principal settle-
ment was Vaitahu, and there I went with Exploding
Eggs, my adopted brother of fourteen, to stay awhile
in the house of the chief. Seventh Man Who Is So
Angry He Wallows in the Mire, as Neo Efitu, his short
name, meant. Atuona personified the brooding spirit
of melancholy that possessed the race, the shadow of
the white upon the Marquesan spirit, but Vaihatu had
as genus loci a blithe and domestic sprite, which had kept
the tiny village — formerly of thousands — in the habits
and moods of the old ways. Waited on as an honored
guest by the chief, his wife, and his niece, Vanquished
Often, the friend and playmate of the few score inhabit-
ants, I had happy weeks of simple pleasures, and of
intense interest in searching into the past of the Mar-
quesans, and especially into their customs and manners
in relation to esthetics.

The only foreigner in the valley, by my earnest wish
and laughable example, life resumed for a time much
of the old Marquesan method and appearance. The
mission church, the first Christian edifice within a thou-
sand miles, was rejoining the wilderness. Without

319

320 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

clergy or adherent, its walls were fast falling into decay,
and its precisely-planned garden was jungle. The art-
ist-schoolmaster, Le Moine, who had taught Vaitahu's
children to say, ''La France est le plus hon pays du
monde" was gone to seek other models for painting as
ravishing as Vanquished Often, or men as majestic as
Kahuiti, the cannibal of Taaoa. Existence, almost as
devoid of invention and artificiality as before the white
came, I was able to rebuild in my mind the structure of
Marquesan taste, and to view in imagination the attrac-
tive aspect of Vaitahu in its idyllic days of old. We
brought out of the chests the native garments of tapa,
and we lived as much as possible — like children playing
Indians — a perspective of the past.

I looked from my mat upon the paepae of Seventh
Man Who Wallows to see Vanquished Often by the
Vai Puna, the spring of Vaitahu. She had taken off
her ahu or tunic of pink muslin and bent over to receive
the full stream of cool water from the hills which flowed
through the bamboo pipes. Her beautiful body, the
blood mantling under her silken skin, perfect in devel-
opment at thirteen years, glowed in the dazzling light
and under the silvery cascade, and her long, unconfined
hair shone red-gold in the sunbeams. My mind reverted
to the descriptions of the women, the men, and the
scenes described by these who voyaged here decades ago.

Not any people in all the world, ancient or modern,
ranked human beauty higher in the list of life's gifts
than did the people of these islands. In the star-scat-
tered archipelagos of the Pacific tropics a dozen tawny
races or breeds of superb physical endowment made
their bodies wondrous temples for their free souls. The

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 321

loveliness and grace of women, the symmetry and
stiength of men, were, before the white came to destroy
them, the fascinating labor of their days, their vivid
religion, and the expression of their joy of living.

They brought the culture of beauty and the rhythm of
motion to an unequaled pert action, and in the adorn-
ment of their bodies and development of their natural
attractions reached a pitch of splendor and artistry
which, though seeming savage to us of this period,
struck beholders, even of our kind, as entrancing and
marvelous.

While all over Polynesia these conditions obtained
when the first Anglo-Saxons threw down the anchors of
their ships in the enchanting harbors of these tropics,
they remained longest in the Marquesas Archipelago.

In their simple dress, their practice of manipulation
in the development of their bodies, their use of scents,
unguents, and lotions, their wearing of flowers and or-
naments, their singular and astounding art of the story-
teller, the dance and the pantomime, and the exquisite
tattooing of their persons, they showed a delicacy of feel-
ing and an understanding of elegance unsurpassed in
the records of the nations of the earth.

As I sat under the pandanus thatch of Seventh Man
Who Is So Angry He Wallows in the Mire, I re-
called what that eminent moralizer, Lecky, had said:

The intense esthetic enthusiasm that prevailed was eminently
fitted to raise the most beautiful to honor. In a land and be-
neath a sky where natural beauty developed to the highest
point, supreme physical perfection was crowned by an assembled
people. In no other period of the world's history was the ad-
miration of beauty in all its forms so passionate or so universal.

322 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

It colored the whole moral teaching of the time, and led the
chief moralists to regard virtue simply as the highest kind of
supersensual beauty. It led the wife to pray, before all other
prayers, for the beauty of her children. The courtesan was
often the queen of beauty.

Lecky wrote that of iFiiicient Greece to contrast it
with the morals of the Europe of his day, but I con-
sidered the striking likeness between the condition he
described and the attitude of the ancient Marquesans.
Here in these tiny islands, separated by ten thousand
miles of billow from the land of Pericles and Aspasia, a
people whose origin was only guessed at by science,
erected the same goal of attainment, and like standards
of harmony of form and movement. Doubtless at that
very day these Greeks of the tropics, considering their
environment, most distant from the birthplace of hu-
manity and from the example of other peoples, were
comparable in brilliancy of person and ease of motion to
the Homeric figures.

The American sea-fighter. Captain David Porter,
who ran up the Stars and Stripes in the breadfruit
groves of these islands, said:

The men of the Marquesas are remarkably handsome, of
large stature and well-proportioned ; they possess every variety
of countenance and feature, and a great difference is observable
in the color of the skin, which for the most part is of a copper
color. But some are as fair as the generality of working people
much exposed to the sun of a warm climate.

The young girls were handsome and well-formed ; their skins
were remarkably soft and smooth and their complexions no
darker than many brunettes in America, celebrated for their
beauty. Their modesty was more evident than that of the

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 323

women of any place we had visited since leaving our own
country; and if they suffered themselves (though with appar-
ent timidity and reluctance) to be presented naked to strangers,
may it not be in compliance with a custom which taught them
to sacrifice to hospitality all that is most estimable?

Why, and how had this strange race, so far from
others' strivings, attained so singular a state of natural
beauty that discoverer after discoverer and diarist after
diarist, from the bloody Spaniard, Mendana, to the
gentle Louis Stevenson, set it down as the "handsomest
on earth?"

One must guess at the beginnings of the Marquesans.
Scientists make explorations to find the route of the
Caucasian people who thousands of years ago — maybe,
before the Hebrews deserted Jehovah for Baal-Peor
— migrated through the unknown and fearsome wastes
of ocean toward these misty islands of the far south.
What equipment of body and soul they brought with
them we do not know, but they were or became the mas-
ters of their seas, and in their frail canoes dared even
the long voyage to New Zealand and to Hawaii, when
Europeans and Asiatics in keeled ships crept carefully
about their own coasts, or crossed the Mediterranean
Sea only within the threatening Pillars of Hercules.

During the thousands of years the Marquesans were
separated from Europe they developed a policy of gov-
ernment, a paternalistic democracy, or communism,
which was perfectly adapted to their nature and sur-
roundings. A very large part of it was concerned with
beauty, manners, and entertainment, with personal
decoration, carving of stone and wood, building of
temples and houses, oratory, dances, and chants. All

324 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

of these were carefully regulated by cults, gilds, and
tapus. They must have been an extremely prolonged
growth, for they had come to a fixed standard of de-
tail and exactness, and an acme of art, bizarre and
exotic as it was, that could have been but the minute
accretion of many centuries. When the first explorers
came into the uncharted spaces of these warm seas, they
found a culture totally beyond the understanding of
most of them, and abhorrent to state and church, but
which a few fine souls glimpsed as an astonishing rev-
elation of the natural development of the human,
and, by foil, of the decadence of civilization. They
found health and high spirits abounding to a degree
utterly strange to them, the hardiest and most adven-
turous of Europeans and Americans, and they were
provoked by the innocence, radiance, and naturalness
of the women.

This Edenic condition astounded the Yankee Porter,
who went to sea at sixteen, and who slew scores of Mar-
quesans, for he put in his log:

The Hawaiians, Tahitians, and New Zealanders had by
residence among whites become corrupt; they had fallen into
their vices and ate the same food. They were no longer in
a state of nature; they had, like us, become corrupt, and
while the honest, guileless faces of the Marquesans shone with
benevolence, good nature and intelligence, the downcast eye
and sullen look of the others marked their inferiority and de-
generacy. Guilt, of which by intercourse with us they had
become sensible, had already marked their countenances.
Every emanation of their souls could not be perceived upon
their countenances as with those of the naked Marquesans.

War, murder, mutiny, desertion, and horrible orgies

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 325

marked the reaction of these forecastle denizens, scour-
ings of slums and dull villages, to the spontaneity, ease,
and liberty they found here, in contrast with their ugly
and restricted lives aboard ship or in the hard climes and
rough grooves of their homes. The sight of such in-
tense individual happiness, glowing vitality, and ex-
quisite bodies, of a cooperative existence without kings
or commoners, business or money, palaces or hovels,
disease or dirt, prudery or prostitutes, shocked them by
the abrupt differences from their own countries. They
wrote the Marquesans down as barbarians, as the
Greeks did the Romans; and church, government, and
trade made haste to hack down their achievement, and
to make over the pieces as the wretched patchwork of
their own hands. They hated it, subconsciously, for
its giving the lie to their own boasted institutions.
They ended it that it might not mock the degradation
and futility of their own conduct and the opposition be-
tween their decalogue and their deeds. The merchant
condemned and altered it to make a market for what it
did not then need or desire.

The first approach to change after subjugation and
conversion was through clothing, because the most obvi-
ous difference between the whites and the browns was
that the latter largely exposed their bodies. The mis-
sionary paved the way for the dealer who had cottons
to sell by saying that God abhorred nakedness. Liv-
ingston himself acted likewise. The Marquesans, in
truth, had a small variety of clothing. Much of the
time both sexes wore only the single garment, the pareu
or loin-cloth. Their clothes of Tapa or bark were, ex-
cept mattings, the only stuffs made by the Marquesans.

326 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

They were of a remarkable texture and coloring, con-
sidering the materials available. The inner barks of
the banian, breadfruit, and particularly the mulberry
trees were used. The outer rind was scraped off with
a shell, and the inner slightly beaten and allowed to
ferment. It was then beaten over wooden forms with
clubs of ironwood about eighteen inches long, grooved
coarsely on one side and finely on the reverse, a process
that united so closely the fibers that in the finished cloth
one could not guess the processes of its making.
Bleached in the sun on the beaches to a dazzling white,
this fabric was either dyed black or brown, yellow or
red, or fashioned as it was into the few varieties of gar-
ments they affected. All wore the pareu about the
loins; a strip two yards or more in length, and a yard
wide, which is passed twice about the waist and tucked
in for holding, as the sarong of the Malay. It hangs
above the knees, and like the fundoshi of Japan, worn
by royalty and beggar, is capable, for strenuous move-
ments, such as swimming, of being gathered up to form
a diaper or breech-cloth.

The cahu or ahu, a long and flowing piece of tapa,
was worn by the females, hanging from the shoulders,
knotted about or covering one or both breasts at the
whim of the wearer. For the coloring of this and the
pareu, rich and alluring dyes were found in the plants
and trees and even the sea-animals of the beaches. The
outlines of the hibiscus flowers and carven objects were
imprinted upon these tapas, and astronomical, mystic,
or tribal signs or records drawn upon them in fantastic
but artistic design.

The method of wearing the cahu for hiding or dis-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 327

closing the charms of the female was as varied as the
toilettes of Parisian fashion. The conceit of the girl
or woman, the occasion, and the weather decided its be-
ing draped in any one of a score of manners. A belle
might think it ungenerous to cover too much, and an
old or homely woman find the entire surface too scant.
When human nature has freest fling, prudery is the
fig-leaf of ugliness, here, as in the salon of Mayfair, or
behind the footlights of Broadway.

For the men, while the pareu, always as now, was the
common apparel, they had a hundred ornaments, in a
diversity more numerable than those of the females.
Whenever man has not sacrificed his masculine craving
for adornment to religious or economic pressure, he is
the gaudier of the sexes. From the fiddler-crab with
his rampant claw to the mandrill with his crimson and
lilac callosities, nature has so ordained it, and man re-
joiced in his privilege. Not until European man felt
the iron hand of the machine age, when the rifle dis-
placed the bow and the pistol the sword, the factory the
home loom, and the foundry the smithy ; not until money
became the chief pursuit of all ranks, and puritanism a
general blight upon brilliancy of costume, did the white
man relinquish his gewgaws to the parasitic woman.
Then he made it a vicarious pride by decorating her with
his riches and making her the vehicle of his pomp in or-
nature, and the advertisement of his prosperity.

The Marquesans, struck by the glitter of brass but-
tons and gold braid, of broadcloth and fur, unfamiliar
with metal, and admiring everj^thing foreign, fell facile
victims to vestures, and when the new-fangled religions
that followed hot upon the discoverers, enforced cover-

328 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

ing by dogma and even by punishment, they clothed
themselves and sweated in fashion and sanctity. But
clothes irk the Marquesans as they do all people living
close to a kindly nature. Our own babes resent even the
swaddles which bind them in the cradle. The first years
of childhood are a continuing struggle against gar-
ments, until, having lost plasticity and the instant re-
sponse of muscle to mind that distinguishes the Marque-
sans, the result is rationalized by adolescents into mod-
esty and convention. After youth, clothing is wel-
comed by us to enhance imperfect charms and to hide
defects, to screen our unhandsome and puny bodies.
The lean shanks, protuberant abdomens, and anatomi-
cal grotesqueries in a public bath bear witness to our
sacrifice. Marriage is often a disclosure of unguessed
flaws.

"The gods are naked and in the open," said Seneca.

Pigalle sculptured the frail old Voltaire in the nude,
yet attained dignity. Even Broadway smiles at
frocked heroes in bronze, and must have its ideals in
marble or bronze undraped.

How often, when I lived at the spacious home of my
friend, Ariioehau Ameroearao, the chief at Mataiea in
Tahiti, I have seen him, chevalier of the Legion of
Honor, come in from the highway in stiff white linen or
in religious black, and in a twinkling reduce his garb to
a loin-cloth!

His walls were hung with portraits of princes and
distinguished travelers, guests of his in the past score of
years, and none was more distinguished, though in bril-
liant uniform and gorgeously decorated, than the old
chief in his strip of cotton print.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 329

''Three kings naked have I seen, and never a sign of
royalty," said the cynical Bismarck.

Plato understood very well the spirit in which the
Polynesians were clothed by the whites, the crass pru-
rience that pointed out to them the wickedness of nudity,
that hid their beautiful bodies under tunics and panta-
loons, that laughed at their simplicity.

In the "Republic" he says:

Not long since it was thought discreditable and ridiculous
among the Greeks, as it is now among most barbarian nations,
for men to be seen naked. And when the Cretans first, and
after them the Lacedaemonians, began the practice of gymnas-
tic exercises, the wits of the time had it in their power to
make sport of those novelties. But when experience has shown
that it was better to strip than to cover up the body and when
the ridiculous effect that this plan had to the eye had given
way before the arguments establishing its superiority, it was at
the same time, as I imagine, demonstrated that he is a fool
who thinks anything ridiculous but that which is evil, and who
attempts to raise a laugh by assuming any object to be ridic-
ulous but that which is unwise and evil.

The Marquesans, perfect animals, had their senses
extraordinarily attuned to the faintest vibrations of
value to their survival or delight. They heard sounds
plainly that I, with rather better than ordinary civilized
hearing, did not catch. I was with Vanquished Often
when she spoke to Exploding Eggs two hundred feet
away in a conversational tone. I tested them, and
found they could talk with each other intelligibly when
I heard but an indistinct whisper from the farthest. So
with smell. Ghost Girl and Mouth of God, -my neigh-
bor at Atuona, could detect any intimates by their

330 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

odor in pitch darkness at twenty feet, though Marque-
sans, because they have httle bodily hair and are the
cleanest people I know, have less personal odor than we.
They enjoyed life through scent infinitely more than
do we. They had no kisses but rubbed noses and
smelled each other with indrawings of their breath.
Odoriferous herbs, flowers, and seeds were continually
about their necks, both men and women, tucked behind
their ears, or in their hair, and their bodies after bathings
were anointed with the hinano-scented cocoanut-oil.
Their noses were sources of sensuous enjoyment to them
beyond my capability. They inhaled emanations from
flowers too subtle to touch my olfactory nerves.

The Marquesan woman has ever been an arch-co-
quette, paying infinite attention to her appearance, and
enduring pain and ennui to improve her beauty. Her
complexion was as much a pride as with a fashionable
American woman to-day. The beauty parlors of our
cities were matched by the steam baths, the use of saf-
fron, of oils, and of massage, and by weeks or even
months of preparation before some great festival. To
burst upon the assembled clan, white as the sea-foam,
with skin as smooth as a polished calabash, hair oiled
and wreathed, and body rounded from dancing practice
and much sleep, and to set beating wildly the pulses of
the young men, so that, strive as they might to remain
mute, they would be forced to yield mad plaudits, was
a result worth months of effort. To be the belle of the
ball was a distinction a woman remembered a lifetime.
It was an honor comparable to the warrior's wounds, or
possession of the heads of the enemies. Parents felt
keenly the success of their daughters. Titihuti and

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 331

others have told me of their triumphs, as Bernhardt or
Patti might recite of packed houses and a score of en-
cores.

A curious secrecy or modesty was attached to the
making of the toilet and the enhancement of the natural
charms. No Marquesan or Tahitian or Hawaiian
would ever have looked at herself in a portable mirror —
if she had one — as do many of our females, and the whit-
ening and reddening of cheeks and lips in public places
would have caused a blush of shame for her sex to suf-
fuse the face of a Marquesan, to whom such intimate
gestures were for the privacy of her home or the bank
of the limpid stream in a grove dedicated to the Mar-
quesan Venus.

Near Tahiti was the atoll of Tetuaroa where for hun-
dreds of years the belles of Tahiti resorted to lose their
sunburn in the bowered groves and to spend a season in
beautification by banting, special foods, dancing, swim-
ming, massage, baths, oils, and lotions.

Here in the Marquesas, as in all Polynesia, a period
of voluntary seclusion preceded the debut of the maiden,
or the preparation for a special pas seul by a noted
beauty.

Seclusion of the girl was practiced at the time of
puberty. It has a curious analogy in such far separated
places as Torres Straits and British Columbia, one Aus-
tralasia and the other North America. The girls of a
tribe in Torres Straits are hidden for three months be-
hind a circle of bushes in their parent's house at the first
signs of womanhood. No sun must reach them, and no
man, even though he be the father, enter the house, nor
must they feed themselves. The Nootkas of British

332 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Columbia also conceal their nubile virgins, and insist
that they touch their own bodies for a period only with
a comb or a bone, never laying their hands upon it.

It would seem that all this mystery had the same pur-
pose, that of adding to the attractiveness of the girls and
heightening the romance of their new condition. Our
coming-out parties parallel the goal of these strange
peoples, announcements, formal introductions, as bril-
liant as possible, being considered desirable both among
savages and ourselves to give notice of a marriageable
state. Our debuts have not departed far from aborig-
inal ideas.

The Junoesque wife of Seventh Man Who Wallows
had just come from the via puna in her accustomed bath-
ing attire, and, still dripping, seated herself in the sun
near me to dry. She had added a jasmine blossom to
the heavy gold hoops in her ears and had lit her pipe,
and her handsome, large face was twisted between smiles
and frowns as she tried to put in understandable words
and gestures her recital of these customs:

"Our girls, daughters of chiefs, such as I am, were
kept hidden for months before we appeared for the first
time in public in the tribal dance. The tapu was strict.
We were secret in our mother's house and inclosure,
without supposedly even being seen by any one but our
relatives and their retainers. It was death to gaze upon
us. We were tapu tapu. If we had cause to go out,
our official guardian blew a conch-shell to warn all from
the neighborhood. Not until the day of the dance or
marriage ceremony, not until the feast was spread and
the accepted suitor present to claim us, or the drums
booming for the dance, were we shown to the multitude ;

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 333

we had had months of omi omi, and would be in perfect
condition and most beautiful."

It was this omi omi, or massage, that many of the ear-
lier chroniclers of the South Seas believed to be the
cause of the chiefs and headmen of all these islands be-
ing much bigger and handsomer than the common peo-
ple. The hakaiki, or chiefs, men and women, through-
out Polynesia astonished the voyagers and missionaries
by their huge size. Often they were from four to six
inches above six feet tall, and framed in proportion.
Hardly a writing sailor or visitor to Hawaii, Tahiti,
Samoa, or the Marquesas but remarks this striking fact.
Many thought these headmen a different race than the
others, but scientists know that family, food, and the cu-
rious effect of the strenuous massage from infancy ac-
count for the differences. The omi omi of these islands,
the tarumi of Tahiti, and the lomi lomi of the Hawaiians
all have a relation to the momi-ryoji, practiced by the
tens of thousands of whistling blind itinerants through-
out Japan.

I had a remarkable illustration of the curative merits
of omi omi when, having bruised my back by awkward-
ness in sliding down a rocky waterfall into a once ta-
booed pool with Vanquished Often and Exploding
Eggs, I submitted myself to the ministrations of Juno
and Vanquished Often. They would have me in the
glare of the early morning sun on Seventh Man's pae-
pae, and there were gales of laughter as they shouted
out my physical differences from the Marquesans, my
excellences, and my blemishes. On one side and on
the other, both squatted, they handled me as if they un-
derstood the locations of each muscle and nerve. They

334 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

pinched and pulled, pressed and hammered, and other-
wise took hold of and struck me, but all with a most
remarkable skill and seeming exact knowledge of their
method and its results. I was in agony over their treat-
ment of me, but after a day as well as ever.

Before I was given the omi omi, I was bathed by the
two ladies with a care and nicety not to be bought at our
best hammams. A tiny penthouse was made quickly
of cocoanut-leaves, and in this was placed a great
wooden trencher of water in which white hot stones were
dropped. On a tiny stool I sat in the resulting steam,
the delicious odor of kakaa leaves thrown into the boil-
ing water aiding the vapor in effect on skin and nerves.
Quite ten minutes I was compelled to remain in the
penthouse, my fair jailers remaining obdurate outside
despite my imploring cries to be released, my protesta-
tions that I was being dissolved and would emerge a
thing of shreds and patches. When I could not have
stood it another second, my lungs bursting with re-
straint, and my body hot enough to hurt my nervously
caressing hands, I was suddenly let out and hurried to
the beach, where Vanquished Often rushed with me into
the beating surf.

The sea seemed cold as an Adirondack lake, and I was
for swimming beyond the breakers in fullest enjoyment
of the relief, but my doctors would not allow me another
minute and hand in hand rushed me to the chief's pae-
pae, now my own, for my lenitive kneading. The
bruises I had got in my awkward essay to emulate the
agility of Exploding Eggs and Vanquished Often were
deep and painful, but after half an hour of their pound-
ing I fell asleep and remained unconscious six hours.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 335

I was to myself a celestial musical instrument, a human
xylophone, from which houris struck notes that made
the stars whirl, and to the music of which Vanquished
Often danced in the purple moonlight upon a milky
cloud. Their cessation of the ojni omi woke me. It
was past noon when I joined them and the whole merry
populace of Vaitahu in the warm ocean waves. I was
without pain or stiffness, and reborn to a childhood I
had forgotten.

CHAPTER XVII

Skilled tattooers of Marquesas Islands a generation ago — Entire bodies
covered with intricate tattooed designs — The foreigner who had him-
self tattooed to win the favor of a Marquesan beauty — The magic
that removed the markings when he was recalled to his former life
in England.

TATTOOING, the marking of designs on the
human skin in life, is an art so old that its be-
ginnings are lost to records. It was practised
when the Neolithic brute went out to club his fellows
and drag in his body to the fire his mate kept ever burn-
ing. Its origin, perhaps, was contemporaneous with
vanity, and that was in the heart of man before he
branched from the missing limb of evolution. It per-
haps followed in the procession of art the rude scratch-
ings on bone and daubing on rock. In the caves of
Europe with these childish distortions are found the im-
plements with which the savage whites who lived in the
recesses of the rocks tattooed their bodies. The Jews
were forbidden by Moses to tattoo themselves, and the
Arabs, with whom they had much converse, yet prac-
tise it. In 1066 William of Malmesbury said that the
English "adorned their skins with punctured designs."
Kingsley, with regard for accuracy, makes Hereward
the Wake, son of the Lady Godiva, have blue tattooing
marks on wrists, throat, and knee ; a cross on his throat
and a bear on the back of his hand. The Romans found
the Britons stained with woad. The taste for such

336

From an old drawing

Te Ipu, an old Marquesan chief, showing tattooing

The famous tattooed leg of Queen Vaikehu

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 337

marks existing to-day is evidenced by the pain and price
paid by sailors and aristocrats of all white nations for
them. Tattooing has faded under clothing which covers
it and a less personal civilization which condemns it.
In the Marquesas Islands it reached its highest develop-
ment, and here was the most beautiful form of art known
to the most perfect physical people on earth.

Until the overthrow of Marquesan culture, the island
of Fatu-hiva was the Florence of the South Seas. The
most skillful workers at tattooing as well as carving
lived in its valleys of Oomoa and Hanavave. During
the weeks I have resided in them I delved into the his-
tory and curiosities of this most intimate of fine arts,
now expiring if not dead. Nataro, the most learned
Marquesan alive, took me into its intricacies and made
me know it for the proud, realistic performance it was,
a dry-point etching on a growing plate from which no
prints were to be made. Nataro's wife had one hand
that is as famous and as admired in Fatu-hiva as "Mona
Lisa's" portrait in Paris. A famous tuhuha wrought
its design, a man equal in graphic genius, relatively,
to Diirer or Rembrandt. Age and work had faded and
wrinkled the picture, but I can believe her husband that,
as a young woman, when the art was not cried down,
people came from far valleys to view it. I recalled the
right leg of the late Queen Vaekehu, the most notlable
piece of art in all the Marquesas until it went with its
possessor into the grave at Tai-o-hae. In late years
the former queen of cannibals and last monarch of the
Marquesas would not show her limb — a modest attitude
for a recluse who lived with nuns and thought only of
death. Stevenson confessed he never saw it above the

338 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

ankle, though the queen dined with him on the Casco.
He had a poet's delicacy, an absolute lack of curiosity,
and Mrs. Stevenson was with him. But he expressed
a real sympathy for the iconoclastic ignorance that was
destroying tattooing here.

The queen, who had been the prize of bloody feuds
and had danced at the feast of "long pig," had gone to
her reward after years of beseechment of the Christian
God for mercy, but I could almost see her once glorious
leg in the life because of the two of my Atuona mother,
Titihuti, which for months have passed my hut daily.
They are replicas of the Queen's, said Nataro, with the
difference that Titihuti's, beginning at her toe nails,
reached a gorgeous cincture at her waist, while Vae-
kehu's did not reach her hip, being, indeed, a perma-
nent stocking. Some of the Easter Island women had
an imitation of drawers delineated upon them, giving
weight to the theory that these perpetuated the idea of
clothing they wore in a colder clime, but of which they
had preserved not even a legend.

Women were seldom tattooed above the waist, ex-
cept their hands, and fine lines about the mouth and
upon the insides of the lips. This lip-coloring was,
doubtless, the efforts of invaders to make the red lips of
the Caucasian women, the fii'st Polynesian immigrants,
conform to the invaders' inherited standards, as the
Manchus put the queue on the Chinese. The Marque-
san men like dark men. The last conquerors here were
probably a darker race than the conquered, and they
preserved their ideals of color, but, having come without
women and seized the women they found, they let them
preserve their own standards, except for red lips, which

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 339

they tattooed blue. These latest coiners thought much
pigment meant strong bones, and after a battle they
searched the field for the darkest bodies to furnish fish-
hooks and tools for canoe-making and carving. They
thought the whites who first arrived were gods, and
when they found they were men, with their same pas-
sions, they thought they were ill. That is the first im-
pression one who lives long with Polynesians has when
he meets a group of whites. They look sickly, sharp-
faced, and worried. They pay dear for factories and
wheeled vehicles.

Very probably the beginning of tattooing was the
wish to frighten one's enemy, as masks were worn by
many tribes, and as the American painted his face with
ocher. That state was followed by the natural desire
of the warrior, as evident yet as in Hector's day, to look
manly and individualistic before the maidens of his
tribe. And finally, as heraldry became complicated,
tattooing grew, at least in Polynesia, into a record of
sept and individual accomplishments and distinguishing
marks. Here it had, as an art, freed itself from the
bonds of religion, so that the artist had liberty to draw
the Thing as he saw it, and had not to conform to priest-
craft, a rule which probably hurt Egyptian art greatly.

In New Zealand, where the Polynesians went from
Samoa, a sometime rigorous climate demanded clothing,
and the head became the piece de resistance of the tat-
tooer. There was a considerable trade among whites in
the preserved heads of New Zealanders until the supply
ran out. White dealers procured the raiding of villages
to sell their victim's visages. Museums and collectors
of such curios paid well for these tattooed faces, but the

340 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

demand exhausted the best efforts of the whites. After
the rarest examples were dead and smoked, there was
no stimulating the supply. The goods refused to be
manufactured. The Solomon Islands now supply
smoked human heads, but they have no adornment.

Birds, fish, temples, trees, and plants — all the cosmos
of the Marquesan — ^was a model for the tuhuka. He of-
ten drew his designs in charcoal on the skin, but some-
times proceeded with his inking sans pattern. He
never copied, but drew from memory, though the same
lines and tableaux might be repeated a thousand times ;
and always he bore in mind the caste, tribe, and sex of
the subject. Thus at a glance one could tell the valley
and rank of any one, much as in Japan the station, age,
moral standing, and other artificial qualities of women
are indicated by their coiffure and ohi, or sash.

The craft did not require any elaborate tools. The
ama or candlenut soot with water, a graduated set of
bone-needles, of human and pig origin, and a mallet
were all the requirements. The paint or ink was of but
one color, black or brown, which on a dark skin looked
bluish and on a fair skin black. The marking of the
parts most delicate and sensitive to pain, as the eyelids,
was a parcel of the endeavor to promote stoicism and to
show the foe the mettle of his opponent. Man did not
consent for thousands of years to share his ornamenta-
tion with women, and then insisted that the motif be
beauty or the accentuation of sex.

The tattooers, in order to learn from one another, to
have art chats, to discuss prices and perhaps dead beats
or slow payers, had societies or unions, in which were
degrees and offices, the most favored in ability and by

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 341

patronage being given the highest rank, though now
and again a white man, by his superior magic and force,
though no tuhuka at all, held the supreme position.

A shark upon the forehead was the card of member-
ship in the tattooers' lodge, to which were admitted oc-
casionally enthusiastic and discerning patrons of art.

At festival times, when tapus were to some degree
suspended and the intertribal enmities forgotten for the
nonce, thousands of men, women, and children gathered
to eat, drink, and be merry, and to be tattooed, as one at
country fairs buys new dresses and trinkets. It was
to these fetes that the pot-boilers, fakers, and beginners
among the talent came ; men who would make a sitter a
scrawl for a heap of pipi, shells and gewgaws, a few
squealing pigs, a roll of tapa, or, most precious of all,
a whale's tooth. Like our second- and third-class
painters, our wretched daubers who turn out canvases
by the foot (though hand-painted) , these tramps, who,
by a dispensation of the priests and a mocking provi-
dence, were tapu, not to be attacked in any valley,
strolled from tribe to tribe, promising much and giving
little. Some worked largely on repair jobs, doing over
spots where the skin had been abraded by injuries in
battles, or by rocks or fire. The man who was well
dressed in a suit of tattoo, or the lady who was clothed
from toes to waist in a washable peau de femme, kept
these garments in as good condition as possible, but
when accident or the fortune of war injured the en-
semble they hastened to have it touched up.

An artist of the first rank, one who in a Marquesan
salon would have a medal of honor, disdained such com-
missions, but dauber and South Sea Da Vinci alike

342 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

often had their work hung upon the hne, when they were
taken by the enemy and suspended at the High Place
before being dropped into the pit for the banquets of
the cannibal victors.

It was always of interest to me to wonder how men
learned tattooing. Painters, 'carvers, etchers, and
sculptors have material ever available for their' lessons.
They can waste an infinity of canvas, wood, copper, or
marble if they have the money to spend, but how about
the apprentice or student who must have live-mediums
even for practice?

Well, just as there are Chinese who, for a considera-
tion, take the place of persons condemned to death
(though they do not, as alleged, make a living out of it) ,
and others who, though it exhaust and finally kill them,
enter deadly trades or hire out for war, there were Mar-
quesans who offered themselves as kit-cats for these stu-
dents and sold their surface at so much an inch for any
vile design or miserable execution. I can see these fel-
lows, well covered with tapa, hiding whenever possible
the caricatures and travesties that made them a laugh-
ing show. These Hessians had no pride in complexion.
Their skins they wanted full of food, nor cared at all
for their outside if the inside man was replete.

There were others who, too poor to pay even the
itinerant wall-painters, let the students wreak their
worst upon them, merely to be tattooed, good or bad,
and many of these, like our millionaire picture buyers,
were luckily denied any appreciation of art and did not
know the imperfections of the shin pictures put upon
them.

"Tattooing in these islands," said Nataro, "was usu-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 343

ally begun upon those able to pay for it at the age of
puberty; but there were many exceptions of tattooing
commenced upon boys soon after their infancy or de-
ferred until mature manhood. Illness, poverty, or
other obstacle might prevent, and the desire of parents
might cause early tattooing. The father or other rel-
ative or protector of the youth or girl paid the tuhuka
but at the festivals even the very poor orphans were
given opportunities to be tattooed by a general contri-
bution, or the chief of the valley paid the fee. Years
were occupied at intervals in the covering of the entire
body of men, which was the aim; but many had to be
content with having a part pictured, and often elaborate
designs were never finished. You see many bare places,
meant to be covered when the tuhuka began his work.
Queen Vaekehu was converted to Christianity with but
one leg done and forewent further beautification to
serve her new God. Though begun in boyhood, the full
adornment of a man could hardly be terminated before
his thirtieth year. During his lifetime of sixty years
he might have it renewed twice, and as each pore could
not be duplicated exactly the third coat would make him
a solid mass of color, the goal of manly beauty.

"Though men usually sought to look terrible so that
when they faced their enemies they would inspire fear,
with women the sex motif was dominant," said Nataro.
"Girls with beautiful bodies and legs are much more
attractive when tattooed, and we selected the best
formed for the most elaborate designs. These were
drawn so that, as the girls danced naked, the whole pat-
terns were obvious, and those who were the most sym-
metrical won high honors in the great public exhibitions.

344 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

If in the wide circle that chanted a utamd, while the old
folks watched, a woman by exposing her beauty in a
dance caused the voices of the young men to falter, or
some one of them to become so entranced as to leap into
the ring and seize her, she won a prize of acclamation
for her parents which no other equaled. The dance
stopped and all united in cheering the dancer. These
beauties danced with their legs close together, so as to
keep the design intact, lifting the 'heels backward and
showing the shap'eliness of figure and the fineness of
tattooing."

To analyze thoroughly the meanings of the different
designs upon the bodies of the Maoris, or upon the
canoes, paddles, and bowls, was impossible now. It
might be compared to the study of heraldry. Tattooing
in the South Seas was a combination of art' and heraldry,
racial and individual pride's sole written or graven
record.

In the Marquesas, the art reached its zenith. It was
the Marquesans' national expression, their art, their
proof of Spartan courage, the badge of the warrior,
and the glory of sex. In the man it marked ambition
to meet the enemy and to win the most beautiful women.
In the weaker vessel it was a coquetry, highly developed
among daughters of chiefs and women of personal force ;
and it afforded those who had submitted to the efforts
of the best craftsmen opportunities to display their
charms in public to the most striking advantage.

Nataro said that when the law against tattooing was
enforced here a few years ago a number went to prison
rather than obey it, but that when it was abrogated the
art was already dead. It is kept alive now, except in

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 345

a few cases, only by the placing of names upon the arms
of the girls. Many tuhukas were still living, but there
was little call for their work.

"They were our highest class, next to the chiefs,"
said Nataro. "We looked up to them as you do to your
great. They were feted and made much of, and their
schools were our art centers, teaching besides tattooing,
the carving of wood, bowls, canoes, clubs, and paddles.
Now we buy tin cans and china plates. Von den
Steinen, the German philologist, connected with the
Berlin museum, who was here ten years ago, copied
every tattoo pattern he saw, and in many he found a
relation to Indian or Asiatic and perhaps other hiero-
glyphics and figures of thousands of years ago."

With the ridiculing of it by the missionaries, who as-
sociated it with heathenry, and the making of it a crime
by the missionary-directed chiefs of Tahiti, tattooing
vanished there almost a hundred years ago, but here
the law against it was very recent. The law written by
the English Protestant missionaries in Tahiti was as fol-
lows:

No person shall mark with tatau, it shall be entirely discon-
tinued. It belongs to ancient evil customs. The man or woman
that shall mark with tatau, if it be clearly proved, shall be
tried and punished. The punishment shall be this — he shall
make a piece of road ten fathoms long for the first marking,
twenty for the second ; or stone work four fathoms long and two
wide ; if not this, he shall do some work for the king. This shall
be the woman's punishment — she shall make two large mats, one
for the king and one for the governor ; or four small mats, for
the king two, and for the governor two. If not this, native
cloth twenty fathoms long and two wide ; ten fathoms for the

346 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

king and ten for the governor. The man and woman that per-
sist in tatauing themselves successively four or five times, the
figures marked shall be destroyed by blacking them over, and
the individuals shall be punished as above written.

To achieve a fairly complete picture upon one's body
meant many months of intense suffering, the expendi-
ture of wealth, and a decade of years of very gradual
progress toward the goal after' manhood was attained ;
but for a man in the former days to lack the Stripes of
Terror upon his face, to have a bare countenance, or one
not yet marked by the initial strokes of the hammer of
the tattooer was to be a poltroon and despised of his
tribe.

Such a one must expect to have no apple of love
thrown at him, t'o awaken no passion in womankind, nor
ever to find a wife to bear him children. He was as
the giaour among the Turks. He had no honor in life
or death, no foothold in the ranks of the warriors, or
place among the shades of Po.

So when white men were cast by shipwreck in those
isles, or fled from duty on whalers or warships, and
sought to stay among the Marquesans, they acceded to
the honored customs of their hosts, and adopted their
facial adornment and often in the course of years their
whole bizarre garb. The courage that did not shrink
from dwelling among cannibals could not wilt at' the
blow of the Tiama.

The explorer in the far North, who lets his face be-
come covered with a great growth of hair, when he in-
tends to return to civilization can with a few strokes of
a razor be again as before. But once the curious ink

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 347

of the tattooer has bitten into the skin, it is there forever.
It is like the pits of smallpox; it can never be erased.
Through all his life, and into the grave itself, the human
canvas must bear the pictures painted by the artist of
the needles. It was a chain as strong as steel, riveted
on him, that fastened him to these lotus isles. So men
of America or Europe did not return to their native land
from the Marquesas, but died here. The whorls and
lines in the ama dye wrote exile forever from the loved
ones at home.

Is that wholly true? Had not science or sorcery ne-
penthe for the afflicted by such a horror — horror if un-
wanted? Is there not one who has escaped such a fat^
when life had become fearful under it ?

I asked that question of all, and in the valley of Han-
avave was answered. I had rowed to Hanavave in the
whaleboat of Grelet, and, when he returned to Oomoa,
stayed on a month for the fishing with Red Chicken
and discussions with Pere Olivier.

"There is a sorcerer in the hills near here," said the
old French priest, thirty-five years there without leav-
ing, "who was said to be the best tattooer on Fatu-hiva.
He is still a pagan, and has a wonderful memory. Take
some tobacco and a pipe, and go to visit him. He may
be in league with the devil, but he is worthy an hour's
journey."

Puhi Enata was still vigorous, though very old. The
designs upon his face and body were a strange green,
the verde antique which the ama ink becomes on the
flesh of the confirmed kava drinker. I greeted him
with "Kaoha!" and soon, with the chunk of tobacco be-
side him and the new pipe lit, I led him to the subject.

348 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

The story is not mine but his, and it has all the weird
flavor of these exotic gardens of mystery. It is true
without question, and I have often thought since of the
American concerned in it, and wondered at his after
fate.

We were seated, Puhi Enata and I, upon the paepae
of his home, the platform of huge stones on which all
houses in the Land of the War Fleet are built.

In the humid air of that tropic parallel he made pass
before me a panorama of fantastic tragedy as real as
the life about me, but as astounding and as vivid in its
facts and its narration as the recital of a drama of an-
cient Athens by a master of histrionics. I laughed or
shuddered with the incidents of the story. He spoke in
his native tongue, and I have given his words as thej'^ fil-
tered through the screen of my alien mind, not always
exactly, but in consonance with the cast of thought of
that far-away and unknown land.

"We had no whites here when he came, this man of
your islands. Other valleys had them, but Hanavave,
no. Few ships have come to this bay. Tai-o-hae, a
day and a night and more distant, they sought for food
and water and now for copra, but Hanavave was, as
always, lived in by us only. Yet we ever welcomed the
haoe, the stranger, for he had ways of interest, and often
magic greater than ours.

"He came one day on a ship from far, this white man
I tell about, and of whom even now I often medi-
tate. He was not of the sea, but on the ship as one
who pays to move about over the waters, looking for
something of interest. That thing he found here. He
brought ashore his guns and powder, his other posses-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 349

sions of wonder, and let the ship go away without him.
He had seen Titihuti, and his koekoe, his spirit, was set
aflame."

I needed no description by the tuhuka to bring before
me Titihuti, to see that maddening, matchless child-
woman, nor to know the desperate plight of a white who
fell in love with her. She must have been the Helen of
these Pacific Greeks, for men came from other islands to
woo her, fought over her, and embroiled tribes in bloody
warfare at her whim. Her affairs had been the history
of her valley for a brief period, and were immortalized
in chants and in legends though she still lived. Many
had related to me stories of her beauty, her spell over
men, and her wicked pleasure in deceiving them.

She was the daughter of a chief, of a long line of
hakaiki, of noble mothers and of warriors, and an adept
in the marvelous cult of beauty, of sex expression, which
to the Marquesan woman was the field of her dearest
ambition, the professional stage and the salon of society.

"The day he came to this beach," said the sorcerer,
"was the day she first danced in the Grove of the Mei,
at the annual gathering of the tribe. All the people
of the ship were invited, and not least he who had no
duties but his desires, and who brought from the vessel
a barrel of rum as his gift to the people. It was as rich
as the full moon, as strong as the surf in storm, and in
every drop a dream of fortune. It made that foreigner
of note at once, and he was given a seat at the Hurahura,
the Dance of Passion, in which Titihuti for the first time
took her place as a woman and an equal of others. She
was then thirteen years old, a moi kanahau, her form as
the bud of the pahue flower, her hair red-gold, like the

350 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

fish of the lagoon, and her skin as the fresh-opened
breadfruit. The Grove of the Mei you have been in,
but you cannot imagine that scene. A hundred torches
of candlenuts, strung on the spine of the palm-leaf, lit
the dancing mead. The grass had been cut to a smooth-
ness, and all the valley was there. As is usual in these
annual debuts of our girls, at the height of the bread-
fruit season, a dozen were allowed to show their beauty
and skill. These danced to the music of drums and of
hand-clapping and chanting before the entire tribe
seated on the grass."

The old man lit the pipe, which had gone out, and
puffed out the blue clouds of smoke as if they were
recollections of the past.

"Finally, as the custom is, the plaudits of the crowd
narrowed the contest to three. Each as she danced ap-
pealed for approval, and each had followers. By the
judgment of the throng all had retired but three after
a first effort. These began the formal titii e te epo.
This is the dance of love, the dance we Marquesans have
ever made the test of the female's fascination.

"Before the first of the three danced, the rum was
passed. It was drunk from cups of leaves, and each
in turn drew from the cask. It ran through our veins
like fire through the pandanus. The great drum then
sounded the call.

"Tahiatini came from the shadow of the trees. She
wore a dress of tapa, made from the pith of the mul-
berry-tree, and as the dance became faster she tossed it
off until she moved about quite nude. For this, of
course, is part of the test. A hundred men, mostly
young, stood and watched her, and watching them were

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 351

the judges, the elders of the race, men and women.
For, Menike, in the expression, the heat, or the coolness
of those standing men was counted the success or failure
of the dancer. And they were taught by pride and by
the rules of the event to conceal every feeling, as did the
warrior who faced the launched spear. They were to
be as the stones of the paepae.

"Tahiatini passed back into the trees, and Moeo suc-
ceeded her. She seemed to feel that Tahiatini had not
scored heavily. She danced marvelously for one who
had never before been in the Grove of Mei, and the
shrewd judges reckoned more than one of the silent hun-
dred who could not restrain from some mark of ap-
proval. There was, when she fell back, a shout of pr,aise
from the crowd, and the judges conferred while the rum
was handed about for the second time.

"Then Titihuti was thrust out from the darkness, and
from her first step we realized that a new enchantress
had come to torment the warriors. I have lived long,
and many of those dances in the Grove of Mei I have
seen. Never before or since that night have I known
a girl to do what she did. Her hahu of tapa was as red
as the sun when the sea swallows it, and hung over one
shoulder, so that her bosom, as white as the ripe cocoa-
nut, gleamed in the light of the burning ama.

"Her hair was in two plaits of flame, and the glitter-
ing ghost flowers were over her ears. You know she
had for months been out of the day and under the hands
of those who prepare the dancers. Her body was as
rounded as the silken bamboo, and her skin shone with
the gloss of ceaseless care.

"She advanced before the silent hundred, moving as

352 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

the slow waters of the brook, and as she passed each
one she looked into his eyes and challenged him, as the
fighting man his enemy. Only she looked love and not
hatred. Then she bounded into the center of the line
and, casting off her kahu, she stood before them, and
for the first time bared her beautiful body in the titii e
te epo, the Dance of the Naked. She fluttered as a bird
a few moments, the bird that seeks a mate, the kuku of
the valley. On her little saffroned feet she ran about,
and the light left her now in brilliancy and now in
shadow. She was searching for the way from childhood
to womanhood.

"Then the great pdhu, the war-drum of human skin,
was struck by O Nuku, the sea-shells blew loudly, and
the Hurahura was proclaimed. You know that. Few
are the men who resist. Titihuti was as one aided by
Veinehae, the Woman Demon. She flung herself into
that dance with madness. All her life she and her
mother had awaited that moment. If she could tear the
hearts of those warriors so that their breasts heaved,
their limbs twitched, and their eyes fell before her, her
honor was as the winner of a battle. It was the supreme
hour of a woman's existence.

"The judges seized the flambeaux and scrutinized
closely the faces of the men. First one yielded and
then another. Try as they might to be as the rocks of
the High Place, they felt the heat and melted. A dozen
were told off in the first few minutes of Titihuti's dance,
though Tahiatini and Moeo had won but two or three.
Faster grew the music, and faster spun about her hips
the torso of Titihuti. The judges caught the rhythm.
They themselves were convulsed by the spell of the girl.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 353

The whole line of the silent hundred was breaking when,
as the breadfruit falls from the tree, suddenly sprang
upon the mead the foreigner who had come but that
day. Though others of the ship tried to hold him, he
broke from them, and, clasping Titihuti in his arms, de-
clared that she was* his, and that he would defend his
capture. The drums were quieted, the judges rushed
to the pair, and, for the time of a wave's lapping the
beach, spears were seized.

"But the ritual of the rum began, and in the crush
about the cask the judges awarded Titihuti the Orchid
of the Bird, the reward of the First Dancer. She stood
in the light of the now dying torches, and when the for-
eigner would embrace her and lead her away she turned
her laughing eyes toward him and called out so that
many heard :

" 'You are without ornament, O Haoe. Cover your
face as do Marquesan lovers, or get you back to your
island !'

"Then she hurried away to receive the praise and to
taste the glory of her achievement among her own
family."

The Taua took his long knife and with repeated blows
hacked off the upper half of a cocoanut to make ready
another drink. I had a very vivid idea of the situation
he had described. That handsome young man of Eu-
rope, belike of wealth, seeking to surrender to his va-
grant fancies in this contrasting environment, and find-
ing that among these savages he had position only as
his rum bought it with the men, and was without it at all
among the women. One could fancy him all afire after
that dance of abandon, ready on the instant to yield to

354 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

the deepest of all instincts, and surprised, astounded,
almost unbelieving at his repulse. He might have
learned that such repulse was not even in the manner
of the Marquesans, but solely the whim of Titihuti, the
beginning of that career of whimsical passion and insou-
ciance which carried her fame from island to island and
fetched other proud whites from afar to know her favor.
He himself had come a long way to be the unwitting vic-
tim of the most prankish girl and woman who ever
danced a tribe to death and destruction, but who withal
was worth more than she who launched the thousand
ships to batter Ilium's towers.

"And did he cover his face?" I demanded, hurrying
to follow the windings of fate.

''Er said the sorcerer. "He gained the friendship
of chiefs. He let his ship sail away with but a paper
with words to his tribe, and he stayed on. He hunted,
he swam, and he drank, but he could not touch his nose
to the nose of Titihuti; for his nose was naked. Weeks
passed, but not his passion. He hovered about her as
the great moth seeks the fireflies, but ever she was busied
with her pomades and her massage, the ena unguent and
the baths, the omi-omi and the combing of her red-gold
tresses. She had set him aflame, but had no alleviation
for him.

"And then when the moon was at its height she
danced again, this time alone, as the undisputed veJiine
haka of Fatu-hiva. The foreigner sat and gazed, and
when Titihuti glided to where he was and, planting her
feet a metero away, addressed herself to him, he shook
with longing. She was perfumed with the jasmine, and
about her breasts were rings of those pink orchids of

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 355

the mountains. The foreigner felt the warmth of her
presence as she posed in the attitudes of love. He
bounded to his feet and, clasping her for the second
time to him, he shouted that he would be tattooed, he
would be a man among men in the Marquesas.

"There was no delay; I myself tattooed him. As
always the custom, I took him into the mountains and
built the patiki, the house for the rite. That is as it
should be, for tattooing is of our gods and of our reli-
gion before the whites destroyed it. I was and am the
master of our arts. I did not sketch out my design
upon his skin with burned bamboo, as do some, but
struck home the ama ink directly. My needles were the
bones of one whom I had slain, an enemy of the Oi tribe.
I myself gathered the candlenuts and, burning them to
powder, mixed that with water and made my color.
My mallet, or hama, was the shin of another whom I
had eaten."

Such a man as Leonardo, who painted "Mona Lisa"
and designed a hundred other beautiful things, or Cel-
lini of the book and a vast creation of intricate marvels,
would have understood the exactness of that art of tat-
tooing in the Marquesas. Suppose "Mona Lisa" her-
self, an expanse of her fair back, and not mere linen,
bore her picture. What infinite pains ! Not more than
took the taua in such a task. In his mind his plan, he
dipped his needle in the ama soot, and, placing the point
upon a pore of the flesh, he lightly tapped the other ex-
tremity of the bone with his hama of shin and impressed
the sepia into the living skin, for each point of flesh mak-
ing a stroke.

Followed fever after several hours of frightful an-

356 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

guish. The dentist is the ministrant of caresses, his
the loved hand of pleasure, compared with the suffering
caused to the quivering body by the blows of those
needles. A seance of tattooing followed, and several
days of sickness. He had not the strength of the na-
tives in the pain, and often he cried out, but yet Jie
signed that the tattooing should go on.

"Across his eyes upon the lids, and from ear to ear,
I made a line as wide as two of your teeth, and I crossed
lines as wide from the corners of his forehead to the cor-
ners of his chin. As he was to be admitted to the Lodge
of Tattooers, I put upon his brow the sacred shark as big
as Titihuti's hand. I was four moons in all- that, and all
the time he must lie within his hut, never leaving it or
speaking. I handed him food and nursed him between
my work. Upon our darker skin the black candlenut
ink is, as you know, as blue as the deep waters of the
sea, but on him it was black as night, for his flesh was
white.

"He was handsome as ever god of war in the High
Place, that foreigner, and terrible to behold. His eyes
of blue in their black frames were as threatening as
the thunders of the ocean, and above the black shark
glistened his hair, as yellow as the sands of the shore. A
breadfruit season had passed when we descended the
mountain, and he was received into the tribe of Hana-
vave. We called him Tohiki for his splendor, though
his name was Villee, as we could say it."

There is a curious quibble in the recital of the Poly-
nesian. He arrives at a crisis of his tale, and avoids it
for a piece of wit or an idle remark. Perhaps it is to

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 357

pique the listener's interest, to deepen his attention, or
it is but the etiquette of the bard.

"Titihuti?" I interposed.

"Tuitui!" he ejaculated. "You put weeds in my
mouth. That girl, that Titihuti, had left her paepae
and vanished. Some said she dwelt with a lover in an-
other valley. Others that she had been captured at
night by the men of Oi Valley. It was always our ef-
fort to seize the women of other tribes. They made the
race stronger. But Titihuti was not in Oi or with a
lover. Her love was her beauty, and soon we learned
that she was gone into the hills herself to be tattooed.
You, American, have seen her legs, and know the full
year she gave to those. They are even to-day the hana
metai okoy the loveliest and most perfect of all living
things."

"And Willie, the splendid Tokihi, what said he?"

"Aue! He dashed up and down the valleys seeking
her. He offered gifts for her return. He cried and
he drank. But the tattooing is tabu, and it would have
been death to have entered the hut where she was against
the wish of the artist. Then he turned on me and cursed
me, and often he sat and looked at himself in the pool
in the brook by his own paepae. That foreigner lost his
good heart. No longer was he kind and gentle. It
was he who led us against the valley of Oomoa, and with
his gun wrought great harm to those people. It was
he who was ready to fight at but the drop of a cocoanut
upon his roof. He took no women, and he became the
fiercest man of Hanavave. When the year had gone,
and Titihuti came back, he would not see her in the

358 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

dance, though in it she showed her decorative legs for the
first time. He cursed her, too, and said she was a sister
of the feki, the devil-fish. He dwelt among us for sev-
eral years as one who leads the tribe, but is not of it. Of-
ten he but missed death by the breadth of a grain of
sand, for he flung himself on the spears, he fought the
sea when it was angered, and he drank each night of the
namu, the wine of the cocoanut flower grown old, until
he reeled to his mat as a canoe tossing at the fishing.

"Then one day came a canoe from Tai-o-hae, witli
words on paper for him from his own people. A ship
from his island was there and had sent on the paper.
That was a day to remember. There were with the
paper tiki, those faces of people you make on paper.
Villee seized those things, and, running to his paepue, he
sat him down and began to look them over. He eyed
the words, and he put the tiki to his lips. Then he lay
down upon his mat and wept. For much time he was
like a child. He rolled about as if he had been struck
in the body by a war-club, and at last he called me. I
went to him with a shell of namu.

" 'Drink!' I said. 'It will lift you up.'

"He knocked the shell from my hand.

" 'I will drink no more,' he cried. 'My father is dead,
and my brother. I am the chief of my tribe. I have
land and houses and everything good in my own island,
but, alas! I have this!'

"He pointed to the black shark upon his forehead,
and then he shouted out harsh words in his own lan-
guage. I left him, for he was like one from whom the
spirit has gone, but who still lives. I thought of the
strangeness of tribes. In ours he was a noble and hon-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 359

ored man for that shark, and yet in his own as hateful
as the barefaced man here. Man is, as the wind cloud,
but a shifting vapor.

"Often, a hundred times, I saw him sitting by the
pool and gazing into it as though to wash out by his
glances the marks on his countenance. He was as deep
in the mire of despair as the victim awaiting the oven.
Nature's mirror showed him why he could not leave for
his land and his chieftaincy. And, American^ for a
woman, too. I saw him many times look at that tiki
and read the words. Maybe he had fled from her in
anger. Now he was great among his people, and she
called him. Maybe. My own heart was heavy for him
when he fixed his eyes on that still water.

"After weeks of melancholy he summoned me one
day.

" 'Taua/ he said, 'is there no magic, no other ink, no
bones, that will quit me of this ?'

"He swept his hand over his face.

" 'I will give you my gun, my canoe, my coats, and I
will send you by the ship barrels of rum and many
things of wonder.'

"He took my hand, and the tears followed the lines
of the tattooing down his cheeks.

" 'Tokihi,' I replied, 'no man in the Marquesas has
ever wanted to take from his skin that which made him
great to his race, yet there is a legend that wanders
through my stomach. I will consult the lodge. It
would be magic, and it may be tapu/

"The next day I found him lying on his paepae, his
face dow .1. He was a leaf that slowly withers.

'Villee,' I said, and rubbed his back, 'there is for

<c o

360 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

you perhaps happiness yet. I have talked with the wise
old men of the lodge.'

"He raised himself, and fixed his dull eyes on me.

" 'One Kihiputona says that the milk of a woman will
work the magic. I can not say, for it is with the gods.'

"The foreigner sprang to his feet.

" 'Come, let us lose no time!' he cried. 'It is that or
the eva/

"Marquesans, when tired of life, eat the eva fruit. I
made all ready, and, taking my daughter and her babe,
with food, and the things of the tattooing, we again
went to the hut in the mountains. Together we built it
over, and made all ready for the trial.

" 'Remember, foreigner,' I said, 'this is all before the
Etud, the rulers of each one's good and evil. I have
never done this, nor even the wisest of us has ought but
a faint memory of a memory that once a white man thus
was freed to go back to his kin.'

" 'E aha a — no matter,' he said. 'There is no choice.
Begin!' '

"I warned him not to utter a word until I released the*
tapu. I made all ready. Then I had him lie down, his
head fixed in a bamboo section, and I began the long
task."

The sorcerer sighed, and spat through his fingers.

"Two moons he was there, silent. I worked faster
than before, because I had no designs to make. I only
traced those of the years before. But the suffering was
even greater, and when I struck the bone-needles upon
his eyelids he groaned through his closed mouth.
Every day I worked as long as he could endure. Some-
times he all but died away, but the omi omi, the rubbing.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 361

made him again aware, and as I went on I gained hope
myself. His own skin was by nature as that of the white
orchid, and the weeks in the patiki out of the sunlight,
with the oil and the saffron, made it as when he was
child. The milk was driven into a thousand little holes
in the flesh, and by magic it changed the black of ama to
white. I think some wonder made it do so, but you
should know such things. I left the shark until the last,
but long before I came to it the gods had spoken.
Faded slowly the candlenut soot, and crept out, as the
silver-fish in the caves of Hana Hevane, the bright
color of that foreigner.

"Many times his eyes, when I let loose the hds, lifted
to mine in inquiry, but I was without answer. Yet
nearer I felt the day when I would possess that gun and
canoe and the barrels of rum.

"It came. A week had gone since I had touched with
the needles his face, and most of it he had slept. Now
he was round with sleep and food, and one morning
when he awoke, I seized him by the hand and said,
'Kaoha!' The tapu was ended; the task was done."*

"And he?" I said greedily.

"He was as a man who wakes from a dream of horror.
He said not a word, but went with me and with my
daughter and the babe down the trail to this village.
Here he stole silently to his pool, and, lying down, he
looked long into it. Then he made a wild cry as if he
had come to a precipice in the dark and been kept from
falling to death by the mere gleam of fungus on a tree.
He fell back, and for a httle while was without mind.
Awake again, he rushed about the village clasping each
one he met in his arms, rubbing noses with the girls, and

362 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

singing queer songs — himenes to e aave — of his island.
His laughter rang in the groves. Now he was as when
he had come to us, gay, kind, and without deep thought.

"The gods had for that moon made him theirs, for
soon came a canoe with news that a ship of his country
was at Tai-o-hae. Never did a man act more quickly.
He made a feast, and to it he invited the village. A
day it took to prepare it, the pigs in the earth, the popoi,
the fish cooked on the coral stones, the fruits, and the
nuts. To it he gave all his rum, and he handed me his
gun, the paddles of his canoe, and his coats.

"But Po, the devil of night, crouched for him. The
canoe to take him to Tai-o-hae was in the water, waiting
but the end of the koina hai. Plentifully all drank the
rich rum, but Tokihi most. Titihuti even he had
greeted, and she sat beside him. She was now loath to
have him go; you know woman. She leaned against
him, and her eyes promised him aught that he would.
She was more beautiful than on that night when she had
spurned him, and she struck from him a spark of her
own willful fancy. He took her a moment to his bosom,
ibeld her as the wave holds the rock before it recedes,
and then, as the madness she ever made crept upon him,
he drew back from her, held her again a fierce moment,
and, dashing his cup to the earth, he turned upon her in
fury.

"It was the evil noon. The eye of the sun was
straight upon him, and as he cursed her, and shouted
that now he was free from her, the blood rushed into his
face, and painted there scarlet as the hibiscus the marks
of the tattooing. The black ama the magic had erased
now shone red. The stripes across his eyes and face

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 363

were like the scars a burning brand leaves, and the shark
of the lodge was a leper's sign upon his brow.

'' 'Mutul' I cried, for I saw death in the air if he
knew, and all the gifts lost to me. 'Silence!' And the
tribe heeded. No quiver, no glance showed the for-
eigner that one had seen what he himself had not. Titi-
huti fastened her gaze on him a fleeting second, and then
began the dance of leave-taking.

"We raised the chant:

*Apae!

Kaoha! te Haoe.

Mau oti oe anao nei.*

"To the canoe we bore him, and thrusting it into the
breakers, we called the last words, "^E avei atu!'

"He was gone forever from Fatu-hiva. And thus I
got this latter name I have, Puhi Enata, the Man with
the Gun."

The old sorcerer rolled a leaf of pandanus about a few
grains of tobacco.

"And you never had word of him?"

"Aoe, no," he said meditatively. "He went upon
that ship at Tai-o-hae. But, American, I think often
that when that man who was Tokihi came to dance in
his own island, to sit at his own tribe's feasts, or when
the ardor of love would seize him, always he tried to be
calm."

CHAPTER XVIII

A fantastic but dying language — The Polynesian or Maori Tongue — Mak-
ing of the first lexicons — Words taken from other languages — Decay
of vocabularies with decrease of population — Humors and whim-
sicalities of the dictionary as arranged by foreigners.

MALICIOUS Gossip and Le Brunnec taught
me Marquesan in the "man-eating isle of
Hiva-Oa," as Stevenson termed my home.
After supper or dinner I had a lesson in my paepae;
often in a mixed group, for the beginnings of democracy
are in the needs of company. Here were the governor,
the highest official, an army officer and surgeon; Le
Brunnec, a small trader; Kekela, a Hawaiian; Puhe, the
hunchback servant of Bapp, the trader; Exploding
Eggs, Ghost Girl, and Malicious Gossip and her hus-
band. Mouth of God. The governor spoke French and
a very little English, Le Brunnec those and Marquesan,
Mouth of God and his wife Marquesan and a trifle of
French, Kekela Marquesan and English, and the hunch-
back Marquesan only. Ghost Girl, of course, knew only
that, but she never spoke at all except to beg for rum or
tobacco. Lonesomeness made us intimate despite our
difference of origin, status and language. We talked
about the Marquesan language, and we two compara-
tive newcomers strove to enlarge our vocabulary.

The derivation of words is an absorbing pursuit.
Enwrapped in it are history and romance, the advance
from the primitive, the gradual march of civilization,

364

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 365

and, besides, many a good laugh; for man made merry
as he came up, and the chatterings of the missing links
are often heard in the chase through the buried centuries
for the beginnings of language. The Aryan, English's
ancestor, was originally made up of a single consonant
between two vowels, and I fancied I was speaking my
ancestral words in this aboriginal tongue.

"There is nothing more fascinating than etymologies.
To the uninitiated the victim seems to have eaten of
'insane roots that take the reason prisoner'; while the
illuminate too often looks upon the stems and flowers
of language, the highest achievements of thought and
poesy, as mere handles by which to pull up the gi'im tu-
bers that lie at the base of articulate expression, sacred
knobs of speech, sacred to him as the potato to the Irish-
man." James Russell Lowell had himself eaten of that
maddening weed. These Marquesan verbal radicals en-
gaged me both by their interest and their humor.

The erudite philologist may barken back to the Chal-
daic or another dead language of Asia or Africa and
make ponderous tomes upon his research, but the ama-
teur can dig as he plays only by being actually with a
simple, semi-savage people, as I was, and finding among
them, still active, the base and shght growth of human
thought and emotion in speech. The most alluring
tongue in sound and origin is the Maori, and Marque-
san is Maori. It is spoken from Hawaii to New Zea-
land, and is termed the "grand Polynesian" language.
The people of those two groups of islands, as well as
those of the Marquesan, Society, Friendly, Paumotuan,
Samoan, Tongan, and some other small archipelagos,
have it as their vernacular, though its variations are so

366 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

great as to prevent converse except limitedly between the
different islands. The Maori tongue is as full of mel-
ancholy as are those passing races. -Soon it will be lost to
use, like the ancient Greek or the mellifluous idiom of
the cultivated Incas. It is decaying so fast now that a
few years mark a decided loss of words, and lessen the
adherence to any standard. Yet it is the most charm-
ing of all present expressions of thought or emotion, and
it is a great pity that it perishes. One sighs for a South
Seas Sinn Fein to revivify it.

The Polynesians, as scientists call them, know them-
selves, and therefore their tongue as Maori. And just
as "British" to an Englishman is a word of pride, and
"American" to our patriotic schoolboys and orators the
greatest word ever coined, so "Maori" actually means
first-class, excellent, fine. The Maoris were hundred
per centers before the Chosen People.

I have lived much with Maori folk in many archipel-
agos and listened for years to their soft and simple,
sweet and short words. Their speech is like the rip-
pling of gentle waters, the breezes through the bread-
fruit-trees. It has color and rhythm and a euphonism
unequalled. Language begins as poetry and ends as al-
gebra, but here the algebraic stage was not reached, and
there remained something of the unconscious uprush of
its beginning, and the subliminal laws of mind which
shaped its construction. For the Maori is a very old
language, older than Greek or Latin, and was cut off
from other languages at the outset of culture, before
the mud of the Tigris was made into pots. The Mar-
quesan indigene was never so complex, as in acute civili-
zation, that his language could not tell what he thought

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 367

and felt, though he, too, had art to supplement words,
as his tattooing, carving, houses, and temples prove.

The Maori has one inflexible rule, that no word shall
end in a consonant, that no two consonants shall be to-
gether, and that all letters in a word be sounded.

There are only fifteen letters, or sounds, in the pure
alphabet, b, c, d, j, h, 1, q, s, w, x, and y being unknown.
In some dialects other letters have been introduced in
the adaptation of foreign words. They are not, how-
ever, properly Polynesian. Words are usually un-
changeable, but pronouns and the auxiliary verb "to be"
and many adjectives and verbs have curious doubling
quality, like ino lino; horo, hohoro, horohoro; haere, ha-
haere. li in Marquesan means "anger" ; iiii means "red
in the face from anger." The adjective follows the
noun, as in moa iti, little chicken, iti is the adjective.
The subject comes after the verb "to be," expressed or
understood, or after the verb that denotes the action of
the subject.

The Maoris knew no genders except those for beings
by nature male or female, and these they indicate by
following words. In Tahitian, tane means "man," and
vahine "woman," or "male and female." Thus 1 was
called often O'Brien tane, and, where the same proper
names are applied to men and women, the word tane
or vahine indicates the sex; The sign of a well-known
merchant in Papeete, the capital of Tahiti and the en-
trepot of the South Seas reads, "Tane Meuel," the
Tane being the name his proud parents gave him when
born to show their delight at his being a boy.

While there is a dispute over the origin of the Maori,
my friend, McMillan Brown of New Zealand, a su-

368 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

preme authority, believes it separated from the primeval
Aryan a millennium or two ago, in the stone age, and
came into the Pacific with the migration that first
brought women into these waters. Some scholars say
the language is* to be classed with the modem European
tongues, and especially with Enghsh. They cite the
reduction of inflection to a minimum, the expression of
the grammatical relationship of words by their order in
the sentence, the use of auxiliaries and participles, the
power of interchanging the significant parts of speech
as occasion requires; the indication of the number of
nouns by articles or other definitives, cases by preposi-
tions, gender by the addition of the word for male or
female, the degree of adjectives by a separate word, and
the mood and tense of verbs by a participle.

As English spoken in isolated mountain regions —
among the poor whites of the Middle West and South
of the United States — becomes attenuated and broken,
so in many of these islands and archipelagos the Maori
language became differentiated by chmate and environ-
ment, and shriveled by the limitations of its use. The
Marquesan has been weakened by phonetic decay, the
1 and r almost disappearing, and in some places, too,
the k being hardly ever heard.

As a nation perishes, so does its language. As its
numbers decrease, the vocabulary of the survivors
shrinks. It does not merely cease to grow; it lessens.
Cornwall proved that and Wales ; Ireland and Scotland
exemplify it now. A language waxes with the mass
and activities of its speakers. Scholars may preserve
a grammar, as the school Latin, or as the Sinn Fein is
doing in Ireland, but the body and blood of the vulgate

U.*«™j-.

I m

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 369

speech waste and ebb without the pulse of growth.
Speech fattens with usage. The largest number of
words in any language is found in that language which
most people speak. The most enterprising race spreads
its language farthest by religion, commerce, and con-
quest.

All these Polynesian tongues are dying with the peo-
ple. Corrupted first by the admixture of European
words, their glossaries written by men unborn to the
land, the racial interests that fed them killed by the de-
struction of customs and ambitions, these languages are
moribund, and as unlike those spoken before the white
came as is the bison to the family cow.

The French observer Bovis said seventy years ago
that only a few Tahitians understood and spoke pure
Tahitian. No one does now. Yet, obsolescent and
garbled as are these spiritual victims of pale-face domi-
nation, the South Sea folk cling to them affectionately.
I attended the first sessions of the Hawaiian legislature
under American territorial government. All proceed-
ings were in both English and Hawaiian, many of the
legislators not understanding English after eighty years
of intimate relations with England and America.
They, like the other Maoris, had not learned other
tongues, but had let their own lapse into a bastard
patois.

The Hawaiian is akin to the Marquesan. The vari-
ations consist in not using in one dialect words in use in
another, in the sense attached to the same words, in the
changing of vowels and of consonants in the same words,
and also by the replacement of consonants by a click of
the tongue. Almost all dialects have these unuttered

370 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

consonants expressed by the guttural accentuation of
the vowel following.

I must know French to approach Marquesan, be-
cause these islands are French for eighty years, and I
know of no practical grammar except that of Monseig-
neur Dordillon, written in 1857, and of no procurable
dictionary but his. Both are in French.

A tragedy originating in petty disciphne or episcopal
jealousy saddened the last days of the writer. Bishop
Dordillon. He had created out of the mouths of his
neophytes the written Marquesan tongue, and he made
his dictionary his life-work. They would not let him
publish it. Ecclesiastical authorities, presumably of
Chile, — for all Catholic missionaries here were under
that see in early days, — forbade it. After forty years
of labor upon the book, he was allowed to put it to print,
but not to affix his name as author. Against this pro-
hibition the sturdy prelate set his face.

"Not for himself," said the vicar, Pere David, to me,
"but for the church and our order, he would not be
robbed of the honor. He died very old, and confided
his manuscript to a fellow-priest. For fifty years each
missionary to these islands copied it for his personal use.
Ten thousand nights have thus passed because of the
jealousy of some prelate in Valparaiso or in Paris.
Pierre Chaulet, of our order, the Sacre Coeur, revised
the book after forty-five years' residence here."

The Tahitian was the first Maori language reduced
to writing. No Polynesian race had a written litera-
ture nor an alphabet. Writing was not invented nor
thought of when they left their European home, nor did
they acquire it in Malaysia. The Polynesians marked

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 371

certain epochs and events by monuments, and conse-
crated them with ceremonies. These events also marked
their language, which was peculiarly susceptible to
change and addition. It was abundant, and all the de-
tails of their material life and history were impressed
upon the language in shades of meanings and words.
In Tahiti the finer meanings disappeared ninety years
ago, and the adverbs and degrees of comparison were
lost. In the Marquesas, because of the lesser infiltra-
tion of whites, the language in its purity lasted longer.
One of the mutineers of the Bounty, Midshipman Peter
He5rwood, who chose to remain in Tahiti rather than
sail with Christian, wrote the first vocabulary of Tahi-
tian in prison at Execution Dock in England. BHgh
had determined to hang Hey wood, and, awaiting his
seemingly assured death, the young officer in his death
cell set down the words he had learned in the happy days
in the Isle of Venus, with their connotation in English.
One may imagine it was a sad yet consoling task to live
again the scenes of his joyous exile, and that each word
of Tahitian he wrote conjured for him a picture of the
scene in which he had learned it, and perhaps of the soft
lips that had often repeated it to him. It is pleasant
to know that the youthful lexicographer did not mount
the gallows, and that his vocabulary was eagerly studied
by the first missionaries leaving England for the South
Seas on the Duf. The first word the clerics heard
when the Tahitians boarded the Duff was taio, friend,
and the reverends wrote to England that as the "heathen
danced on the deck in sign of hospitality and friendship,
we sang them, 'O'er the gloomy hills of darkness.* "
With Heywood's list as a preparation, they established

372 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

an alphabet for Tahiti which fitted the dulcet sounds as
they registered on their untuned ears. The general rule
was to give the vowels their Italian value and to sound
the consonants as in English. Their fonts of type were
limited, and they had to use makeshifts of other letters
when they ran out of the proper ones. They made mon-
umental errors in their monumental toil, errors unavoid-
ably due to their not being philologists, nor even well
educated — errors perpetuated and incorporated in the
language as finally written. This Tahitian dictionary
and grammar formed the basis of all similar books in the
Marquesan, Hawaiian, and other dialects. What store
of ancient tongues the missionaries had, they put into
linguafacturing religious words for the Tahitians. In
fact, they were so busy inventing words for ordinary use,
and for their prayers, sermons, and the translation of the
Eible, they did not record many native words. They
bowdlerized the whole Polynesian language, and emas-
culated an age-old tongue from which we might have
gathered in its strength something of the spirit of our
Aryan forefathers.

A chief difficulty of the makers of the written Poly-
nesian languages was the adjectives. Primitive peoples
have not the wealth of these that civilized nations
possess, and fine shadings here are often expressed by
intonation, grimace, or gesture.

There is no available Tahitian-English lexicon. The
London Missionary Society published one before the
French seized Tahiti in the forties. It is out of print,
and as obsolete as to present-day Tahitian as Dr. John-
son's once-famous tome is as to English. The only
copies are in the hands of the Mormon, Josephite and

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 373

other English-speaking missionaries in Tahiti, and in
the hbraries of collectors. It cannot be bought in Ta-
hiti. Monseigneur Tepano Jaussen wrote one in
French. I have it, dated at Paris, 1898; but so fast is
the Tahitian tongue degrading into a bloodless wretched
jumble that it, too, is almost archaic.

"A Vocabulary of the Nukahiwa Language; includ-
ing a Nukahiwa-English Vocabulary and an English-
Nukahiwa Vocabulary" was printed in Boston in 1848.
No living Nukahiwan, or Marquesan, would understand
much of it, as there has been such radical change and de-
generacy in the dialect in the seventy years since it was
written, and so few Marquesans survive.

The language shows that at one time they did not
count beyond four, and the higher numbers were ex-
pressed by multiples of four. Afterward they came to
five, which they made lima or the fingers of one hand.
When the ten or denary system was adopted, the word
umi, or whiskers, was chosen to mean ten, or a multitude.

The cardinal numbers are sometimes tiresome. For
instance, thirty-one is E tahi tehau me te onohuu me te
mea he e tahi. I once remarked to a Marquesan chief
that the Marquesan people said many words to mean a
trifle and took a long time to eat their food.

"What else have we to do?" he asked me.

Strangely, the larger numbers are shorter. Twenty
thousand is tini.

Should I wish to say "once," meaning at one time, I
say, mamua mamua mamua; more anciently hakiu ka-
kiu kakiu kakiu; "a very long time ago," tini tini tini
tini; "quite a long time ago," tini hahaa tini hahaa tini
hahaa tini hahaa; but "always" is anatu and "soon" epo.

374 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

This last word is a custom as well as a word, for it is like
the Spanish manana and the Hawaiian mahope, the Ta-
hitian ariana, or our own dilatory "by and by."

The variations between the dialects in the different
groups is great, and even in the same group, or on the
same island, meanings are not the same. In the Mar-
quesas, the northwestern islands have a distinct dialect
from the southeastern. Valleys close together have dif-
ferent words for the same object. These changes con-
sist of dropping or substituting consonants, t for k, 1 for
r, etc., but to the beginner they are baffling. Naturally,
the letters, as written, have the Latin value. Thus, Ta-
hiatini is pronounced Tah-heea-teenee, and Puhei, Poo-
hay-ee.

For me words have color, form, character: They have
faces, ports, manners, gesticulations; — they have moods, hu-
mours, eccentricities : — they have tints, tones, personalities.

Lafcadio Hearn might have written that about the
Maori tongue.

The Marquesan language is sonorous, beautiful, and
picturesque, lending itself to oratory, of which the Poly-
nesians are past masters. Without a written tongue
until the last century, they perfected themselves in
speaking. It was a treat to hear a Marquesan in the
full flood of address, recalling the days of old and the
glories departed, or a preacher telling the love of God or
the tortures reserved for the damned. They were grace-
ful and extremely witty. They kept their audience
laughing for minutes or moved them quickly to tears.
Their fault was that shared by most European and
American orators, long-windedness. The Marquesans

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 375

have many onomatopes, or words imitating natural
sounds, and they are most pleasing and expressive. The
written words hardly convey the close relation they bear
to the reality when spoken. The kivi, a bird, says, "^Kivi!
kirn! kivir The cock says, "Kokoao! va tani te moa!
Kokoao!" The god that entered the spirit of the priest-
ess made a noise in doing so that was like this : ''A u u
uuuuuuua! A uuuuu a!"

When the pig eats, the sound he makes is thus : ''Afu!
afu! afu! afu! afu! afu! afu! apu! apu! apu! apu! apu!
apu! apu!" In repeating these sounds the native abates
no jot of the whole. The pig's afus are just so many;
no more, no fewer.

When the cocoanut falls to the ground the sound is
'^Hu!" The drinker who takes a long draft makes the
noise, ''Aku! akuf aku! aku! akw! akur

Moemoe is "the cry one makes of joy after killing any
one."

It is notable that in English the names for edible ani-
mals when alive are usually the foundational Saxon, but
when dead and ready for food they are Norman. Ox,
steer, bull, and cow are Saxon. Beef and viand are
Norman. Calf is Saxon, but veal is Norman; sheep is
Saxon, mutton Norman. Probably the caretaker of
these animals, the Saxon villain who tended them, made
his names for them stick in the composite language,
while the sitters at table, the Normans and those who
aped their tongue, applied the names of the prepared
meat as they plied their knives. Pig and hog, the latter
meaning a gilded pig, are English, but pork is Norman.

So in the study of Marquesan one finds that the com-
mon objects have older names than those less usual.

376 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

The missionaries had a hard time suiting a word to the
devil. With their vision of him, horns, hoof and tail,
they had to be content with kuhane anera maaa. Ku-
hane means soul or spirit, anera means heavenly spirit,
and maaa means wicked, and also a firebrand or incen-
diary. So Great Fern, my Presbyterian neighbor, gave
me his idea that the devil — Tatana, as Satan is pro-
nounced— was a kind of cross between a man and a wild
boar running along with a bunch of lighted candlenuts,
setting fire to the houses of the wicked.

It is not easy to learn well the Marquesan language,
but it is not hard to acquire a smattering of the Lingua
Franca spoken by natives to whites and whites to na-
tives. The language itself has been so corrupted by
this intercourse that few speak it purely.

Amusing are the English words adapted or melted
into the native tongue, and it is interesting to trace their
derivation. They call any tin or metal box tipoti (pro-
nounced "teepotee"). The first metal receptacles they
saw aboard the first ships were the teapots of the sailors,
and they took the word as applicable to all pots and
boxes of metal. The dictionary says "Tipoti — petite
hoite en fer-hlanc."

Beef is Pifa (peefa) . Poteto — pronounced potato —
means ship's biscuits or American crackers or cakes.
The early whalesmen held out their hardtack to the na-
tives and offered to exchange it for potatoes or yams.
The natives took it that the biscuits were potatoes, and
call them so to-day.

A curious and mixed meaning is that of fishuha, which
one might think meant a fish-hook. It means a safety-
pin, and is a sought-for article by the women. The

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 377

Marquesans had fish-hooks always, and a name for
them, and so gave the Enghsh name to safety-pins,
which appear like unto them.

Metau is a fish-hook, and a pin is pine (pee-nay).
There are hundreds of queer and distorted words like
these. Bread is faraoa, pronounced frowwa, which is
flower, with an r instead of an 1, as they have no 1 in their
alphabet. In Tahiti, taofe is coffee. K and t and 1 and
r are interchangeable in many Polynesian languages,
and fashion has at times banned one or the other or ex-
changed them. Whims or even decrees by the pagan
priests have expelled letters and words from their vocab-
ularies, and some have been taboo to certain classes or
to all. Papeete was once upon a time Vaiete, which
means the same, a basket of water, the site conserving
the streams of the hills. Vaiete was smothered under a
clerical bull and forgotten along with other words
thought not up-to-date.

I have heard an aged and educated American woman
born in Honolulu call it Honoruru, and Waikiki, Wai-
titi, as she had learned when a girl.

Coffee here is \alie, not unlike the Japanese hoM.

Area is the same word in Latin and Maori, and virtu-
ally in English. It means space, in all. Ruma, a house,
is much like room, and pooka or puaka, a pig, is akin
to the Latin porcus, and the Spanish pnierca.

When the missionaries here sought to translate a be-
loved phrase, "The sacred heart of Jesus," famihar in
Catholic liturgy, they were puzzled. The Polynesian
believes with some of the Old Testament writers that
the seat of sentiment is in the bowels. "My very bow-
els yearned" is a favorite expression of Oriental authors.

Koehoe is the Marquesan word for entrails. It means

378 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

also intelligence, character, and conscience. A man of
good heart is in Marquesan a man of good bowels. The
good fathers were sore put to it to write their invocation
to the "bleeding heart of the Savior," and one finds a
warning in Bishop Dordillon's dictionary:

Les Canaques mettent dans les entrailles (koekoe) les sen-
timents que nous mettons dans le coBur (houpo).

Quelquefois il convient de traduire ad sensum pluto que ad
verbum et vice versa; Le coeur de Jesus — te houpo a letu.

Extreme unction, the sacrament, is eteremaotio, pro-
nounced, "aytairaymahoteeo." ,

The daily usage of common English words fixed cer-
tain ideas in the minds of the islanders for all time.

on mani, a corruption of old man, is used for any-
thing old ; hence a blunt, broken knife or a ragged pair
of trousers is oil mani.

A clergyman is mitinane, pronounced mitt-in-ahny,
an effort at missionary. In Tahiti the word is mitinare
or mikonare, and is one of ribald humor. It is also a
bitter epithet against one who is sanctimonious. The
white traders, beachcombers, and officials have given
the word this significance by their ridicule of religion and
its professors.

What more picturesque record of the introduction of
cattle into Samoa than bullamacow? It is the generic
name in those islands for beef, canned beef, and virtu-
ally all kinds of canned meats. A child could trace it
to the male and female bovine ruminants first put ashore
there, and nominated by the whites "bull and a cow."

The good Bishop Dordillon notes that a cook is enata
tunu kai, but that the common word is kuki, and for

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 379

kitchen fae kuki. That kuki is our own cook, as the
Marquesans heard the sailors call him — cooky. Fae is
house.

A pipe is paifa (pyfa), and tobacco pake (pahkay),
rough pronunciations of the English words.

All through Polynesia the generic name among for-
eigners for a native is Kanaka, which is the Hawaiian
word for man, or the human race. The Marquesan
man is kenana or enata or enana, and woman vehine.
The Tahitians and Hawaiians say taata or tane for man,
and vahine or wahine for woman. The French word
for Kanaka is canaque. This word is opprobrious or
not according to the degree of civilization. The Mar-
quesans often call themselves canaques, as a negro calls
himself a negro; but I have seen a Tahitian of mixed
blood weep bitterly when termed a Kanaka. Perhaps
it is as in the Southern part of the United States, where
the colored people refer to one another commonly as
niggers, but resent the word from a white.

Pig in Marquesan is puaa or puaka.

Piggishness in English means greediness ; but cochon-
nerie, the French verbal equivalent, means filth or ob-
scenity, and in Marquesan has its counterpart in haa
puaa, to be indecent ; hee haa puaa, to go naked, and kau-
kau haa puaa, to bathe naked, words doubtless originat-
ing under missionary tutelage, as when the Catholic
priests were all-powerful, they made laws forbidding
nudity in public. In fact, a noted English writer who
spent some time here was arrested and fined for sleep-
ing upon his veranda one hot noon in the garb of Adam
before the apple episode. The Catholic missionaries
here never bathed in the rivers or sea, and had no bath

380 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

arrangements in their house. Godliness has no relation
to cleanliness. Celibate man the world over had the
odor of sanctity.

Shark is mako, and, curiously, tumu mdko is a gross
eater, or "pig" in our adopted sense, while vehine mako
is a prostitute. E haa mako is to deliver over to prosti-
tution. Probably this last phrase has been coined by
the clergy for lack of a more opposite one. Hatete in
Tahitian is chastity, for which the natives had no word
nor idea.

When card-playing was introduced by the whites, its
nomenclature was adapted. Pere or pepa are cards.
Pere is play, pronounced p'ray, and pepa is paper.
Taimanu, heata, tarapu, and pereda are diamonds,
hearts, clubs, and spades ; teata is the knave ; te hai — the
high — is the ace ; and furu is a full. Fardoa is flour or
bread and fardoa pere — flour play, flour or bread-like
playing-cards — are biscuits or crackers. Afa miniti is
a half-minute, or a little while. Others of the hundreds
of bastard words now in the language and dictionary
are : Niru, needle ; pia^ beer ; poti, boat ; purumUj broom ;
putete, potato; punu, spoon; Poretona, London; tara,
dollar; tavana, governor or chief; tohita, sugar; uaina,
wine; tihu, dix sous, or half a franc; fira, fiddle; puka,
book. I must not omit the delightful verkuti for very
good, or all right, or the stiff eelemosina, for alms, for
which also, the Polynesians had no word, as no one was
a beggar.

As did the American Indians, the Polynesians learned
English and other European tongues through religion.
The discoverers, who were officials, traders, or adven-
turers gained a smattering of the native language, but

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 381

hardly ever had the perseverance, if the education, to
gather a thorough knowledge. Almost all the first
modern dictionaries and grammars were written by
clerics. The prime reason for their endeavors was to
translate the sacred Scriptures into their neophytes'
language and to be able to preach them. The Bible
has been the first book of all outlandish living languages
to be reduced to writing for hundreds of years.

Consequently, its diction, its mode of speech, and its
thoughts have molded the island tongues. Words lack-
ing to translate biblical ideas had to be invented, and the
missionaries became the inventors. Some with Hebrew
and Greek and Latin at their service used bits of them
to create new words, and others drew on their imagina-
tions, as do infants in naming people and things about
them. In writing their dictionaries, they limited the
European vocabulary to necessary, nice, or religious
words, and the vernacular to all they could find, with a
strict omission of those conveying immodest ideas. As
the Polynesians had no morals from the Christian point
of view, a great number of their commonest words were
lost.

The Bible was done into Marquesan in the forties by
English Protestants, and the old Hawaiian missionaries
in the Marquesas made much of it in their teachings.
It is not popular in French, and few copies survive.
The Catholics do not recommend it to the laity. Protes-
tantism is apathetic ; yet I have seen a leper alone on his
paepae deep in the Scriptures, and when I asked him if
he got comfort from them, I was answered, "They are
strong words for a weak man, and better than pig."

The same corruptions that have destroyed the original

382 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

purity of the Hawaiian and Tahitian tongues has
marred that of these islands. The French officials had
hardly ever remained long enough to encompass the
language here, and seldom had they been of the scholarly
type.

Rulers over colonies make feeble effort to speak well
their subjects' tongues. Perhaps two of the dozen gov-
ernors, military and civil, the Philippines have had un-
der American ownership could talk Spanish fairly well,
and none spoke the aboriginal tongues which are the
key to native thought. They knew the governed
through interpreters, and therefore knew nothing really
of them. As our boys laugh at foreigners' ignorance,
so do foreign colonists laugh at ours. I saw a famous
American governor stand aghast when, asking his Fili-
pino host, as he thought, for "a night lamp then and
there," the astounded president e of a village brought
before the assembled company a something never pa-
raded in polite society.

The missionary dictionaries of the Polynesian dialects,
preserving only a very limited number of the words once
existing, and hardly any of the light and shade, the
idioms and picture phrases, of these close observers of
nature, remind one of Shakespeare's criticism, "They
have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the
scraps."

The Enghsh missionaries put the Marquesan sounds
into English letters, but when their day was done in
Tahiti, and the French came to power because of French
Catholic missionaries being expelled at the instigation
of Protestant clerics, the poor Marquesans had to un-
learn their English and take up French.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 383

In Marquesan there never was an English dictionary
circulated that I know of, and so the natives' first
European language was French as far back as books
and schools were concerned ; but the commerce has been
mostly in English, the whalers and the traders talk
English, and all Polynesia is stamped by the heel of the
Saxon.

A German army officer who traveled with me la-
mented that in German Samoa the language used is
English when not Samoan, even the German officials
being forced to use it.

On the schooners all commands are in English, though
the captains are French and the crews Tahitian, whose
English is confined to these words alone. At the Ger-
man traders' in Taha-Uku the accounts are in English
or American. It is the effect of the long dominance of
the English on the sea and in commerce.

A chief difficulty of the makers of the written Poly-
nesian languages was the adjectives. Primitive peoples
have not the wealth of these that civilized nations pos-
sess, and fine shadings here are often expressed by into-
nation, grimace, or gesture.

CHAPTER XIX

Tragic Mademoiselle Narbonne — Whom shall she marry? — Dinner at the
home of Wilhelm Lutz — The Taua, the Sorcerer — Lemoal says Nar-
bonne is a Leper — I visit the Taua — The prophecy.

AS long as I live, I shall have, as my avatar of
tragedy, Mademoiselle Narbonne. Fate had
marked her for desolation. The grim drama
of the half-caste whose spirit is riven by heredity and en-
vironment, fighting for supremacy of the soul, was en-
acted here in scenes of rare intensity and mournful fit-
ness. While I did not await its final denouement I saw
enough to stamp its pitiable acts upon my memory,
and later I learned of the last blows of an inevitable
destiny.

Not even the pitiful plight of the bone-white daugh-
ter of the drunkard, Peyral, appealed to me as did the
conspiracy of life and ungenerous men against the hap-
piness of this singular creature. Mademoiselle Nar-
bonne.

I recall the impression the first sight of her made upon
me. I was by the door of the Catholic Church, the ser-
vice half over, when she came in, and knelt at a prie-dieu
especially placed for her. Wealth had its privilege in
the house of God here as in the temple of Solomon.
But Mademoiselle Narbonne had another claim to dis-
tinction though it did not win favor with the church.
She was exotically beautiful, a distracting and fascinat-

384

From,the painting by Oscar F. Schmidt

Nakohu, Exploding Eggs

From the painting by Oscar F. Schmidt

Haabuani, the sole sculptor of Hiva-Oa

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 385

ing contrast with the ahnost savage girls who knelt in the
pews in their cotton tunics of red or white or pink.
She had the grace of a hothouse flower among these
blossoms of half-savage nature. She was an orchid
among wild roses.

Peyral was then in process of winning me into his
family, and both communicative and monitory.

"She is old Narbonne's daughter," he croaked.
"The richest person in the Marquesas, now that her
father is dead, but I would n't be her with all her money.
Me, I value my skin!"

My whole attention was upon her, and the possible
sinster meaning of his comment escaped me. Whites
blackguarded other whites so commonly in the South
Seas that one discounted or denied every judgment. I
was to understand his implication later. Mademoiselle
Narbonne had no part in the life of our valley of At-
uona, nor did she come to it other times than when she
attended the services at the Catholic church or visited
the nuns with whom she had been from childhood until
the death of her father a few months before. Upon
inheriting his vast cocoanut-groves and considerable
money she had said good-bye to her ascetic guardians
and left the convent walls to take possession of her
dead parent's house and estate. These were in the ad-
joining valley of Taaoa, and with her in the ugly Euro-
pean home built by him lived the stepmother she had
known, and the mother whom he had driven awav with
blows, years before, when he caught her in a tryst
with Song of the Nightingale.

I met her towards sunset a week later. During
that time, I had often wondered what her tem-

386 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

perament might be, and what the future would spin for
her. Many Daughters, Ghost Girl, and other all-Mar-
quesan girls were striking in their aboriginal, hatched-
carved beauty, but seemed at opposite poles to Made-
moiselle Narbonne in sophistication and elegance.
And yet at times I caught in her a glimpse of savagery,
of wilful passion and abandonment to her senses beyond
that upon the faces of these daughters of cannibals.
The key to that occasional shift into barbarity I found
in her home. Her father had been a driving, sober,
and fierce Frenchman, a native of Cayenne, in Guiana,
where the French in three hundred years have achieved
only a devil's island for convicts with cruelty and foul-
ness festering under the tricolor. Narbonne in the
Marquesas had risen from a discharged corporal of
marines to manager of the Catholic mission properties,
and, by hook and crook, owner of countless cocoanut-
trees. This child of his thirty years of banishment
from his own deadly natal land was the one treasure
he had cherished besides property. He had endured
dangers in his early career here, fought and subdued
swaggering chief and tropical nature, to erect a massive
tomb of concrete, and to leave this daughter. She was
already apathetic to his memory, and disregardful of
the advice he had given always with mingled caresses
and cuffs.

Her mother. Climber of Trees Who Was Killed and
Eaten, who had been banished from his house for her
unfaithfulness, had returned after his death to share
it with Daughter of a Piece of Tattooing, who had re-
placed her. Between the two women was no jealousy,
both enjoying the ease their hard years of serving the

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 387

Cayennais had earned them. In Chmber of Trees I
traced the source of those pagan moods which now
and then swept from the face of Barbe Narbonne the
least vestige of the mask the nuns had taught her to wear,
and let be read the undammed passion and wind-free
will of the real Marquesan woman.

"I will not be a soeur'/ she said to me. "The nuns
are dear to me, and they want me to come into the con-
vent, or to go to France for training to return here.
I am waiting to know life. I am not satisfied with the
love of the saints and of the Blessed Virgin."

"You are able to go where you please," I answered.
"You do not have to go to France as a Religious.
Paris would welcome you. Board the next schooner
for Tahiti, and you are on the way to the wide world."

Mademoiselle Narbonne made a gesture of fear.
Few Marquesans had ever gone abroad; there were
terrors in the thought. It had been taipu to leave their
island home, and, though, as far as Christianity might
work the miracle, she had in the convent been purged of
most of her mother's superstitions, she had not rid her-
self of this one.

"I would not care to go that great distance," she
said, dreamingly, "but I would like to go to Tahiti, to
see the cinema, and perhaps the celebration of the four-
teenth of July. I have for years sent to Paris for my
clothes. I have read many novels despite the sisters
forbid it. I have one here that I wish you might talk to
me about. Many nights I have sat up to read it."

She handed me a yellow paper-covered book, "Jean
et Louise," by Antonin Dusserre, a story of pastoral
and village life in Auvergne, and the unfortunate loves

388 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

of a simple peasant youth and maid. Its atmosphere
was of the clean earth, the herds, and the harvests in a
lost corner of France. Its action did not cover ten
miles, yet the hate and injustice, the desires and defeats
of its little world were drawn with such skill that they
became universal. The author, himself a man in sabots,
had breathed into his model of common clay the life
of all humanity. I had read the book, and I was eager
to hear her opinion of it; of an existence, artless as it
was, still as alien to her knowledge as ancient Greece.

"What do you think about it?" I asked. She spoke
French vividly, though with many Marquesan insets.

"Jean and Louise loved each other," she replied,
"and, because she was poor and had no money to give
a husband, his father separated them ; and Jean allowed
it. Already, Monsieur Frederick, the girl had shown
her true love for him by spending the night with him
in the hills with their sheep, and everybody knew she
would have a child. That Jean was an assassin and a
coward. Me, I would kill such a man if I loved him,
but I could not love that kind."

Barbe Narbonne's black eyes flashed with her feeling.

"I am frank with you. Monsieur, because you are a
stranger. You are not French nor Marquesan. I am
both, and I hate and love both. I hate the French for
what they have done to my mother's race, and I hate the
Marquesans for not preferring to die than to be con-
quered. I have not had a lover. I cannot find one here
that can satisfy me. If I did, he might have all my
money and land. I would want a man who could read
books, who was honest and strong, but who knew and
liked this island of Hiva-Oa, who could ride and fight.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 389

He must love me as" — she paused to weigh her compar-
ison— "as nuns love Christ, for whom they leave their
homes in France."

Father David, seeing me with Mademoiselle Nar-
bonne one day, spoke of her to me.

"We have hoped all along that Jean Narbonne's
daughter would remain with us," he said, inquisitively.
"But the sacred heart of Jesus does not call every one.
The church leaves all free to choose a vocation of ser-
vice to God or not. We know she can find happiness
only with the nuns, for there is only wickedness outside
the convent. Barbe is now a woman, and unfortu-
nately too much like her mother, who was a Magdalen.
She cannot marry a native because she cannot live in
the brush. What white can she select. There is the
governor and Bauda and Le Brunnec, all bad Catholics,
and who else?"

"There is Lutz, the big trader at Tahauku," I said.

"Lutz? No, no! He is a German, an enemy of
France, and he is a Protestant, and, besides, he has had
his own woman fourteen years. He is not married to
her, but God knows even the devil could not excuse
putting away such an old companion. What would he
want of her but her money?"

"He has some property himself."

"No, no ! It would be impossible. He is a German,
a heretic, and I tell you he has that Tahitian woman
ever since he has been here. Some day he will return
to Germany, the Germany of Martin Luther, and leave
behind any woman here. These Europeans who come
here, except the Fathers, have no consciences. When
they have made a little fortune, unless they are like

390 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Guillitoue, or Hemeury Fran9ois, who are more Cana-
que than the Canaques, they go back to marry innocent
and unsuspecting women."

I cannot imagine why I mentioned Lutz. I had never
seen him with Mademoiselle Narbonne, and she had not
sounded his name. Of course, he was the only possibly
eligible man other than the whites already enumerated.
However, such thoughts did not come by chance, for
the apostolic vicar's solicitude against him was matched
by the boisterous roarings of Commissaire Bauda, the
reincarnated musketeer. Over a Doctor Funk at his
beach house, my repeating of what Father David had
said brought from him an oath and a spluttering:

"Sacre cochon! That Lutz will go too far on
French territory. He has the best lands, most of the
trade, and is the only one who can sell liquor. Do we
not all pay tribute to him? Now, me, I have not
thought of marrying, but if that daughter of a French
corporal should look for a suitable mate, who but
Bauda? I am a soldier, a veteran of wars in Africa,
I have the medal General Devinne pinned here," — he
slapped his chest, — "and I am a Frenchman. I could
not agree to live here, but why not for her a house in
Marseilles where there are so many dark people of our
colonies? I could be there, say half the year, and the rest
of it in Paris. I would defend her against the world,
and in turn, would take my pleasure in the capital.
I do not seek it, but rather than the robber, Lutz, should
take the money to Germany, as I know he wants to do,
it might, perhaps, be arranged. And, pire alors! I
would soon send to the devil all those notions the church

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 391

has put in her httle head. A drop of absinthe,
mon vieucc? Bauda has his eyes on Lutz."

I had met Herr Lutz each time that I had gone to his
store at Tahauku, but our social relations began when
he sent me, by his cook, a Tongan, a formal invitation to
dinner. Like the young governor, this European mer-
chant, as often as the small voice of his civilization spoke
to him, cultivated the customs of his bourgeois class in
order to reassure himself of his retaining them. I have
the letter before me:

Tahauka, le 11 avril.
Dear Mr. O. Brien,

In case that you having nothing else to do, I shall be
glad to see you at Tahauku to-night. Do not bother please
about dressing, the roads are too bad. If it suits you, I invite
you to stay here over night.

With kindest regards.
Yours
WiLHELM Lutz

Certainly I had nothing else to do, except to explain
to Exploding Eggs that I would not need his services
to gather cocoanut husks for my dinner fire, and at five
o'clock to start for Tahauku. Lutz's kindly sentence
about not dressing was to me a joke, for I had to cross
both the Atuona and the Tahauku rivers, and a storm,
the day before, had made the trails — there were no roads
■ — merely muddy indications of the direction. The
Atuona stream I was able to wade with my trousers
rolled and canvas shoes in my hands, and when I reached
the Tahauku River, I found it waist-deep, and the foot-

392 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

ing uncertain. A Chinese was gathering the coarse
grass by the river's bank for Lutz's horse. It is a rare
man who does not make a slave of his inferior who by-
conquest or necessity is forced to do his will. A man 's
a man for a' that only when fighting equality or mass
strength makes him so. I myself, who abhor inequality,
proved a sinner there. Averse to getting my clothes
wet, I tried to make the Chinese understand my wish
that he take me on his back across the stream. Stu-
pidity or a dislike to play horse caused him to assume a
vacant look, the Oriental blankness which is maddening
to Occidentals. I took him by the shoulder, mounted
him, and drove him through the hundred feet of rushing
water. On the other side, I thanked him, but his slit
eyes gleamed balefully as he turned away.

The sky was racked with clouds, and they hung on the
mountain like smoky draperies. The evening air was
humid and depressing. Tahauku was a lonely, beau-
tiful place, typical of the Marquesas, isolated, gloomy,
but splendid. There were no craft in the bay except
two small cutters moored near the foot of the stone
stairs. A group of wooden buildings in an extensive
clearing lined the road that led along the cliffs, and
about it were thousands and thousands of palms, the
finest cocoanut-grove that I had ever seen in the South
Seas or Asia or India. They were planted regularly,
not crowded, but with space for roots and for air. They
had been set out two generations ago by the grandfather
of the stark daughter of Peyral, the Irish cavalry officer,
who was buried among them. Then a thousand Mar-
quesans had led there the life of their ancestors ; a score
remained.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 393

In the commodious house erected by the latter, Lutz
lived in a determined though inadequate effort to pre-
serve his German birthright. In the sitting-room in
which he welcomed me stiffly, though courteously, were
the hangings and cheap ornaments of a Prussian lower
middle-class family, tidies, mottos, and books, including
a large brass-bound Bible and the kaiser's portrait in
colors. A bitters was drunk before the meal. Ijutz
sat at the head of a longish table, and his two white
employees, a Hamburg apprentice just out, and Jensen,
a Dane, joined us. The talk was in English, and it was
curious, in this far-away island ruled by the French for
seventy years, to find my tongue, as in almost every
corner of the world, the powerful solvent of our mixed
thoughts. Lutz talked about America, through which
he had come from Germany on his way to Tahiti and
the Marquesas. He praised our strength in trade, and
derided the French and English, predicting that the
Germans would divide the South Seas commerce with
us, to the exclusion of others.

I liked Lutz, and, after the Hamburg apprentice and
the Dane had gone to play chess, he and I passed some
hours in chatting about music, books, and history. He
h-ad the solid foundation of the German schools below
the universities, and he had read constantly his German
reviews. Stolid, ambitious, swift to take a business
advantage, he lived in this aloofness from the things he
liked, in order to save enough to raise his social status
on his return to his fatherland. Just before he showed
me to my room for the night, he said :

"My old woman is going back to Tahiti. She is tired
of it here after so many years. When Captain Pincher

394 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

comes in with the Morning Star, I'm sending her back
with him. She 's getting lonesome for her kin. You
know how those Tahitians are."

I had seen but a glimpse of the "old woman" that
evening. She had not appeared openly, perhaps be-
cause of the rigid rule of Lutz, or perhaps from pique.
On the road, though, I had said good day to her, a huge
sack of a middle-aged creature, long past comeliness, but
with an engaging and strong personality. The words
of Pere David and of Bauda recurred to me before I
slept. The "old woman" had been here fourteen years,
and her sudden repatriation coincided with Made-
moiselle Narbonne's coming into her fortune, and her
restlessness for a white husband.

I sensed a conflict. Tahitian women, as well as all
these Polynesians, were seldom afflicted by sexual jeal-
ousy, the soul-ravaging curse of culture, yet they had
a pride, an overwhelming dignity of personal relations,
which often brought the same dire results. The re-
jected one many times had eaten the eva, the poisonous
fruit, or leaped to death from a cliff, though she would
have shared the house mats with her rival as a friend.
That was because they ranked mere physical alliance
as but a part of friendship between men and women,
often an unimportant beginning, in the natural way of
propertyless races.

"Lutz will nat get rid of Mana so easily." Fran9ois
Grelet, the shrewd Swiss, of Oomoa, on the island of
Fatuhiva, whom I had visited following my evening
with Lutz, had remarked to me: "She has as much
strength of will as he has. Her father was the chief
of Papenoo, in Tahiti, and Lutz had to steal her away

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 395

to bring her here. I remember her then because the
schooner, on which they were, made port in Oomoa for a
few days. Lutz was in his twenties, with a year in
Tahiti to learn the business before his firm sent him
to the Marquesas. Now, you know, for Mana to
leave her folks and her island meant a very unusual
courage and will, and she has stuck with Lutz all this
time. He is heavy-handed, too, when vexed over waste.
I don't think it will be a matter of settling with her as
to support; they all have a living at home. Also, the
Tahitians do not love the Marquesans. You will see!"

I had returned from my visit to Grelet, when, ar-
riving at night in a canoe to the stone steps at the
Tahauku landing, Tetuahunahuna, the steersman,
pointed out to me the dark bulk of a schooner swinging
at anchor.

^'Fetia Taiao" he said. It was the schooner on which
Lutz's old woman was to depart from her long-time
abode.

In the weeks that had elapsed during my stay with
Grelet, the affair of Mademoiselle Narbonne and Herr
Lutz had actually become the gossip of Atuona. The
church, the French nation, the masculinity of all the
other whites, were concerned. The suitor was said to
pay almost daily visits to the Narbonne house in Taaoa,
and I saw him galloping past my house in the after-
noons, and heard sometimes in the night, his shod horse's
hoofs on the pebbly road.

"It is terrible," Sister Serapoline said to me, when I
took her a catch of popo to the convent. "That Ger-
man is a heathen, and has been living in sin with a good
woman for years. Now he will drag down to hell the

396 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

soul of our dear Barbe. We are offering a novena to
Joan of Arc to bring her to us. She has not been in
the church or convent for a month. She would make a
wonderful sister, for she has a good heart and a true de-
votion to Joan of Arc. And, to tell the truth, her
money would be put to a divine purpose instead of go-
ing into his business here or being wasted in Germany."

"What about Mana?" I asked. "Is she satisfied to
go away?"

"That I doubt, but Mana, too, has not been inside the
church for a long time. Monsieur, I have heard that
she has fallen from the true religion, and is dealing with
sorcery. The devil is astir in Atuona now."

Song of the Nightingale was of Taaoa, the valley of
Mademoiselle Narbonne, and, as I said, had once been
the lover of her mother. Through serving a term of
imprisonment for making intoxicants of oranges and of
the juice of the flower of the cocoanut-tree, his servitude
spent as cook for the Governor allowed him leisure for
a few stolen hours with his tribe. Song was a very evil
man; of that perverse disposition which afflicts great
murderers like Gilles de Raiz or the Marquis de Sade,
and also cowardly ones who do in mean words and ac-
cursed inuendoes what the arch villains do in deeds.
He hated because he was thwarted. Before the white
regime he would have set valley against valley, and is-
land against island for mad spleen. I had seen his vile-
ness in a ludicrous light when he had put Ghost Girl's
god, the kuhu, before her as food, and had reviled her
grandmother eaten by his clan. He often made fun
of the governor to me, and of me, doubtless, to many.

Song stopped at my house one night late. He was

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 397

returning from Taaoa, and had drunk deeply of the il-
licit namu eiiata, the cocoanut brandy. He begged me
for a drink of rum, and I could ill refuse him as he had
filled my glass so frequently at the palace. He tossed
off a shell of the ardent liquor, and filled his pipe from
my tin. Then he began to talk loosely and boastfully
as was his habit. He ridiculed the churches, and their
teachings, and spoke of Gauguin, and his carven cari-
cature of the bishop. Gauguin was a "chick tippee/'
he said again, and not any more afraid of the sacrament
than was he.

"They cannot hurt you if you are tapu as I am," he
went on. "The priest talks of Satan and his red-hot
fork, and calls the taua, our one remaining priest, a
child of Satan. I have been to see that taua. He is of
my family, and, though he is very old, he does not be-
lieve in the Christian magic, but in our own. He can
do anything he wants to a Marquesan. He can make
them sick or well."

"How about a white?" I asked, negligently.

"I don't say that. The taua might work his sorcery
with some, but he does not try. Do you know whom I
saw in his hut to-night? Mana, the woman of Lutz,
the Heremani. What did she there ? Why do you go
to the mission? To get the hon Dieu to help you.
Mana went to Taaoa to ask the Marquesan Po, the god
of night, to help her. The Taua did not inform me,
but Mana said to me that if she sailed on the Fetia Taiao
to Tahiti, Ma'm'selle would never marry Lutz. The
taua would make her tapu to the Heremani, who would
be afraid to take her to his bed."

Song of the Nightingale poured himself another

398 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

drink, and, muttering an incantation in his own lan-
guage, slunk out toward the palace to hoodwink the gov-
ernor. My heart misgave me, for I had a sincere ad-
miration for Mademoiselle Narbonne, and I could not
help a kindly feeling for the Heremani, Lutz, who had
heaped favors on me. When my money had run out,
he had trusted me for months, though he had my bare
word that I expected a draft from America. My sym-
pathies were divided odiously. Lutz seemed to be mer-
cenary in his pursuit of Narbonne's daughter, and yet
might not love move him? He had been faithful to
Mana for fourteen years, according to everybody, which
was a marvel for a white man. Mana was to be pitied,
and her endeavor to circumvent her competitor not to be
despised. I could not sneer at the sorcery of the taua.
In Hawaii, I had seen a charming half-English girl,
educated and living in a cultured home, yield to a belief
in the necromancy of a Hawaiian kahuna, and die.
Her strength "ran out like water." With everything
to live for, she faded into the grave at twenty.

How was taua to aid Mana to keep the affections
of Lutz? The philter that Julia sought on the slopes
of Vesuvius to win the love of Glaucus came to mind,
but the tauas, I remembered, used no physical
means to work their spells. They depended entirely
on the mind. They studied its every intricacy, and the
power of suggestion was, I reasoned, their weapon and
medicine as it wa^ with Charcot, Freud, or Coue, the
modern tauas of Europe. In my travels and residence
of a dozen years in Asia and the South Seas, I had been
confronted 'often with phenomena inexplicable except
through control of others' minds by the thaumaturgist.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 399

Nevertheless, I had so frequently had such an opinion
shattered by a more artful and cunning material explan-
ation that at each instance I wavered as to the method
of the mage.

The schooner Morning Star, the Fetia Taiao, swung
about the Marquesan group, from Tahauku to Taiohae,
Oomoa, and Vaitahu, and after a month dropped an-
chor again near the stone steps of Lutz's magazin. Ly-
ing Bill I met at the governor's, and heard him say that
he had as passenger for Papeete the "old woman of the
Dutchman."

"I '11 sail with the first 'an'ful o' wind after we load
our copra," he said. "That '11 be in three days. Mana
is bloomin' well angry at Lutz. I 'm wonderin' if she
won't go over to Taaoa and 'ook out those purty eyes o'
Ma'm'selle. 'E oughta 'ave Mc'Enry's woman to deal
with. She 'd take a war-club to im."

Lutz had me to dinner again the night before the
schooner left, and at table were, besides Jensen and the
Hamburg apprentice, Captain Pincher and Ducat, his
mate. I did not get a glimpse of Mana, though Lutz
appeared uneasy, and occasionally went out into the
kitchen and once into the garden. The good Patzen-
Iwfer beer was plentifully served by the Tongan, and,
un-iced as it was, we drank several cases of it with
"HochsT from Lutz and the Hamburger, ''SkoaUr
from Jensen, and " 'Ere's yer bloody 'ealths!" from Ly-
ing Bill.

McHenry, I learned, was keeping a store on the
atoll of Takaroa. The rahui at Takaroa was finished,
and the divers dispersed. No great pearl had been
brought up, though Mapuhi and his tribe had had a

400 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

bountiful season. Our party broke up about midnight,
and, after the seafarers had gone down the basalt stairs
to their boat, and his clerks were in bed, Lutz and I sat
a few minutes. He, perhaps, wanted to avow his in-
tentions regarding Barbe Narbonne, to justify himself
about Mana, and to gain from me the comfort of my
concurrence in his ethics and ambitions, but his stiff
Prussian bringing-up forbade him. Instead, he spoke
of his childhood at Frankfort, his education, and his
failure to go to a University on account of poverty. At
seventeen, he had been put to work in an exporting
house in Hamburg, and had passed seven years as an un-
derling with small pay. His chance had come when
debts due the company in Tahiti called for an experi-
enced man in goods and finance to go to Papeete and
wring a settlement from the debtor. He had been able
to please his firm, and to buy out the failing concern by
Hamburg backing. In the fourteen years since, he had
been exiled in Tahauku, and despite his grinding efforts
and many voluntary privations, had not amassed much.
His mother and father in Germany were dependent on
him, and he had not been able once to visit them because
of the expense.

Maybe the Patzenhofer had mellowed my sympathies,
for I agreed with him that he was a dutiful son and a
worthy merchant, and that life had not been quite fair
to him. There was a moment when I feared he was
about to divulge his secret, but a noise outside made
him start, and after he had listened with frowning brow
a minute he said good night. He did not wish to be
alone, it was evident, for he said he would sleep on

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 401

a straw couch in my room. I heard him tossing as I
fell asleep.

From the hill of Calvary the next afternoon I saw the
Morning Star as she glided past the opposite cliffs of
Tahauku. At least the main barrier to Lutz's plans
had gone from the Marquesas. As Mademoiselle Nar-
bonne no longer came to Atuona, I had not seen her for
many Sundays, and, although I still saw Lutz on his
peregrinations, and from my Golden Bed hearkened to
the iron of his horse's heels, I had no direct nor even
fairly certain knowledge that he had won her hand.
Gradually a desire to see her, to make sure of her in-
tentions, grew in me, and I had fixed the following Sun-
day as a date for my journey to Taaoa, when a stupe-
fying incident disarranged my scheme.

Le Brunnec, the trader, my companion of the wild
cattle hunting, was ever on the outlook for information
or entertainment for me. Speaking a little English,
and by nature friendly, he now and again sent to my
cabin a stranger, with a sealed note explaining the
bearer's particular interest to me. One day, there ap-
peared an American citizen, Lemoal, a twisted, haggard
native of Paimpol, who had been an adventurer and vag-
abond all about the world. After a shell of rum, he had
boasted a while, and then when I had given him another
drop with a gesture of farewell, he had said with a leer
and a curse, that he had seen me with Mademoiselle Nar-
bonne, and that "I would better beware."

"She is a leper, that rich girl," he had said; "every-
body here knows it but you. Let the accursed German
of Tahauku get it, not you!"

402 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

He ambled down the trail like an old kobold, a spirit
of evil and filth, wagging his long beard, and sucking at
his pipe. I threw away the shell from which he had
drunk. But in my horror at what he had said, I could
not forget that Mademoiselle Narbonne had asked me
a strange question, at first meeting — whether it was true
that the Government was segregating the lepers in Ta-
hiti, and immuring them in a leprosarium. I had an-
swered in the affirmative, and thought curiosity dictated
the query. Now, with Lemoal gone, his statement and
her question rose together. Le Brunnec's note said
that Lemoal was not to be believed always. He might
have told Le Brunnec about Barbe. It could not be
true! Yet, the missionary's daughter a half a mile
away from me was a leper, and Tahiatini, Many Daugh-
ters, was suspect. The Chinese imported by the Ameri-
can, Hart, had brought the terrible disease from Canton,
and many had died from it in the Marquesas. Those
who had it were free to live as they pleased, for there
was no care of them by the authorities. But in Tahiti,
for the first time, they had taken them from their fam-
ilies, and were keeping them in a separate estate. It
was easy, with the abominable assertion of Lemoal agi-
tating me, to exaggerate or misinterpret the meaning of
Mademoiselle Narbonne's interrogation.

Did the visit of Mana to the taua have anything to do
with Lemoal's wretched slander or gossip?

I should be a fool, I reckoned, to believe Lemoal.
Even the vicar apostolic had intimated that the Protes-
tant pastor was a rake, and I knew him to be a virtuous
man. Gauguin had written in his journal that the

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 403

bishop was a "goat," and I believed him a vow-observing
celibate. Much, then, I was to credit this lifetime vil-
lain, Lemoal! Men who stayed too long in the South
Seas became natural, simple children of the sweet soil,
or decayed and rejected, rotten fruit of civilization
when unsuited to assimilation.

A week after Lemoal had poisoned my mind with his
intimation, I met Mademoiselle Narbonne at Otupotu,
the divide between the valleys of Atuona and Taaoa,
where Kahuiti, the magnificent cannibal of Taaoa, had
trapped the Mouth of God's grandfather and eaten him.
It was a precipice facing the valleys of the island of
Hiva-Oa, as it curved eastward. The brilliant stretch
of sea contrasted with dark glens in the torn, convulsed
panorama — gloomy gullies, suggestive of the old pagan
days when the Marquesans were free and strong.
Above the shadowy caverns, the mountains caught the
light of the dying sun and shone green or black under
the cloudless sky. To sit there as the day declined and
to view the tragic marvel of the advent of night was
to me a rapturous experience made sorrowful by the
final sinking of the sun. No long twilight, no roman-
tic gloaming followed the plunge of terror. I have al-
ways peopled it with afrits and leprechawns, mischiev-
ous if not malicious.

It was an hour before dusk when I arrived, and soon
I heard, far down the glade of Taaoa, the slow approach
of a horse. As the rider came in view, I waved my
hand, and the daughter of the Cayennais called to me,
with a trifle of surprise in her soft voice. She dis-
mounted and sat beside me. She had changed. In

404 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

what exactly I could not define. She was less self-cen-
tered, silent, melancholy. The savage had fled from
her face, and animation with it.

'T am half French, but all Marquesan," she had said
to me once.

She was all white this evening. The rich color had
deserted her cheeks, and in her pallor was tenderness
and longing. I was drawn to her as never before. Her
delicate hand crept into mine, and we remained hushed
a few minutes. Curiously, the words of Lemoal did not
recur. She was so perfect, so beautiful, the nightfall
so embracing, other thoughts were banished. We were
in a wild expanse, in a bed of ferns, and landward a
prodigal glory of palm and plant, vine and orchid. Na-
ture had spent its richest colors and scents, its rarest
shapes and oddest forms, for bird and insect, star and
sun, to look upon and rejoice in, and with no count of
man. In her grandest or most subtle manifestations,
nature had no thought to suit herself to man, and only
as he adapted himself to her thousand smiles and frowns,
could he remain alive upon an inconsequential planet
which was nothing with the blazing star now going down
in the west. A shudder, and man died by myriads; a
breath, and he perished. But ever nature swelled the
seeds of her unthinking creations and ornamented her
body with fresh fruitage.

Sunset and death, the heat of the day and of life, and
then the lapsing years in the descent toward the cold
grave, often stumbling and trembling, and without the
cadence and the color of the passing day ; and both end-
ing in murk and fear. These tropical islands were for
youth, when every sense was a well of enjoyment.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 405

Age must only regret not having known them sooner.

The slim hand of Barbe Narbonne, folded in mine,
excited no pleasanter thoughts than these as we sat at
Otupoto. I felt that I must have drawn them from
her, for I was happy, and the tide of life running strong
in my veins.

She broke the quiet.

"What do you think of Monsieur Lutz?" she said
suddenly.

"What do I think of Monsieur Lutz?" I parried.
"I like him. Why do you ask me that?"

"Because, Monsieur, he has asked me to marry him;
and I am thinking."

She took away her hand and smoothed her brow as
if she swept away cobwebs.

The crisis had come in which her future was at pitch
and toss. The years of childhood make most of us what
we are. The white surrounded by Polynesians in the
early years of life, learning their language first, and
having them as playmates, willy-nilly becomes more
than half Polynesian. Their tastes, dreads, supersti-
tions, pleasures, and ideals become his. Barbe Nar-
bonne had the savage blood of her mother to accentuate
her environment. The exigency that now confronted
her had kindled in her divided soul for the first time the
conflict between the white and the brown. From infancy
she had been in the convent, and now she had had a few
months of unrestraint in the society of her two mothers,
and recently of release even from the rigors of the con-
fessional and the nuns' admonitions. She had been
slipping back fast into the ways of the Marquesans;
the palm-groves had claimed her, and the jungle was

406 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

closing in upon her. The courtship of the European,
Lutz, was a challenge to her white strain, but it was
confusing, for it added a third element. Her mothers'
semi-savagery, and the convent strictness of rule were
in strife now with this offer of relief from both by the
most important white in the Marquesas except the gov-
ernor.

"Do you love him?" I asked her, and looked into her
eyes.

She cast them down a moment in confusion or medi-
tation. No longer she wore ]i)lack. That had been in
imitation of the sisters' dull dress, and she had put it
aside with the mass and the confession. Her tunic,
the simple flowing garment of the valley, was of pale
blue. Her hair was parted on her low, delicate fore-
head. Her legs were stockingless, her feet thrust into
small, brown shoes.

She raised her eyes, and replied slowly, seeking the
answer herself, maybe, at the moment.

"Monsieur Lutz is a gentleman. He says he loves
me. I must marry a white man. Who else is there?
If I stay in Taaoa, I shall become a Marquesan pure.
It is so easy."

Her manner was naive and confiding, and affected
me deeply. Where lay her chance for happiness?

Abruptly, the accusation of Lemoal rung in my ears ;
and I could hardly refrain from voicing it, in a wish
to hear her fierce denial. Never had she been more
attractive, more the pattern of the most wholesome and
fairest of her mingled parentage. I could not resist
saying :

"You know Lemoal?"

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 407

"That canaillel He worked for my father for long
and cheated him. Ah, he is a bad one! Only the last
few weeks he has been hanging about my house to
wheedle food and drink from me without return. He
is of no account. Why do you ask?"

"He says that you are ill."

"111! I?"

Her eyes closed, and her body became limp an in-
stant. A flush spread over her face.

"Lemoal said that!" she cried. "It is a lie! What
ill have I? Tuberculosis? Do I cough? Am I thin?
The miserable! It is strange. Kahuiti and two others
have asked me in the past few days if I were ill. Mon-
sieur Frederick, you are my friend. Look at me ! Am
I not well?"

She leaped to her feet. An instant she entertained
the suggestion of stripping her tunic from her, and re-
vealing her entire body for judgment. She bared her
girlish bosom, and her hands tore at the gown, and then
the convent inhibitions conquered, and she hastily cov-
ered herself.

She blushed darkly, and turned from me. The mor-
tal sin of immodesty had been the daily preachment
of the nuns.

"I must go home before the night," she said weakly.
"I will not go on to the convent. Good-by, my friend.
Pray for me!"

The dusk was already thick as she mounted her horse,
and I made out the trail to Atuona with difficulty.
Dimly, I discerned the workings of an unholy spell, or
my sympathy for her and my hatred for Lemoal con-
jured up a web of witchcraft that would affright her

408 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

suitor, and bind her to the scene of her birth. How far
this web had been spun I could only guess. I put the
matter flatly to Le Brunnec. Yes, he had had the same
story from Lemoal, and so had many others. As to
Lutz's hearing it, he did not know, but Lemoal was des-
pised by Lutz, who had quarreled with him long ago.
He would not dare to carry his tale to Tahauku, nor
would any one. The Prussian trader in his dealings
had inculcated respect and a decent fear of himself.

That evening I sent Exploding Eggs to tell Song
of the Nightingale I wanted to see him at my house.
When he came, I referred, after the customary drink
of rum, to the taua, and declared my eager wish to meet
him. I knew Kahuiti, of the valley of Taaoa, who was
still a cannibal, and I must know the last of the pagan
priests there. The cook was well pleased, and we
agreed that the first evening the governor took his din-
ner at the house of Bauda he would come for me. Le
Brunnec smiled when I let him know my plan.

"Go ahead!" he said. "I am no believer in anything
but a reasonable profit, and a merry time. You can
do nothing if you are trying to help Mademoiselle Nar-
bonne. I have seen too often the meddling white fail
with these Marquesans. They know more about many
important things than we do, even if they don't wear
shoes or eat with a fork. That old taua may be a fool,
but they don't think so, and there's the secret."

Song of the Nightingale appeared at six, a few even-
ings later, and we started on the five miles' ride to
Taaoa. I had borrowed a horse of Mouth of God, and
the prisoner-cook had no difficulty in finding one. Too
many people dreaded his bitter tongue and violent dis-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 409

position to refuse him. As we went through the pass
at Otupotu and descended the winding trail to the ad-
joining valley, the sun was below the far tops of the
green hills and was tinting all the sky in shades of soft-
est red. Clouds, edged with brilliant gold, were like
lilies in a garden of roses. The air was still and heavy
when we rode by the sulphurous springs where Mouth
of God's grandfather was slain by Kahuiti's spear. My
guide avoided the village of Taaoa, and took a path
which led by a graveyard.

On an obelisk had been inscribed half a century be-
fore:

Inei Teavi o te mata einana o Taaoa.

"Here lie the bodies of the people of Taaoa.*' An
all-inclusive tombstone, for there was no other, but, in-
stead, banana-plants, hadamiers, i^i-apples, and chile
peppers, the fiery-red pods of the latter bright against
the green and black. Behind the burial-place were two
great aoa trees, giant banyans that must have been there
when the first adventurous white cast anchor in these
waters. In the lessening light, they had a mysterious
air of life in death ; they were moribund with age, twisted
and gnarled like those century-old Mission Indians of
California who sit outside their adobe hovels and show
a thousand wrinkles on their naked bodies. Yet these
banyans were filled with life, for a hundred new shoots
were thrusting from above into the rich mold of the
earth, and presaging renewal of the dead limbs and
greater growth of the whole.

The trees covered acres, overpowering in their im-
mensity, with columns of regular and solemn symmetry.
Their ponderous buttresses were like towers, but divided

410 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

into many separate chambers where the branches had
descended from heights to become roots, and later other
columns. These trees were individuals, shattered and
worn by existence, broken by storms, the boughs arching
a hundred feet from the ground to let down grotesque
and curving branches that blindly groped for a grasp
upon the soil. They were tragedies in wood, and stirred
in me memories of old French tales of darksome wolds,
of the shadowy, dripping spinneys where the loup garou
lay in wait for the bodies and souls of his victims.

Into one of the cells of the banyan, Song of the Night-
ingale led me. As large as an average room, it was di-
vided by a tapa hanging, and from behind this came, at
his call, the taua. He had a snow-white beard and long
hair, and was very old. His body was quite covered
with tattooing, the most elaborate designs I had seen.
The candlenut ink, originally blackish-brown upon his
dark skin, had, as the result of decades of kava di-ink-
ing, turned to a verde-antique, like the patina upon an
ancient bronze.

''Moa taputoho/' said Song, with extreme seriousness.
"A sacred hermit." One who had forsaken all the com-
mon things of existence to commune with the gods.

The sorcerer's surrounding were druidic, remindful of
the Norns, who dwelt beneath the world-tree Ygdrasil,
Urd and Verdande and Skuld, and decided the fate of
men.

He gazed at me intently, raised his hand in a grave
manner, and said something to my companion which
I did not understand.

"He asks if you want anything of him," explained the
convict.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 411

"Yes, I do," I replied. "Ask him if the daughter
of Liha-liha is a leper?"

My interpreter did not put the question direct, but
I comprehended his many sentences to state my mean-
ing.

The taua pursed his lips and withdrew behind the
curtain. From his hidden fane issued the deep rum-
bling of his voice in a chant.

"He is asking the tiki, the image of the god," said
Song, fearfully.

I confess I was aware of a depression approaching
fear. It was dark in the banyan cell, and a torch of
candlenuts threw a fitful glimmer on the tapa and the
scabrous walls.

Soon above the indistinct voice of the taua was the
sound of something in the branches of the banyan, of
a flapping of wings, and a knocking.

"It is a bat," I whispered to Song.

"It is the god coming to answer," said he, cowering
with real horror.

A dreadful thing it is not to believe in the supernat-
ural when in ordinary surroundings, and yet to be sub-
ject to horrible misgivings when circumstances conjure
up visions of terror.

The uncanny noises in the tree increased, and then
the mammoth banyan shook as though an earthquake
vibrated it. Song and I were now flat on the ground,
and I repeated an invocation of my childhood :

"From the powers of Lucifer, O, Mary, deliver us!"

I said it over and over again, and it numbed my
senses during the few minutes that the pandemonium
continued.

412 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

When the taua emerged, Song turned his back upon
him, and, taking my hand, reversed me, too.

"Tapu!" he said, nervously.

''Tuituir began the moa taputoho. "Be silent!"
and in a staccato manner pronounced his divination.
His tone was orotund and dignified, and impressive of
sincerity. The words were symbolic, and of other
generations, and Song waited until he had finished to
translate them. Before he could do this, the taua said,
"^ApaeT a word of dismissal, and retired. Song seized
me by the hand as I went toward the curtain, and pulled
me away; but, for a second, I had a glimpse of a rude,
basalt altar built against the trunk of the tree, and on
it a stone image before which was a heap of fruit. I
was directed speedily away from the banyan, and not
until we had mounted our horses and galloped a hundred
feet did the convict answer my question.

"The moa taputoho said that this girl will offend the
god if she marries a haoe, a foreigner, and that she
knows already how the god will punish her if she leaves
her own valley of Taaoa."

And flinging out the words as we pounded up the hill,
it was as if the maker of moonshine was more propheti-
cal than the taua himself, or was a most interested
mouthpiece, for he put into them a malevolence missing
from the aged hermit's voice. That had been majes-
tic though forboding, while the intonation of Song of
the Nightingale was personal and harsh. Maybe he
hated Lutz as did Lemoal. Le Brunnec corroborated
my suspicion.

"Lutz found him stealing a demijohn of rum, and had
him sent to prison for several months," said the Breton.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 413

"But, granted that every one hates the German," he
continued, "you are wasting your sympathy and time.
I predict that Lutz will get Mademoiselle Narbonne,
but that the taua and his magic will snare her finally.
These people are born to be unhappy and to die under
our Christian dispensation."

So, from day to day, the rumor of her dismaying con-
dition spread, until it was known to almost everyone of
the few thousand Marquesans in all the islands, and to
all others except Lutz. His wooing had not ceased,
and when the day's work was done at Tahauku, and his
evening meal despatched, as for months, he thought
nothing of the ten slippery miles in the pitchy blackness
to and from the home of his Golden Maid. His hoof-
beats entered into my dreams, and after midnight I of-
ten awoke as they resounded on the little bridge across
the stream by the Catholic Church, Poor devil I He was
to pay dear for his brief dream.

CHAPTER XX

Holy Week — How the rum was saved during the storm — An Easter Sun-
day "Celebration" — The Governor, Commissaire Bauda and I have
a discussion — Paul Vernire, the Protestant pastor, and his Church — ■
How the girls of the valley imperilled the immortal souls of the first
missionaries — Jimmy Kekela, his family — A watch from Abraham
Lincoln.

HOLY Week passed in a riot of uncommon
amusement. Its religious significance — the
most sacred period of the year both for Cath-
olics and Protestants — was emphasized by priest and
preacher with every observance of the church, but the
lay white harked back to the mood of the ancient feast
of spring and drew the natives with them. Permits to
buy rum and wine were much sought for by the Marque-
sans, to whom drink was forbidden. The governor was
of an easy disposition, and few who had the price of a
dame-jeanne of rum or wine failed to secure it. As
Lutz, the German trader at Tahauku, the adjoining
valley, was the only importer of intoxicants, the canoes
were active between our beach of Atuona and the stone
steps at Tahauku, while others rode a-horse or walked.
On Holy Thursday an uninformed new-comer might
have pronounced the ^larquesans a busthng race with
a liquid diet.

Cloudbursts had swollen the streams, and made the
trails troughs of mud, so that when Exploding Eggs
and Mouth of God and I arrived at Atuona beach with
our empties we were glad to place the receptacles in the

414:

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 415

canoe of a fisherman for transport to Lutz's. A ges-
ture of my cupped hand to my mouth made him eager
to oblige me. We walked up the hill and past the Scal-
lamera leper-house. My friends' bare feet and skill
made it hard for me to keep up with them. Shoes are
clumsy shifts for naked soles. After a glass of Munich
beer and a pretzel with Lutz, Exploding Eggs finding
his own little canoe at the stone steps, we loaded the
demi- Johns in it and the fisherman's. I went with the
latter, and Mouth of God with my valet. The canoes
were narrow and they sank to the gunwales with the
w^eight. The tide of the swollen river tore through the
bay, and soon Mouth of God cried out that we must
take Exploding Eggs in our craft. The boy trans-
fered himself deftly, and Mouth of God's canoe shot
ahead. It became necessary for us to bail, for the water
poured in over the unprotected sides, and the boy and I
used our hats actively. Suddenly the fisherman in ag-
onizing voice announced that we could not stay afloat.
He gave no thought to our bodily plight, the racing cur-
rent, and the rapacious sharks, but laid stress on our
freight.

"Aue!" The rum will be lost!" he shouted, as the
canoe weltered deeper, and then, without ado, both he
and Exploding Eggs leaped into the brine. The canoe
staggered and rose, and, after freeing it from water,
I paddled it to shore, while the pair swam alongside,
watching the precious burden.

All night the torrent roared near my home. The big
boulders rolled do'VMi the rocky bed, groaning in travail.
The solid shot of cocoanut and breadfruit, sped by the
gale, fell on my iron roof while the furious rain was hke

4.16 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

cannister. The trees made noises as a sailing ship in a
storm, singing wildly, whistling as does the cordage,
and the crash of their fall sounding as the freed canvas
banging on the yards. Sleep was not for me, but I
smoked and wrote, and listened to the chorus of an-
gered nature until daybreak.

In the first light I saw Father David, in soutane and
surplice, attended by two barelegged acolytes, fording
the breast-high river. He held aloft the golden box con-
taining the sacred bread, and one of the acolytes carried
a bell of warning. Paro had the black leprosy, and in
his hut far up the valley, on his mat of suffering, waited
for the comfort of communion. All day three priests
moved up and down urging the people to confess and
"make their Easter."

Titihuti, the magnificently tattooed matron, went
with me to the ceremony of Honi Peka^ the Kissing of
the Crucifix. Honi really meant to rub noses or smell
each other's faces, for the Marquesans had no labial
kiss. The Catholic church was well filled, and each na-
tive in turn approached the railing of the channel, and
rubbed his nose over the desolate figure of the Savior.
It was a wonderful magic to them. The next day.
Good Friday or Venini Tapu, I asked Great Fern what
event that day commemorated.

"letu-Kirito was killed by his enemies, the tribe of
luda," he replied, as he might relate a tribal feud in
these islands.

Holy Saturday was a joyous holiday, and on Easter
Sunday the climax of the feasting and merriment came.
The communion-rail was crowded, many complying

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 417

with the church compulsion of taking the sacrament
once a year under pain of mortal sin. There was com-
pensation for celibacy and exile in Father David's ex-
pression of delight as he put into each communicant's
mouth the host. He was the leading actor in a divine
drama, the conversion by his few words of consecration
of a flour wafer into the actual body and blood of Jesus
Christ. The histrionic was mixed with and a moving
part of his exaltation.

He gave to all, including Peyral and me, the only
white attendants, a little loaf of bread he had blessed;
faraoa benetitio in Marquesan, or flour benedicto. Ah
Suey took communion, and after mass hurried to me.
The reputed murderer of Wagner, the American, was
prideful because he was the baker of the faraoa benetitio.

"How you likee that bleadee?" he asked me. "My
bake him bleadee, pliest make him holee. Bimeby me
ketchee heaven," he said in all seriousness.

Titihuti, my neighbor, joined me to walk to our
homes, and, knowing her to miss no masses on Sundays,
I asked her why she had not received the sacrament.
She said she had never partaken of it, that she had yet
to make her first communion of the Lord's supper.

"But, Titihuti," I remonstrated, "you know that you
are in danger of hell-fire. You believe in the Catholic
doctrine, you say, and despite that you disregard its
strict order."

Titihuti I realized was a heathen, still full of animist
superstitions, and I was not unprepared to hear her
answer :

"If I took the host into my mouth I would die. The

418 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

manakao would seize me. I will wait until I am about
to die, and then Pere David will give me the viaticum,
and I will go straight to aki."

The manakao is a demon, and aki is paradise. Titi-
huti was intending to take the chance that kings and
others took in the early days of Christianity, when,
being taught that baptism wiped out all sins, they kept
an alert clergyman always near them to sprinkle them
and speed them to heaven, and meanwhile they sinned
as they pleased.

By noon the entire village was chanting and dancing.
The unusual removal of the restriction against bever-
ages made Easter a pagan rout. The natives became
uninhibited, if not natural, for a few hours. Several
times the governor had had groups at his palace to give
exhibitions of their aboriginal dances, but this feast-day
he extended a general invitation to a levee. Fifty or
sixty men or women enjoyed the utmost hospitality.
The young ruler was bent on seeing their fullest expres-
sion of mirth, without any restraint of sobriety. The
noise of their songs echoed to the mission, where the
nuns prayed that some brand might be spared from the
holocaust. Swaggering chiefs and beauteous damsels
abandoned themselves to the spirit of the day. The
dances were without order. Whenever a man or woman
felt the urge they sprang to their feet and began the
tapiriata. Under the palms, upon the verandas, in the
salle a manger, in every corner of the palace and its
grounds, the people, astonished at such unwonted free-
dom and such lavish bounty, showed their appreciation
in movements of their bodies and legs. The fairest girls
surrounded the host, and with sinuous circlings and a

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 419

thousand blandishments entertained and thanked him.
The chants by the elders were of his greatness. The
young sang of passion.

From the hill near the cemetery where Guillitoue, the
anarchist, dwelt, sounded the drums. I was the es-
pecial guest there in the afternoon, and those who were
not too deep in the pool of pleasure at the palace climbed
the mountain. The orator had built a shelter of bam-
boo and cocoanut leaves, graceful and clean, and upon
its carpet of leaves we sat. Guillitoue in a loin-cloth
and black frock-coat moved about among the three
score with a dame-jeanne in each hand, and poured rum
or wine at request. Occasionally he broke into a wild
hula, grotesque as he whirled about with the wickered
bottles at arms-length. From other valleys whites and
natives had come to the koina. Thirty horses were tied
to the cemetery railing. Amiable gaiety and ludicrous
baboonery passed the afternoon.

Frederick Tissot, a storekeeper at Puamau, a Swiss
in his fifties, ten years in the Foreign Legion of Al-
giers, a worker upon the Chicago Exposition buildings
in the early nineties, and seventeen years here, spoke
of the "good time" when he worked at Zinkand's res-
taurant in San Francisco.

"I drank thirty quarts of beer a day. I was cook,
and the bartenders stood in with me for bonnes bouches.
I never tasted solid food. I had soup and booze. I
nearly died in a year, and had to leave."

He sighed at the memory of those golden days.
Later I saw him falling off his horse, and laid upon a
mat in a native house.

James Nichols, son of a Chicagoan, dignified, tall and

420 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

thin, almost white, with side-whiskers, a black cutaway,
overalls, and bare feet, a shoeless butler for all the
world, had a tale for me of his father's marrying in
Tahiti a member of the royal family of Pomare, and
of himself being born on Christmas Island.

"A wild island that," said the quasi-butler in English.
"Captain Cook discovered it when he was steering north
from Borabora on Christmas day. He stayed there a
few weeks and saw an eclipse of the sun. He took
away three hundred turtles. When I lived there they
melted cocoanuts into oil, and my father was the cooper.
Cook had planted cocoanuts there. It is an atoll, a
lonely place, and I was glad to leave. I learned Eng-
lish from my father, and maiTied a Paumotu lady. I
was in Tahiti until eight years ago, when the cyclone
wiped me out. Here I work for the mission, making
copra, and I am the tinker and tinsmith. Here 's look-
ing at you!"

Jensen, the young and engaging Dane, who will
never return to civilization, trod a measure with a
charming girl from Hanamenu.

"The clan of the Puna has left its bare paepaes all
over her valley," he said. "She is the last."

At dark the cavalcade reeled down the hill, leaving
Pierre Guillitoue sleeping beside the drum. Despite
his late fifties and his, to say the least, irregular way of
living, Pierre is strong and healthy.

Captain Cook marveled in his diary that "since the
arrival of the ship in Batavia [Java] every person be-
longing to her has been ill, except the sailmaker, who
was more than seventy years old ; yet this man got drunk
every day while we remained there."

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 421

A white man lured away the consort of Ahi, an agree-
able young man much in love. I found the lorn hus-
band screaming in grief.

"Tahiatauani, my wife, my wife!" he cried out. The
Marquesan weeps with facility. Hour after hour this
stalwart fellow let fall tears, lying on the ground in
agony. Then he rose and said no more about it.

Easter Sunday went out in a blaze of riotous glory.
I saw Ah Suey after nightfall inquiring anxiously and
angrily for his daughter. The nuns had reported to
him that she had failed to appear for vespers. That
night in the breadfruit-grove by the High Place they
enacted the old orgies of pre-Christian days. Thirty
men and women, mostly young, sang the ancient songs
and danced by the lights of lanterns, of candlenuts and
fagots, and to the sound of the booming drums.

I sat at wine the next day with Father David in the
mission-house, it was bare and ugly as all convents,
having the scant, ascetic, imcomfortable atmosphere
that monks and nuns dwell in all over the world — no or-
naments, no good pictures, no ease. Stark walls, stifi'
chairs, and the staring, rude crucifix over the door. The
apostolic vicar censured the Government severely. He
plucked his long, black beard nervously, and spoke his
feelings in the imperious manner of a mortal who holds
the keys of the kingdom of heaven, castigating fools
who would n't even learn there was a door. There was
no trace of personal pride.

"The goverrmient here and in France is unjust to
the church. We suffer from the impiety and wicked-
ness of French officials. The people of France are
right at heart, but the politicians are Antichrists. The

422 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Protestants are bad enough, but the French are Cath-
olics, or should be. This young governor here is a
veritable heathen, and has shown the people the road
to hell again, when they had hardly trod the via trita,
via tuta. He and Bauda are godless men. Monsieur,
rum is forbidden to be given to a Marquesan, yet the
valley floats in rum. I know that to get copra made
one must stretch the strict rod of the law a trifle, but
not to drunkenness, nor to dances of the devil, dances,
that, frowned upon, might be forgotten."

The governor, Commissaire Bauda, and I dined that
night on the palace veranda, and afterward we had an
animated discussion. I wrote it down verbatim:

Governor. What was it Pere David said to you,
mon ami?

I. He said that the Catholic church was badly
treated by the officials here.

Governor. Yes, he wants another great slice of
land. Oh, that church is insatiable! One of my pred-
ecessors, Grosfillez, fought them. Here is his report
in the archives : He says that, contrary to their claims
that they have caused the republic to be loved here,
that they have taught the Franch language, and have
raised the natives from savagery, from immorality and
evil manners, the facts are that they have not changed
a particle the morals of the Marquesans, that they
taught in their schools a trifling smattering of French,
and that they did not make France loved and respected,
but sought the domination of their order, the Picpus
Congregation, at the expense of the Government. This
domination they forced in the early days at the point

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 423

of the bayonet, to the sacrifice of the lives of French of-
ficers and soldiers.

Bauda. That is true here and everywhere we
French have gone. We have died to spread the power
of the church. Nom d'un chien! Six campaigns in Af-
rica, me! Et pire alors! Did not General La Grande
pin this decoration on me?

Governor. Here is the very letter of Grosfillez to
the authorities. He says that he visited the school at
Tai-o-hae, and that when he spoke to the pupils, many
of them three or four years in the school, the good sis-
ter asked permission to translate his simple words into
canaque so they could understand. Sapristi! Is that
teaching French? Is not the calendar of the church
here filled with foolishness, and almost all in canaque?
Hein? Read this :

The governor thrust into my hands the almanac writ-
ten by Father Simeon Delmas, of Tai-o-hae, and pub-
lished by the mission. It was in hektograph, neatly and
beautifully written, and contained the religious calen-
dar of the year, and sermons, admonitions, and anec-
dotes, in Marquesan, with a small minority in French;
a photograph of Monseigneur Etienne Rouchouze, for-
mer vicar apostolic to Oceanica, with praise for his ca-
reer; an anecdote of Bernadette of Lourdes, the famous
peasant girl to whom the Virgin Mary appeared, to-
gether with a list of the apparitions of the Virgin in
France, beginning in 1830, the other dates being '46,
'58, '71, and '76; a prayer to Joan of Arc, with an at-
tack on Protestantism (Porotetane) for burning her,
and something about the Duke of Guise; a stirring ar-

424 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

tide on Nero's persecution of the Christians ; an account
of the Fall of the Bastille; a comparison between Clovis,
king of France, and Napoleon; a tale of Charles V;
and a table showing that the Catholic church had estab-
lished missions in all the inhabited islands of this group
since 1858, and giving the number of children in the
schools when they were closed by the government as
clerical.

"The mountain groaned and brought forth a mouse,
a soldier," said the almanac.

"That is treason," said the governor, looking over my
shoulder, "and what has all that foolishness to do with
a dying race that does not know what it means? The
church has done nothing for these people. They are
not changed except for the worse. What has the church
done for their health? Nothing. My predecessor
wanted to stop the eating of popoi. He knew that it is
dirty, not healthful, and the promiscuous way of eating
it spreads disease. The church fought him and said
popoi was all right. France I Have we not suffered
enough by that church since the Edict of Nantes?
Since time immemorial? The church is a corporation,
selfish, scheming, always against any government it does
not control. It has been the evil genius of France.
Only Napoleon harnessed the beast and made it do his
work, but it saw his humbling. The priests tell the
canaques the Government is against the church, and
that the church is in the right; that it is the duty
of every Catholic to love the church first, because
the church is Christ. They do not preach disaffec-
tion. Peut-etre, non.. But they do not preach affec-
tion.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 425

I. But you must admit that these priests lead lives
of self-sacrifice ; that personally they gain nothing. A
meager fare and hard work. They visit the sick

Governor. Visit the sick? They do that, and they
bury the dead. But they do nothing to better condi-
tions. We teach sanitation. The priests are them-
selves either ignorant or neglectful of sanitation. Their
calendars, their tracts, their preaching, say not a word
about health, cleanliness; nothing about the body, but
all about the soul, about duties to the church. I am
here primarily to study and aid the lepers, the consump-
tives and the other sick. To try and halt the disease
which has killed thousands of unborn children, and the
tuberculosis which takes most of the Marquesans in
youth. I am a soldier, experienced in Africa, used to
leprosy, and the care of natives. In Africa the church
gives nothing to the people but its ritual. What has
the church done here after seventy years?

I. Ah, governor, that is the very question Pere
David asked me as to the Government. He says they
looked after the lepers when they had a free hand here.

Governor. Looked after them. They were not
physicians. Those men are peasants crammed with a
pitiful theology. They shall have nothing from me but
the law.

He attacked the intermezzo of "Cavalleria Rusticana"
on his flute, as Many Daughters arrived. Over her ear
was a sprig of fern, and about her neck a string of fra-
grant nuts. Her very large eyes were singularly bril-
liant.

"C'est toi qui pousse le pu me metai/* she compli-
mented and tutoyed. ''C'est toi qui na pas la pake?

426 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

It is thou who playest the flute wonderfully. It is thou
who has not any tobacco?"

*'Ah, ma fille, you are well? You will have a drop of
absinthe?" said the governor.

"With pleasure; I am as dry as the inside of an old
skull."

"But, my friend," I remonstrated with the executive,
aside. "She is a leper. Her sister is, too. Are you
not afraid? She drinks from our glasses."

"Me? I am a soldier, and a student of leprosy. It
is my hobby. It is mysterious, that disease. I watch
her closely."

If the apostolic vicar felt keenly his inability to man-
age the affairs of the village and the islands to suit his
ideas of morality and religion, so did the Protestant pas-
tor. My house was very near the mission, and it was
some days after I had arrived before I went to the dis-
senting church, half a mile across the valley. Monsieur
Paul Vernier, the Protestant pastor, had been many
years in the Marquesas. He was respected by the un-
godly. Guilhtoue hailed him as a brother, anarchist
and infidel though he was himself. Vernier alternated
between hunting souls to save and bulls to shoot, for he
was a very son of Cush, and his quest of the wild cattle
of the mountains had put him upon their horns more
than once. Salvation he held first, and he was canny
in copra, but many nights he lay -upon the tops of the
great hills when pursuit of game had led him far.

Vernier had a background, for, though born in Tahiti,
his father had been a man of culture and his mother a
charming Frenchwoman, whose home in Tahiti was
memorable to visitors. Vernier had devoted his life to

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 427

the Marquesans, and lived in this simple atmosphere
without regret for Tahiti. The apostolic vicar said
that Vernier was Antichrist made manifest in the flesh,
but that was on account of the odium theologicum,
which here was as bitter as in Worms or Geneva of old.
The spirit of Pere David was pierced by the occasional
defections from his flock caused by the proselytizing of
iVernier. Before I met him I had gone to his church
with Great Fern and Apporo. It was a box -like, red-
wood building, its interior lacking the imagery and col-
oring of the Roman congregation. The fat angels of
Brother Michel, the cherubim and seraphim in plaster
on the fagade of Father David's structure were typical
of the genius of that faith, round, smiling, and breath-
ing good will to the faithful. Protestantism was not in
accord with the palms, the flowers, and the brilliancy of
the sunlight. Thirty made up the congregation, of
whom fourteen were men, twelve women, and four chil-
dren, though the benches would seat a hundred. The
women, as in the Catholic church, wore hats, but I was
the only person shod.

Men and women sat apart. During the service, ex-
cept when they sang, no man paid any attention to the
preacher, nor did but three or four of the men. They
seemed to have no piety. The women with children
walked in and out, and four dogs coursed up and down
the aisle. No one stirred a hand or tongue at them.

Fariura, a Tahitian preacher, who replaced Vernier,
was a devout figure in blackest alpaca suit and silk tie,
but barefooted. As he stood on a platform by a deal
table and read the Bible, I saw his toes were well spread,
which in this country was like the horny hand of the

428 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

laborer, proof of industry. Climbing the coeoanut-
trees made one's toes ape one's fingers in radiation.

Tevao Kekela led the singing in a high-pitched cop-
pery voice, and those who sang with her had much the
same intonation and manner. Often the sound was like
that of -a Tyrolean yodel, and the lingering on the last
note was fantastic. They sang without animation,
rapidly, and as if repeating a lesson. In the Catholic
church the natives were assisted by the nuns. These
words were, of course, Marquesan, and I copied down
a stanza or two:

Haere noara ta matorae

Va nia i te ea tiare,

Eare te pure tei rave,

Hiamai, na roto i te,

Taehae ote merie?

O te momona rahi

O te paraue otou, ta mata noaraoe?

Momona rahi roa

O te reira eiti to te merie?

Parau mai nei letue

Etimona Peteroe tia mai nioe,

Haa noara vau i tei nei po

Areva tuai aue.

Fariura prayed melodiously and pleadingly for ten
minutes, during which Tevao Kekela's father never
raised his head but remained bowed in meditation. A
tattooed man in front of me bent double and groaned
constantly during the invocation. The others were oc-
cupied with their thoughts.

Then said Fariura, "Ma teinoa o letu-Kirito, Metia

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 429

kaoha nui ia, in the name of Jesus Christ, a good day
to all the world."

He began his hour's sermon. The discourse was
about Rukifero and his fall from Aki, and I discovered
that Rukifero was Lucifer and Aki was paradise. He
described the fight preceding the drop as much like one
of the old Marquesan battles, with bitter recriminations,
spears, clubs, and slings as weapons, and Jehovah nar-
rowly escaping Goliath's fate. In fact, the preacher
said He had to dodge a particularly well-aimed stone.
Fariura, Kekela, Terii, the catechist, and his wife, Toua,
received communion, with fervent faces, while the others
departed, lighting cigarettes on the steps, some mount-
ing horses, and the women fording the river with their
gowns rolled about their foreheads.

The preacher shook hands with me, the only white.
He was in a lather from the -heat and his unusual clothes,
and the rills of sweat coursed down his body. His pan-
tomime of the heavenly faction fight had been energetic.
I took him to my house for a swig of rum, and we had
a long chat on the activities of the demon, and ways of
circumventing his wiles.

Men like Vernier were not deceived by dry ecclesias-
ticism. They knew how little the natives were changed
from paganism, and how cold the once hot blast of
evangelism had grown. Religion was for long the
strongest tide in the affairs of the South Seas both under
the heathen and the Christian revelation. Government
was not important under Marquesan communism, for
government is mostly concerned with enforcing oppor-
tunity for acquisitive and ambitious men to gain and

430 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

hold wealth and power. In the days of the tapus gods
and devils made sacred laws and rehgious rites. The
first missionaries in the Marquesas, who sailed from
Tahiti, were young Englishmen, earnest and confident,
but they met a severe rebuff. They relate that a swarm
of women and girls swam out to their vessel and boarded
it.

*'They had nothing on," says the chronicle, "but gir-
dles of green ferns, which they generously fed to the
goats we had on board, who seemed to them very strange
beings. The goats, deprived for long of fresh food,
completely devastated the garments of the savage fe-
males, and when we had provided all the cloth we had
to cover them, we had to drive the others off the ship for
the sake of decency."

Harris, one of the English missionaries, ventured
ashore, and the next morning returned in terror, declar-
ing that nothing would induce him to remain in the ]\Iar-
quesas. He feared for his soul. He said that despite
his protestations and prayers the girls of the valley had
insisted on examining Jiim throughout the night hours
to see if he was like other humans, and that he had
to submit to excruciating intimacies of a "diabolical
inspiration." Crooks, Harris's partner, dared these
and other dangers and remained a year. Crooks said
that in Vaitahu, the valley in which Vanquished Often
and Seventh Man Who Wallows in the Mire lived,
there were deified men, called atuas, who, still in life,
wielded supernatural power over death, disease, the el-
ements, and the harvests, and who demanded human
sacrifices to appease their wrath. Crooks believed in

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 431

the supremacy of Jehovah, but, like all his cloth then,
did not doubt diabolism and the power of its professors.

For half a century American and English centers of
evangelism despatched missionaries to the Marquesas,
but all failed. The tapus were too much feared by the
natives, and the sorcerers and chiefs held this power un-
til the sailors and traders gradually broke it. They sold
guns to the chiefs, and bought or stole the stone and
wooden gods to sell to museums and collectors. They
ridiculed the temples and the tapus, consorted with the
women, and induced them for love or trinkets to sin
against their code, and they corrupted the sorcerers with
rum and gauds. They prepared the ground for the
Christian plow, but it was not until Hawaiian mis-
sionaries took the field that the harv^est was reaped.
Then it was because of a man of great and loving soul,
a man I had known, and whose descendants I met
here.

I was picking my way along the bank of a stream
when a deep and ample pool lured me to bathe in it.
I threw off my pareu and was splashing in the deli-
ciously cool water when I heard a song I had last heard
in a vaudeville theater in America. It was about a
newly-wedded pair, and the refrain declared that "all
night long he called her Snookyookums." The voice
was masculine, soft, and with the familiar intonation of
the Hawaiian educated in American English. I swam
further and saw a big brown youth, in face and figure
the counterpart of Kamehaemeha I, the first king of
Hawaii, whose gold and bronze statue stands in Hono-
lulu. He was washing a shirt, and singing in fair tune.

432 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

"Where's your Snookyookums ?" I asked by way
of introduction.

He was not surprised. Probably he heard and saw
me before I did him.

"Back on Alakea Street in Honolulu," he replied,
smilingly, "where I wish I was. You 're the per of eta
[prophet] they talk about. I been makin' copra or I'd
been see you before. My name is Jimmy Kekela, and
I was born here in that house up on the bank, but I was
sent to school in Honolulu, and I played on the Kame-
hameha High scrub team. The only foot-ball I play
now is with a cocoanut. I had a job as chauffeur for
Bob Shingle, who married a sister of the Princess Ka-
wananakoa, but my father wrote me to come back here.
I'll wring out this shirt, and we'll go up and see my
folks."

The Kekela home was a large, bare house of pine
planks from California raised a dozen feet on a stone
paepae. Unsightly and unsuitable, it was character-
istic of the architecture the white had given the Marque-
san for his own graceful and beautiful houses of hard
wood, bamboo, and thatch, of which few were left. I
wrung out my pareu, replaced it, and scrambled up the
bank with him. The house was in a cocoanut forest,
the trees huge and lofty, some growing at an amazing
angle owing to the wind shaping them when young.
They twisted like snakes, and some so approached par-
allelism that a barefooted native could walk up them
without using his hands, by the mere prehensility of his
toes and his accustomed skill. In front of the steps to
the veranda of the home were mats for the drying of
the copra, and a middle-aged man, very brown and

Tahiatini, Many Daughters, the little leper lass

f Vangois Grelet, the Swiss, ol Uomoa

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 433

stout, was turning over the halves of the cocoanut meat
to sun them all over.

*'My father," said Jimmy to me, and ''Perofeta" to
him. He shook hands gingerly in the way all people
do who are unaccustomed to that greeting, and said,
"Kaohar My answer, ''Aloha nui oeT surprised him,
for it was the Hawaiian salute. On the veranda I was
presented to the entire Kekela family, four generations.
By ones and twos they drifted from the room or the
grounds. Hannah, the widow of Habuku, was very
old, but was eager to talk.

"I am a Hawaiian," she said in that language, "and
I have been in Atuona, on this piece of land, sixty years.
My husband brought me here, and he was pastor in that
church till he died. Auwe! What things went on here
then! I have seen many men being carried by toward
the Pekia, the High Place of Atuona, for roasting and
eating. That was in war time, when they fought with
the people of Taaoa, or other valley. Kekela and my
husband with the help of God stopped that evil thing.
Matanui, a chief, came to Hawaii in a whale-ship, and
asked for people to teach his people the word of the true
God. Four Hawaiians listened to Matanui, and re-
turned with him to Hanavave, where the French priest
Father Olivier, is now. A week later a French ship
arrived with a Catholic priest. Auwe! He was angry
to find the Protestants and tried to drive them out.
They stayed with the help of the Lord, though they had
a hard time. Then Kekela and we came, and we have
seen many changes. He was a warrior, and not afraid
of anything, even the devil. There are his sons, lami
and Tamueli, and his grandsons and granddaughters

434 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

and their children. We are Hawaiian. We have no
drop of Marquesan blood in us. Did you know Aber-
ahama Linoconi?"

Hannah lifted herself from the mat on the floor, and
brought from the house a large gold watch, very heavy
and ornate, of the sort successful men bought fifty years
ago. It was inscribed to James Kekela from Abraham
Lincoln in token of his bravery and kindness in saving
the life of an American seaman, and the date was 1864.

"That watch,'* she said, "was given to Kekela by the
big chief of America. When he died he gave it to his
son, Tamueli. Tell the prophet why Aberahama Lino-
coni gave it to your grandfather, lami !"

Jimmy, the former chauffeur, tried to persuade his
uncle, Samuel, a missionary on another island, to tell
the story, but finally himself narrated it in English.

"Grandfather Kekela was at Puamau, across this is-
land, when he got this watch. He had been at Puamau
some years and teachin' people stop fightin' an' go
church, when a whale-ship come in from Peru, an' shot
up the town. The Peru men killed a lot of Marque-
sans, and stole plenty of them to work in the mines like
slave. They had guns an' the poor Puamau native only
spear and club, so that got away with it good an' strong.
Well, nex' year come American whale-ship, an' the mate
come up the valley to ketch girl. He saw girl he love
an' chase her up the valley. The Puamau people let
him go, an' ask him go further. Then they tie him up
and beat him like the Peru people beat them, and then
they got the oven ready to cook him. The chief of Pua-
mau come tell my grandfather what they goin' do, an'
he was some sore. He put on his Simday clothes he

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 435

bring from Hawaii, an' high collar an* white necktie,
an' he go start something. He was young and not
afraid of all hell. The mate was tied in a straw house,
an' everybody 'roun' was getting paralyzed with namu
enata — you know that cocoanut booze that is rougher
than sandpaper gin in Hawaii.

"They were scarin' the mate almost to death when
grandfather come along. The mate could see the umu
heatin' up, and the stones bein' turned over on which
he was goin' to be cooked. Grandfather went in the
hut. The mate was lyin' on his back with his hands an'
feet tied with a purau rope, an' his face was as white
as a shirt. I remember grandfather used to say how
white his face was. Kekela knelt down an' prayed for
the mate, an' he prayed that the chief would give him
his life. He prayed an' prayed, and the chief listen an*
say nothin'. 'Long toward mornin' the chief could n't
hold out no longer, an' said if grandfather would give
him the whale-boat he brought from Hawaii, his gun,
an' his black coat, he would let him go. Grandfather
handed them all over, an' took the mate to our house,
and cured his wounds, and finally got him on a boat an'
away. It was no cinch, for the American ship had
sailed away, and he had to keep the mate till another
ship came. Many time the young men of Puamau tried
to get the mate, to eat him, an' when another ship ar-
rived, an' Kekela put the mate on board, they followed
in their canoes to gi'ab him. They pretty near were
killin' grandfather for what he did.

"The mate must have told the Pres'ent of United
States about his trouble here, for grandfather got a bag
of money, this watch, a new whaleboat, an' a fine black

486 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

coat brought him by an American ship with a letter
from Mr. Lincohi. Father wrote back to Pres'ent Lin-
coln in Hawaiian, an' thank him proper."

"He must have lived to be a very old man," I said,
"because I was in Kawaiahao Church in Honolulu when
he preached. He was asking for money for this church,
and he took out the watch Lincoln gave him, and banged
it on the pupit so that we thought he would break it.
He was greatly excited. I wrote a piece about his ser-
mon in the Honolulu paper and it was printed in the
Nupepa Kukoa, the Hawaiian edition of the Hono-
lulu Advertiser''

Samuel Kekela leaped to his feet and rushed into
the house, from which he came with a yellowed copy of
the Nupepa Kukoa, containing the article, with Ke-
kela's picture. To my own astonishment I read that
the fourteen Hawaiians of the Kekela families who had
accompanied the aged pioneer to Honolulu had jour-
neyed in a schooner captained by my own shipmate.
Lying Bill. I had seen the schooner in Honolulu Har-
bor.

Here was a remarkable group, a separate and alien
sept, which, though living since before Lincoln's Presi-
dency in this wild archipelago, had preserved their Ha-
waiian inheritances and customs almost intact. This
had been due to the initial impetus given them by their
ancestor, and it had now ceased to animate them, so that
they were declining into commonplace and dull copra
makers, with but a tiny spark of the flame of piety that
had lighted the soul of their progenitor.

"I am not the man my father was," said John, the
father of Jimmy. "I am an American because I am a

ATOLLS OF TitE SUN 437

Hawaiian citizen. My father had us all sent to Ha-
waii to be educated and to marry."

The old Kekela had been a patriarch in Israel. Not
alone had he lessened cannibalism and the rigidity of
the tapu in the "great, cannibal isle of Hiva-Oa," but
he had instructed them in foreign ways. He had ac-
quired lands, and now this family was the richest in the
Marquesas. Only the Catholic mission owned more
acres. They were proud, and convinced that they were
anointed of the Lord, though Jimmy, being young, had
no interest at all in religion. If Kekela the first had
not been a missionary he would have been a chief or a
capitalist. Hannah showed me the photographs of the
kings and queen of Hawaii since Kamehameha IV with
their signatures and affectionate words for Kekela.
Now they were disintegrating, and another generation
would find them as undone as the Marquesans. The
contempt of government, trader, and casual white for
all religion had affected them, who for two generations
had been Christian aristocrats and leaders among a mass
of commoners and admiring followers. The ten com-
mandments were as dead as the tapiis, and the church
had become here what it is in America, a social and en-
tertainment focus for people bored by life. The Ger-
man philosopher has said that the apparent problem of
all religions was to combat a certain weariness produced
by various causes which are epidemic. Christianity for
civilized people may be "a great storehouse of ingenuous
sedatives, with which deep depression, leaden languor,
and sullen sadness of the physiologically depressed
might be relieved," but for the Marquesans it had been
a narcotic, perhaps easing them into the grave dug by

438 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

the new dispensation brought by civilized outsiders.
The gentle Jesus had been betrayed by the culture that
had developed in his name, but which had no relation
to his teaching or example. These good-willed Keke-
las were as feeble to arrest the decay of soul and body
of their charges as was the excellent Pastor Vernier or
the self-sacrificing Father David. In the dance at the
governor's the flocks, at least, had an expression, cor-
rupted as it was, of their desire for pleasure and for-
getfulness of the stupid present.

CHAPTER XXI

Paul Gauguin, the famous French-Peruvian artist — a rebel against
the society that rejected him while he lived, and now cherishes his
paintings.

ABOVE the village of Atuona was the hill of Cal-
vary, as the French named the Catholic ceme-
tery. Often in the late afternoon I went there
to watch the sun go down behind the peak of Temetiu,
and to muse over what might come into my mind. My
first visit had been with Charles Le Moine, the school
teacher of Vaitahu, and the only painter living in the
Marquesas. We had gone to search for the grave of
Paul Gauguin, the famous French-Peruvian artist, and
had found no trace of it.

"That woman who swore to keep it right has buried
another lover since," said Le Moine, cynically.

A small man, with a long French nose, a red, pointed
beard and mustache, twinkling blue eyes, and dressed
in faded denim, Le Moine, though many years in these
archipelagos, was out of the Latin Quarter. Two front
teeth missing, he had a childish air; one thought his
whiskers might be a boy's joke. He was a hlageur
about life, but he was very serious about painting, and
utterly without thought of else.

"I work at anything the Go^^ernment will give me
to earn leisure and a bare living so as to paint here,"
he said.

Alas! Le Moine was not a great artist. His pic-

439

440 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

tures were so-so. Doubtless the example and fame of
Gauguin inspired him to achieve. We had often talked
of him.

"When he died," said Le Moine, "I was here, and I
attended the night services in the church over his re-
mains. The chief gendarme or agent special, like
Bauda now, took charge of his house and effects. You
may imagine the care he took when I tell you that Gau-
guin was under sentence to prison for reviling the gen-
darme and the law. He auctioned off everything with
a jest, and made fun of the dead man and his work.
He said to us: 'Gauguin is dead. He leaves many
debts, and nothing here to pay for them, but a few paint-
ings without value. He was a decadent painter.'
Gauguin would have expected that. I had only a few
sous, but was able to buy what I needed most, his
brushes and palette. Peyral got 'Niagara Falls,' as the
^ ^ gendarme shouted its name. It was Gauguin's last pic-

V/. - ^ ture; a Brittany village in winter, snow everywhere, a
gA./y^'*^ few houses and trees, and the dusk in blue and red and

J violet tones. He made that, mon ami, when he was dy-
^ -^ * ing. It was his reaching back to his old painting
ground in his last thoughts. I think Peyral sold it to
^ ^ . Polonsky, the Tahitian banker, who was here looking

jjo ■'■ to buy anything of Gauguin. Lutz got his cane, carved

,^^>' by Gauguin, and the other things went for a trifle, in-
'' eluding the house, which was torn down for the lumber,
because nobody here wanted a studio. I admired Gau-
guin, but he had nothing to do with me because I was
white and of the Government. He was absorbed with
the Marquesans, and to them he was all kindness and
generosity. He was the simplest educated white man in

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 441

his needs I have ever known, and I myself, as you know,
have few demands. Gauguin wanted drink, paint and
canvas. He always kept a bottle of absinthe in a little
pool by his house."

Lying Bill had said that Gauguin was a seaman.

" 'Is 'ands was as tough an' rough as mine," said Cap-
tain Pincher. " 'E 'd been to sea on merchant ships an'
in the French navy. Gauguin was no bloomin' pimp
like most artists. 'E knew every rope in the schooner,
an' could reef an' steer. 'E looked like a Spaniard, an'
'e could drink like a Yarmouth bloater. Many a time
I brought 'im absinthe to Atuona on my ship. But 'e
was a 'ard worker. I used to sit with 'im sometimes
when 'e 'd play 'is organ. 'E wasn't bad at it, either.
Women did n't care much for 'im. 'E never made
much of them, but 'e 'ad plenty. A bleedin' queer frog,
'e was."

"He was a chic type" said Song of the Nightingale,
the prisoner-cook of the palace. Song said chick tip-
pee, but he meant that Gauguin was a good man to
know. "When there was a big storm here, and all the
land of the man next to him was washed away by the
river, Gauguin gave him a piece. Ea! He gave him,
too, a paper which made the land his. The family has
it to-day, and they are my relatives."

Pastor Vernier, Father David, Peyral, Flag, Song
of the Nightingale, and others had spoken of Gauguin,
but his name never came to their lips spontaneously.
Being dead ten years, he was as never having been, to
the Marquesans. To Vernier his note was of small in-
terest and to the vicar apostolic an annoyance. In these
seas when a man was dead he was forgotten unless he

442 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

had left an estate, or his ghost walked. The Marque-
san and the Paumotuan held the dead in great fear at
times, but not in reverence. The spirit of the artist had
remained with his body, and that was lost in the matted
earth of the graveyard on the height. His dust had
long ago united with the cocoanut-palms that rose from
his burial-place on that lonely hill. The purple blos-
soms of the pahue vine, which crawled over his un-
marked grave and sent its shoots to search the heart of
the unhappiest of men, were the only tribute ever laid
there. The woman who had vowed to keep its formal
outline unbroken and to bedew it with her tears smiled
at my recalling it. Gauguin here was a name's faint
echo, but in America and Europe they bartered for
Gauguin's pictures as if they were of gold, schools of
imitators and emulators were active, and novelists and
critics seized upon his utterances and deeds, his savage
ways and maddening canvases, to fit fictional characters
to them, or to tell over and over again the mystifying
story of his career and his work. Here, among the fas-
cinating scenes nature fashions for those who love its
extravagances, he died in poverty. More is paid to-day
for one of his pictures than he earned in a lifetime.

The man Gauguin persisted as a legend wherever
painting or Polynesia was much discussed. There was
in him a seed of anarchism, a harking back to the abso-
lute freedom of the individual, a fierce hatred of the
overlordship of money and fixed decency, of comme il
faut, which lightened the eye of many conforming peo-
ple, as a glimpse of light through a distant door in a
dark tunnel. In this stark, brooding, wounded insur-
recto, this child of France and the ardent tropic of

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 443

South America, each of us who had suffered, and re-
belled, if only in our hearts, gained a vicarious expres-
sion, and an outlet for our atavistic and fearful desires.
Time that had led man from the anthropoid to the ar-
tist had betrayed Gauguin. He had yielded to the im-
pulse we all feel at times, and had tried to escape from
the cage formed by heredity, habits, and the thoughts
of his countrymen. Space he had conquered, and in
these wilds was hidden from the eyes of civilization, but
time he could not blot out, for he was of his age, and even
its leader in the evolution of painting. The savage in
man he let take control of himself, or willed it to be, and
was spoiled by the inexorable grasp upon him of his
forebears and his decades of Europe. He was satur-
ated with the ennui of the West. He wanted to be
primitive, and had to use morphine, absinthe, and or-
gan music to remain in the East. He asserted that
he wanted to be "wise and a barbarian." He was a
great artist but no barbarian.

He wrote: "Civihzation is falling from me little
by little. Under the continual contact with pebbles my
feet have become hardened and used to the ground.
My body, almost constantly nude, no longer suffers
from the sun. I am beginning to think simply, to feel
very little hatred for my neighbor — rather, to love him.
All the joys, animal and human, are mine. I have es-
caped everything that is artificial, conventional, cus-
tomary. I am entering into the truth, into nature. In
the certitude of a succession of days like this present
one, equally free and beautiful, peace descends on me."

He never knew peace. His was a tortured soul and
body, torn by conflicting desires, and absence of the

444 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

fame and slight fortune he craved. He had courage
and stoicism. In scores of letters to his friend Mont-
fried he complained of his fate, of his desperate poverty,
his lack of painting materials, the bourgeois whites
about him, and his lack of recognition in Europe. He
wanted to return there, and JNIontfried had to tell him
in plain terms that he would destroy by his presence in
Paris any sale there was for his pictures. Gauguin
realized that, for it carried out his own motto, one that
he had put over his door: "Be mysterious and you
will be happy I"

Gauguin was like all cultivated whites who go to the
South Seas after manhood, hke me, unfitted by the poi-
sons of civilization to survive in a simple, semi-savage
environment. We demand the toxins of our machine
bringing-up and racial ideals, as the addict his drug.
Gauguin was already forty-three when he stepped
ashore at Tahiti, and fifty-three when he came to the
Marquesas, but at least he had put into a proper milieu
his portrait of himself made when he said to his oppo-
nents, in Paris : "I am a savage. Every human work is
a revelation of the individual. All I have learned from
others has been an impediment to me. I know little,
but what I do know is my own."

Paul Gauguin was dead at fifty-five. An ancestor
was a centenarian. The family was famed in its envi-
ronment for its vitality, but Paul wasted his energy
in bitter blows against the steel shield of society, and
spoiled his body with the vices of both savage and civi-
lized.

"He was smiling when I saw him dead," said Mouth
of God, who had served him for the love of him.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 445

That smile was his ever-brave defiance of life, but,
too, a thought for France — for the France he adored,
and which he dreamed of so often though it had rejected
him. That last picture, painted in these humid Mar-
quesas in his house set in a grove of cocoanut-palms and
breadfruit-trees, was of Brittany and was a snow scene.
He did not defeat his enemy, but sank into his last sleep
content to go because the struggle had become too an-
guishing. He knew he was beaten, but he flew no flag of
surrender. He passed alone, with only the smile as a
token of his final moment of consciousness, and the emo-
tion that stirred his soul.

As was said best by his friend and biographer, Charles
Morice, Gauguin was one of the most necessary artists
of the nineteenth century. His name now signified a
distinctive conception of the natm-e of art, a certain
spirit of creation and mastery of strange technique, and
a revolt against established standards and methods
which constituted an opposition to the accepted thoughts
and morals of art — if not a school, at least a distinct
class of graphic achievement. As the French say, it
was a categoric. For the conservatives, the regular
painters and critics, he had created un frisson nouvcau,
a new shudder in art, as Hugo said Baudelaire had in
literature.

Gauguin was not a distinguished writer. "Noa ISToa"
was written by his friend, Morice, in Paris, from letters
to him. The painter commented upon the book that it
was "not the result of an ordinary collaboration, that is,
of two authors working in common, but that I had the
idea, speaking for non-civilized people, to contrast their
characters with ours, and I had enough originality to

446 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

write it simply, just like a savage, and to ask Morice, for
his part, to put it in civilized words." His "Intimate
Journals" are actually revelatory of the man, but "Noa
Noa" is a tropical dish seasoned with sophistries, though
beautiful, and, to a large degree, true. It is a poetical
interpretation by Morice, a Parisian, of Gauguin's ad-
ventures in Tahiti.

Gauguin spent little time in writing. Every fiber of
his weakening body and every lucubration of his mind
were bent on expressing himself in painting, or in clay
or wood, but he thought clearly and individualistically,
and wrote forcefully and with wit. He was not a
poet, nor had he felicity of language.

I revived Gauguin's memory in the South Seas.
Having known about him in Tahiti, I was interested to
find out all I could of his brief life and sorrowful death
here. Lovaina, the best known woman in the South
Seas, at whose Hotel Tiare I lived in Tahiti, spoke of
Gauguin one day. She had heard a whisper between
Temanu and Taata-Mata, two of her handmaids, that I
might leave the Tiare, her impossible auherge in Pa-
peete, to lodge with Madame Charbonnier or Madame
Fanny.

Lovaina, three quarters American by blood, but all
Tahitian in looks, language, and heart, was not assured
that her impossible hotel was the only possible one
within thousands of miles, as it was really, and she said :

"Berina, I think more better you go see that damn
house before you make one bargain. You know what
Gauguin say. He have room with Madame Charbon-
nier, and eve'y day, some time night, she come make

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 447

peep his place. He had glass door between that room
for him and for other man, and he say one day to me
(I drink one Pernod with him) :

" 'That sacre French women she make peep me. I
beelong myself. I make one damn pictu'e stop that.'

"You go look for yourse'f to-day. You see that door.
Gauguin say he make ugly so nobody make look."

"That Gauguin was a very happy man in my maison,"
said Madame Charbonnier in French to me. "He and
I had but one disagreement. One day a native woman
accompanied him here. I knew he must have models,
but I want no hussies in my house. I am a respectable
citizeness of France. I looked through the glass door,
and I warned him, though he had paid in advance, I
must preserve my reputation. O, la la la! He
painted that mauvaise picture of that very Tahitian girl
on my door to spite me. La voila! Is it not affright-
ing?"

It was a double-panelled door, and a separate paint-
ing covered each; to the left a seated girl wearing a
pareu and to the right a girl playing the vivo, the Ta-
hitian flute, a female figure standing, and the white rab-
bit Gauguin introduced afterward into many paintings.
I might have bought the door of Madame Charbonnier
or somewhat similar windows and doors in another house
occupied by Gauguin for a hundred francs or perhaps
two or three times that much. At any rate, for an in-
considerable sum, because they had no value as ex-
amples of the painter's ability nor were they intrinsi-
cally beautiful or attractive. Stephen HawefS, a tal-
ented Enghsh artist, who was there with me, bought the

us ATOLLS OF THE SUN

door, and W. Somerset Maugham a window, which I
saw afterward in a New York gallery for sale at some
thousands of dollars.

I was mentioning Gauguin's name at Mataiea, in
Tahiti, at the house of the chief of that district, Tetu-
anui, a gentleman of charming manners and great
knowledge of things Tahitian. Rupert Brooke and I
had walked to the ancient maraiy or temple, and the
poet and I had tried to rebuild the ruin in our imagi-
nation. I had seen marais better preserved, and I had
talked with many who had studied their formation and
history.

This one, very famous in the annals of Tahiti, was not
far from Tetuanui's home, and on it had been enacted
strange and bloody sacrifices in the days of heathenry.
It was on the sea-shore, and, indeed, much of it had
fallen into the water, or the surf had encroached upon
the land. We had spent some hours about it, and had
wondered about the people who had made it their cathe-
dral a few score years ago. Here we were living with
their grandchildren. The father of the chief's father
might have participated in the ceremonies there, might
have seen the king accept and eat the eye of a victim,
or feign to do so, for cannibalism had long passed in
Tahiti even a century ago.

Walking back to Mataiea, we met the chief return-
ing from his day's labor directing the repair of
roads, for, though a chevalier of the Legion of Honor,
a former warrior for the French against tribes of other
islands, •Tetuanui had small means, and was forced to
be a civil servant of the conquerers.

"We have been to see the marai" said Brooke.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 449

''Oia mau anei teie?'' replied Tetuanui. "Is that so?
I have not been there for a long time. The last time
was with that white painter Gauguin. He lived near
here, and one day I spoke of the marai, and he asked
me to show it to him. We walked down there together,
but he was disappointed that it was so broken down."

Once again the chevalier gave me a glimpse of the
barbarian. He and his amiable wife took occasional
boarders, and there were two San Francisco salesgirls
there for a week. They were shocked at our bathing
nude in the lagoon in front of the house, although we
wore loin-cloths to walk to the beach and back. They
complained to the chief, who was astonished, for Brooke
was strikingly handsome, and the Tahitian girls were
open in their praise of his beauty.

"They should have seen that Gauguin," said Tet-
uanui, as he begged our pardon for telling their indig-
nation. "He was always semi-nude and often nude.
He became as brown as a Tahitian in a few months.
He liked to lie in the sun, and I have seen him at the
hottest part of the day sitting at his easel. You know,
he had a wife here in the way that the whites take our
women, and one day he and she were in swimming, and
came out on the road before putting on parens. A good
missionary complained of them — it was not quite
proper, truly, and the gendarme warned both of them.
Gauguin was furious, for he .hated the gendarmes before
that."

Ten years were gone since Gauguin, having fled from
Tahiti and a fate that he could not escape, had expired
here in Atuona in a singular though anguished resigna-
tion. His atelier and dwelling had been just below

450 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Peyral's on the opposite side of the road I trod so often
to and from the beach, and Peyral had known him as
well as such a man can know a master. Mouth of God,
the husband of Malicious Gossip, saw Gauguin dead
in his house, and it was he who told me that Kahuiti,
the recent cannibal chief, had a tiki made by Gauguin.
I went to Taaoa, past the Stinking Springs and the
house of Mademoiselle Narbonne, to see it.

I remembered that James HLuneker .said,"In the huts
of the natives where cataloguing ceases, many pictures
may be found."

Kahuiti had one, and dear to the heart of that re-
markable anthropophagus. It was a striking figure of
an old god, and a couple of feet square, and in the
painter's most characteristic style.

When I asked him to sell it to me, he opened wide
those large brown eyes which had looked a hundred
times at the advancing spear, and had watched the
cooking of his slain enemy. He said nothing but the
words, "^Tiki hoa pit! An image by my dear friend!"

I smoked a pipe with him, and went back to Atuona
thoughtful.

Gauguin made many enemies, but he kept his friends
even in death.

''Toujours tout a vous de coeur'' he had signed his
letters to his one or two friends, with rare sincerity.

Gauguin had deserted Tahiti because of his frequent
quarrels with the representatives of the Government
there, and with the church. He precipitated a similar
situation in Atuona almost immediately. In his "In-
timate Journals," he tells of it:

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 451

The first news that reached me on my arrival at Atuona was
that there was no land to be bought or sold, except at the mis-
sion. . . . Even so, as the bishop was away, I should have to
wait a month. My trunks and a shipment of building lumber
waited on the beach. During this month, as you can well imag-
ine, I went to mass every Sunday, forced as I was to play the
role of a good Catholic and a railer against the Protestants.
My reputation was made, and His reverence, without suspecting
my hypocrisy, was quite willing (since it was I) to sell me a
small plot of ground filled with pebbles and underbrush for 650
francs. I set to work courageously, and, thanks once more
to some men recommended by the bishop, I was soon settled.

Hypocrisy has its good points. When my hut was finished,
I no longer thought of making war on the Protestant pastor,
who was a well-brought-up young man with a liberal mind
besides ; nor did I think any longer of going to church. A
chicken had come along, and war had begun again. When I
say a chicken I am modest, for all the chickens had arrived, and
without any invitation. His Reverence is a regular goat, while
I am a tough old cock and fairly well-seasoned. If I said the
goat began it, I should be telling the truth. To want to con-
demn me to a vow of chastity! That's a little too much;
nothing like that, Lizette !

To cut two superb pieces of rose-wood and carve them after
the Marquesan fashion was child's play for me. One of them
represented a homed devil (the bishop), the other a charming
woman with flowers in her hair. It was enough to name her
Therese for every one without exception, even the school-chil-
dren, to see in it an allusion to this celebrated love affair.
Even if this is all a myth, still it was not I who started it.

Pastor Vernier told me of his acquaintance with
Gauguin and of his last days. Vernier acknowledged

452 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

that he had never been his friend. I would have known
that, for to Gauguin, professors of theology were as ab-
surd and abhorrent as he to them.

Gauguin's residence was a half mile away from Ver-
nier's. Two years he had lived there after ten in
Tahiti. Always disappointment, always bodily suffer-
ing, and the reaction from alcohol and drugs ; an invalid
a dozen years.

"He was a savage, but a charming man," said Pastor
Vernier to me. "I could have nothing to say to him,
ordinarily, and he did not seek me out. He had no re-
spect for the law and less for the bon Dieu. The Cath-
olics especially he quarreled with, for he made a cari-
cature of the Bishop, and of a native woman, about
whom there was a current scandal. It was common
talk, and the natives laughed uproariously, which
angered the bishop greatly. It was unfit to be seen by
a savage. You can imagine it!

"I had not seen him for some time when I had a note
from Gauguin, scrawled on a piece of wrapping-paper.
It said:

"Will it be asking too much for you to come to see me?
My sight is all of a sudden leaving me. I am very ill, and can-
not move."

"I went down the trail to his house, and found Mouth
of God with him, as also the old Tioka. His legs were
terribly ulcerated. He had on a red loin-cloth and a
green tam-o'-shanter cap. His skin was as red as fire
from the eczema he had long been afflicted with, and the
pain must have been very severe. He shut his lips tight
at moments, but he did not groan. He talked of art for

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 453

an hour or two, passionately advocating his ideas, and
without reference to his approaching end. I think he
sent for me for conversation and no more. It was then
he presented me with books and his portrait of Mal-
larme.

"We chatted long and I was filled with admiration
for the courage of Gauguin and his prepossession with
painting, at the expense of his doleur. About a fort-
night later I went back when Tioka summoned me, and
found him worse, but still forgetful of everything else
but his art. It was the eighth of May Tioka came
again. Gauguin now was in agony. He had had pe-
riods of unconsciousness. He must have known his
danger, but he talked fitfully of Flaubert and of Poe,
of 'Salammbo' and of 'Nevermore.' When I said adieu
he was praising Poe as the greatest poet in English.

"A few hours afterward I heard the shouts of the
natives that Gauguin was dead.

'' 'Haoe mate!' they called to me. 'The white is dead.'

"I found Gauguin on his cot, one leg hanging down
to the floor. Tioka was urging him in Marquesan to
speak, and was rubbing his chest. I took his arms and
tried to cause respiration, but in vain. He was already
beginning to grow cold. Do you know. Monsieur
Americain, that the vicar went down there at night be-
fore I was aware of it, and, though Gauguin despised
him and his superstitions, forced an entrance and, had
the body carried to the Catholic Cemetery, with mass,
candles, and other mummeries."

The good Vicar, Pere David, had another tale. He
told it over our wine at the mission. My House of the
Golden Bed was but the toss of a mango away, and we

454 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

often discussed the fathers, especially Anthony, Jerome,
and Francis of Assisi.

"It is not true," he said, plucking his long, black
beard nervously, as was his wont. "Gauguin was born
in the church. Did he not tell me he was the descendant
of a Borgia? He was at the Jesuits' school.
The devil got hold of him early. Ah, that
France is punished for its breaking of the Con-
cordat. Napoleon knew what was needed. Gauguin
did make much trouble here. I do not care what he did
to the Government. That Government is usually athe-
ist. But he made an obscene image of the bishop.
He never entered our mission, after he had secured
his land from us, and labor to build his house. He
derided the sacred things of religion, and when he came
to die he sent for the Protestant. I had hoped always
that he would recant his atheism and change his ways.
He was immoral, but then so is nearly everybody here
except the fathers, and the nuns. That very pastor —
Non! I guard my secret. Mais, it is not a secret, for
all the world knows. N'importe! I close my lips."

He was determined to be charitable, but, as for me,
I knew the charge well, and had disproved it by personal
research. John Kekela, the Hawaiian, had sworn on
the Bible given his father by Kalakaua, the last Ha-
waiian king, that it was a lie, and Kekela would know
for sure, and would not kiss the book falsely for feai*
of death or, at least, the dreaded fefe, which makes one's
legs as big as those of an elephant.

"But despite the antagonism of Gauguin to the
church and his immorality, you took charge of his body
and gave him a Catholic funeral," I said.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 455

"Who am I to judge the soul of a man?" replied the
vicar, deprecatingly, his right hand lifted in appeal.
"He was alone in his last moments. Doubtless the
Holy Virgin or perhaps even the patron of the Mar-
quesas, the watchful Joan of Arc, aided him. Each one
has his guardian angel who never deserts him. When
the shadows of death darken the room, then does that
angel fight with the demons for the soul of his charge.
I learned that Gauguin was dead from the catechist.
Daniel Vaimai. It was then evening of the day he had
died, and I had been ministering to a sick w^oman in
Hanamate, an hour's ride away. I met Daniel Vaimai
at the cross-roads and he informed me of Gauguin's
death. I felt deeply sorry that he had not had the holy
oils in his extremity, and had not received absolution
after confession, but the devil is like a roaring lion of
Afrique, seeking what he may devour."

"He is especially active here," I ventured, interested
as I am in all such vital matters. The vicar, who had
been talking animatedly and gazing at an invisible con-
gregation, fixed his eyes on me.

"Here in the Marquesas and wherever whites are,"
he replied acridly. "But to return to Gauguin! I
immediately arranged for the interment of the dead man
the next morning. In this climate decay follows death
fast. As a matter of fact, some of us, including two
of the Freres de la doctrine chretienne, had hastened to
Gauguin's house when his death was announced the day
before. They had planned his funeral for two o'clock
the next morning, but we made it a trifle earlier, and
removed him to the church of Atuona shortly after one.
There we had mass for the dead, and did the poor

456 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

cadavre all honor, or, rather, we thought of the soul
that had fled to its punishment or reward. We carried
the body to Calvary and put it in the earth."

"I find no stone nor any mark at all of his grave,"
I said.

''Peut-etre, that may well be," said the vicar calmly.
"I do not know if one was placed. He had no kin here
nor intimates other than natives."

"But Pastor Vernier says Gauguin had asked long
ago to be buried with civil rites only, and that he had
wanted to assist in them. He says that you deceived
him as to the hour of removal to the church, and that
when he arrived at two o'clock Gauguin was already in
the mission which he could not enter."

The vicar shrugged his shoulders.

"I cannot enter into a controversy as to what Vernier
says. Gauguin was of Catholic parentage. Have I
not said he claimed to be a descendant of a Borgia, and
Borgias were popes? What more or less could the
church have done? Stern as that Mother may be to
wayward children in life, she spares no effort even in
death to comfort those remaining, and to help by prayer
and ceremony the spirit that wrestles with purgatory.
We ever give the benefit of the doubt. A second be-
fore he succumbed to that heart stroke, or the laudanum,
Gauguin may have asked for forgiveness. Only God
knows that, and in His infinite mercy He may have be-
stowed on him that final penitence. You will not for-
get the thief on Calvary."

That villainous Song of the Nightingale might have
given success to my quest for the grave of Gauguin.
I cannot remember now that I ever mentioned to him

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 457

my looking for it. He pointed it out to a recent gov-
ernor of the Marquesas Islands, Dr. L. Sasportas, who,
in a letter to Count Charles du Pare, now of Sari Fran-
cisco, tells of it :

Gauguin, of whom you wrote, had not departed from the
tradition of adopting native customs ; and unfortunately, his
influence among the Marquesans was rather bad than good. I
have gathered some details about him, which may interest those
who know that sad end of this talented painter who came to the
Marquesas, to escape the civilized world, its taxes, ugliness and
evils. He found here the government, police, the tax collector,
etc. If these islands enjoy an eternal summer, disease is not
lacking in them.

Gauguin, morphinomaniac, lived close to a bottle of absinthe
that he kept fresh in his" well. He was condemned to serve in
jail for three months, and one morning he was found dead near-
by a phial of laudanum. He committed suicide. Nothing
remains of him. His house has been demolished, and his land
is a field of potatoes. His last paintings have been carried
away, not by admirers, but by merchants who did not ignore the
value of his work.

My wife and I went once to a little French cemetery which
lies on top of the hill and among a hundred Christian tombs
we looked for Gauguin's. About three quarters of the crosses,
worm-eaten, had fallen. One after the other we threw them
over to find the name of Gauguin. It was in vain. After we
had come down, we inquired of our cook, prisoner and drunkard,
who lived here at the time of Gauguin. We learned that the
tomb was for a long time abandoned. We finally found it, and
we had a wreath of natural flowers that he loved so much, rose-
laurel, hibiscus, gardenia and others, placed upon the spot.
They are decayed now, alas, as is Gauguin.

That again was Gauguin. Fleeing from Europe,

458 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

from civilization, from the redingote, and even there,
in that most distant isle, thousands of miles from any
mainland, being pursued by the gendarme! Had he
not abandoned Tahiti after a decade for a wilder spot,
yet a thousand miles farther, hidden in a bywater of the
vast ocean, and in the "great cannibal isle of Hiva-Oa"
been harassed by the law and the church ?

He saw there was no escape, and that, after all, the
fault was in him. He demanded the impossible from
a world corrupted to its horizon. He, too, could say
of himself, as he wrote of the Tahitians, and then of the
Marquesans :

The gods are dead and I am dead of their death.

"He had verses on that god he made for his garden,'*
said Le Moine. "They began:

*Les dieux sont mort et Atuona meurt de leur mort.'

That was it. Gauguin was like the Marquesans of
his, of my, village of Atuona. Their old gods were
dead, and they perished of the lack of spiritual sub-
stance.

Le Moine was to go mad, and to die, as I would have
if I had not fled. The air was one of death.

"Le soleil autrefois qui I'enflsBmmait I'endort
D'un sommeil desole d'affreux sursauts de reve,
Et I'effroi du futur remplit les yeux de I'Eve.
Doree : elle soupire en regardant son sein,
Or, sterile scelle par les divins desseins.

»>

When I returned to America and wrote of Gauguin,
I received a letter from his son:

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 459

. . . novel could n't hurt Gauguin as an artist. We men
aren't insulted when apes yelp at us ; but we are sometimes
obliged to live amongst them, so when you defend Gauguin
against the quadrumanes, you make it easier for his son to move
in their midst.

I therefore thank you and beg you to believe me your most
grateful friend and admirer,

Emile Gauguin.

CHAPTER XXII

Monsieur I'lnspecteur des Etablissements Fran^ais de I'Oceanie — How the
School House was Inspected— I Receive My Conge— The Runaway
Pigs — Mademoiselle Narbone goes with Lutz to Papeete to be Mar-
ried—P^re Simeon, about whom Robert Louis Stevenson wrote.

ONE must admit that the processes of govern-
ment in my islands were simple. Since only
a couple of thousand Marquesans, of an orig-
inal myriad, were alive, after three score years of colo-
nialism, officialdom had lessened according to the mor-
tuary statistics. Sovereignty was evidenced by the tri-
color that Song of the Nightingale occasionally raised
in the palace garden, while Commissaire Bauda and two
gendarmes aided the merry governor in exercising a
lazy authority. There was no hospital, nor school to
distract the people from copra making, and, excepting
for the court sessions of Saturdays, to hear moonshine
cases, or a claim against Chinese rapacity, we might
have thought ourselves living in an ideal state of
anarchy.

One morning we awoke to the reality of empire and
the solicitude of Paris. Flag, the mutoi, peered through
the windowless aperture of my cabin, shortly after
dawn, and announced, with the pompousness of a bum-
bailifF, that the French gunboat Zelee was at Tahauku,
and would shortly land Monsieur Vlnspecteur des Etab-
lissements Franfais de VOceanie. Flag called the visi-
tor 'Sieu Ranisepatu, and in pantomime indicated his
rank and power. The Zelee sent him ashore at the

460

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 461

stone steps of Lutz's store, and departed for Vaitahu,
ostensibly for a fresh water-supply, but, as Painter Le
Moine said with an oath, the commander had gone to
Le Moine's adopted village, Vaitahu, to make love to
Vanquished Often, the artist's model.

The inspector of colonies occupied the spare room
at the palace and our pleasant parties were suspended.
He was a gross, corpulent man, in a colonel's gilded uni-
form. One could not see his collar, front or back, for
the rolls of his fat neck and his spacious beard. The
tapis was full of troublesome affairs. The governor
and Bauda had fallen out. Rum was responsible.
The governor had given Taiao Koe, Flatulent Fish,
one of my tattooed neighbors, a permit to buy a gallon
of rum for Lutz. Flatulent Fish lightened his jug
too much. Commissaire Bauda met him wobbling from
port to starboard on his horse, and took the jug. That
for Bauda, censor of morals! But the same day, dur-
ing the difficult work of repairing Bauda's arm-chair,
Bauda cheered the natives with rum, and two, made
utterly reckless, invaded the palace garden in search of
more. The inspector was stupefied, and the governor
drove them away with threats of prison and indignant
exclamations that such a thing had never happened be-
fore. Of course, Bauda had to let the inspector know
of his action in saving Flatulent Fish from a more
wobbly state, and he did so in ignorance of his chair-re-
pairers having betrayed to the inspector his own liber-
ality. The governor did not fancy Flatulent Fish's
permit for rum being brought before the inspector's
notice. So the great man had to decide whether the
Governor or the Commissaire was supreme in rum

462 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

matters, rum, of course, being absolutely forbidden to
the natives.

After two days, this matter was settled. The in-
spector became restless. Every day he said, "I must see
the schoolhouse. It is necessary that I see that
important building."

He meant a tumbledown, unoccupied cabin up the
valley, a dirty, cheap, wooden building, bare planks and
an iron roof.

Rain did not permit the inspector to go at once, for
he did not stir out of the Governor's house while it was
wet; but after three days of fair weather he said very
firmly, "I will visit the schoolhouse. It is my duty and
I wish to report on that."

So, with the governor, he advanced up the broken
road to the river, which must be crossed to go up the
valley. The river was two feet deep. There were
crossing-stones placed for him, but he was stout and
they were three feet apart. One must jump from one
stone to the other. The governor, in boots, plunged
into the purling rill. The inspector cried to the gov-
ernor, ''Mais, mon brave, prenez garde aux accidents!"

"It is not dangerous," said the governor, who in five
strides had reached the other bank.

*'But I may get my shoes wet," said the inspector.

'Tt is better to take them off," advised the governor.

"Yes, that is true. Naturally one removes one's
shoes when one crosses a river on foot. And, in such a
case as this, one must take chances. It is imperative
that I inspect the schoolhouse. Mais, nom d'un chien!
Where shall I sit to take off my shoes?"

The governor suggested a certain boulder, but it was

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 463

too low; another was too high. But, after inspecting
many boulders, one was found that suited the embon-
point of the big man. He bent over, then looked at
the river, and sat up straight.

"It is a wooden schoolliouse?" he queried.

"Yes, plain wood," said the executive.

"And, par consequence, it has a roof and a floor and
sides, and maybe some wooden desks for the scholars.
Steps to enter, n'est-ce pas? And a tableau noir, to
write the alphabet on. As a matter of fact, there is
little difference between schoolhouses. You have seen
that schoolhouse, mon ami?''

''Out, Monsieur Vlnspecteur, I have seen it. It is
exactly as you describe it. Tres simple, and the black-
board is there, but a trifle disfigured."

"Ah, the blackboard is in bad condition! Bien, we
must remedy that. I am well satisfied. I will return
to your house. These stones are very hot."

The bon homme marched back, puffing, combing his
fan-like whiskers with his fingers, with that quietly ex-
ultant air of one who has done his duty despite all risks.

The Zelee returning, and this being the total of his
inspection, he ordered it to speed forthwith to Tahiti,
where, doubtless, as in Paris, he recited the dangers and
difficulties of life in the cannibal islands. He forgot to
have the blackboard repaired. I learned by letter from
Malicious Gossip, two years after his notation, of its
deplorable state. The ingratitude of colonies toward
their foster-mothers is proverbial. Our own fat men,
secretaries of war, senators, and congressmen, make as
cursory examinations of our American vassals in the
Pacific and Atlantic, and with as little help to them.

464 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

The inspector's conge was almost synchronous with
mine. The Saint Francois of Bordeaux, the first mer-
chant steamship in the Marquesas, arrived from Tahiti,
to swing about the ports of my archipelago and return
to Papeete. My heart ached at leaving; the tendrils of
the purple-blossomed pahue-vine were about it. How
could I forsake forever my loved friends of Atuona and
Vaitahu, Malicious Gossip, Mouth of God, Vanquished
Often, Seventh Man Who Is So Angry, Great Fern,
Ghost Girl, and the little leper lass. Many Daughters?
I must make my choice, and swiftly. If I stayed much
longer, I would never live again in America; the
jungle would creep over me and I should lie, some day,
on Calvary's hill near the lost remains of Paul Gauguin.
There was Le Brunnec, the best of the whites, but he
was a Breton peasant, born to the sun and simplicity
and nature's riches ; I was of the shade and artificiahty,
of pavements and libraries. Nor could I show an un-
abraded surface to these savage tropics as did Lutz.
His Prussianism, his Lutheranism, preserved him cold,
and ready to escape at fortune's opening. My Irish
forebears and American generations gave me no such
buckler, nor ambition.

The one passenger of the Saint Francois who came
ashore on our beach weighted the balance for America.
He was Brunneck, an American swimmer, diver, and
boxer, whom I had seen Sarah Bernhardt kiss when at
Catalina Island he rose through the clear waters of
Avalon Bay to her glass-bottomed boat and presented
her with an abalone shell. I traded him my coffee-pot
and utensils for the memory of Sarah's moment of
abandon, and Brunneck tipped the scales for me toward

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 465

the America he had deserted. He was an atavist in
a grass skirt and a crown of ferns, hatless, purseless, a
set of boxing-gloves his only impedimenta. I could not
equal his serenity, that of a civilized being again in har-
mony with the earth. I hurried aboard the steam-
ship in Tahauku roadstead to decide my vacillation.

By dark, the Tahauku River, into which some weary
cloud had emptied, sent a menacing current down the
roadstead. The steamship rolled and swung wildly.
As madder grew the fresh torrent, the anchors dragged,
and the vessel drifted broadside toward the rocky cliff.
Steam was down and the engines would not turn. The
captain yelling from the bridge, the Breton sailors in
noisy sabots, prancing alarmedly about the decks, a
search-light playing upon the rocks, and lighting the
groups of natives watching from the headlands, the
shouting and swearing in French and Breton with a
word or two for my benefit in English, all made a
dramatic incident with a spice of danger.

The Saint Francois swung until the rail on which I
stood was four feet from the jagged wall. A wild
chant rose from the Marquesans on shore in the moment
of most peril. I made ready to leap, but soon heard the
hum of the screw as it began fighting the current. We
gained little by little, and, once clear of the rocks,
pointed the prow for the Bordelaise Channel and com-
parative safety. The cargo boats had not been hoisted
aboard, and they banged to pieces as, urged by the
rushing river, we drove through the door of the bay
and out to sea.

I lay down on a bench, and when I awoke at dawn we
were heading back for Tahauku to finish loading. Ex-

466 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

ploding Eggs was beside me. I had not known he
was aboard. The adventures of the night, the fires, the
engines, the electric lights, and the danger had delighted
him.

"Sacrel" muttered the red-faced captain at break-
fast. "These Marquesas are as bad as the Paumotus."

No lighthouses, charts inaccurate, shore-guides lack-
ing, treacherous tides, winds, currents, reefs, and pas-
sages. Lying Bill said it took "bloody near a gen'us to
escape with his hfe after thirty years of navigation in
these waters."

The Polynesians believed that souls animate flowers
and plants, that these are organized beings. For pigs,
they had a special heaven, Ofetuna. Each pig had a
distinct and arbitrary name, which was never changed,
though men changed their names often.

On the deck of the Saint Francois were half a dozen
slender pigs that had once played about my paepae and
were now engaged in resisting the monopolistic ten-
dencies of Alphonse, a ram bought from the trader.
By uniting, they made his habitat painful, and his out-
cries brought the steward, who attempted to correct the
ram, but was butted into profanity and flight.

*' You 're no lam' o' goodness ! You '11 be chops
mighty soon!" the negro shouted, and threw a pan at
him. The ram bolted, knocked open a swinging port,
and, followed by the pork, dived into the bay. He may
have sensed the threat of the steward.

'"^A la chasse! A la chasse!" ordered the captain from
the bridge. '\Tonnerre de Dieu! Our meat is going
ashore."

If a boat coming to the Saint Francois had not inter-

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 467

cepted the bold deserters, they would have succeeded
in their break for liberty, and probably have taken to
the wilds. The recovering them was no easy task, but,
diverted from the rocks, they were run down, after half
an hour of fierce commands through a megaphone
from the captain. They were fast swimmers, being
encumbered by no fat. Their adventure dispelled for
me the myth that pigs cannot swim. The story ran
that in swimming pigs cut their throats with their hoofs.

I had recognized in the English-African accent of
the steward the lingo of the West-India negro, and
oddly, I remembered having seen the man himself at
Kowloon, in China, where he had been bartender at the
Kowloon Hotel. With no word of French, and ten days
aboard from Tahiti, the black man was bursting with
conversation. Serving me with a bottle of Bordeaux
beer, he spoke of his hardships, and of familiar figures
of his happier days at Kowloon :

"Yes, sir, men can stand more than animiles," he said.
"They can, sir, work or play. You remember that gor-
iller that Osborne had in the Kowloon Hotel grounds?
He perished, sir, from his drinking habits. He took
his reg'lar with the soldiers and tourists, and his
favoryte tonoc was gin and whiskey mixed, but after
he was started, he would 'bibe near anything 'toxicat-
ing. You remember how big he was? Big as Sikh, that
goriller was. He was a African ape like the white per-
fesser says he is descended from.

"Week before Chrismus, that infantry regiment in
barricks, in Kowloon, kept him late every night, and I
seen him climb to his house in that tree hardly able to
hold onto the limbs. Chrismus eve he let nothisg slip

468 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

his paws. He began with the punch — you remember,
sir, the punch I used to make? and he overdone it,
though he had a stummick like a India major's. He
drank with the officers and he drank with the Tommies.
When I opened the bar, Chrismus morning, he was
dead on the ground. He had n't never been able to
reach his home. Osborne gave him a Christian berrial
under the comquat trees, but as sure as you 're born
every officer and soldier turned up for more drink that
night. Men can stand more than animiles, sir."

All morning I sat on the deck and took my fill of the
scenes on either shore, while copra was hoisted aboard
from canoes and boats. Exploding Eggs was ex-
amining minutely the wonders of the steamship, re-
porting to me occasionally some astounding discovery.
Until then I had refused to consider taking him away
from his people, but, in a moment of selfishness, I
drew a plat of America, to attract his thirteen years, —
the lofty buildings, motor-cars, telephones, ice and ice-
cream, snow and sleighs, roller-skates and moving pic-
tures. He had seen none of these, nor read of them,
but, nevertheless, the fear of homesickness caused him,
after a few minutes to say:

"Aoe metai, Nakohu matar which meant, "No good;
Exploding Eggs would die!"

Characteristic of all primitive peoples was this nos-
talgia, and, far from being sentiment easily smothered,
it was more often than physical ailment the predispos-
ing, or even actual, cause of death when they were sepa-
rated from their homes. The Pitcairn youth who died
in California and the Easter Islanders who could not
endure even their exile in Tahiti were examples. The

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 469

Maori Napoleon, Te Rauparaha, gazed upon his old
home, Kawhia, and wept in farewell. His legendary
song says :

O my own home ! Ah me ! I bid farewell to you,
And still, at distance, bid farewell.

Before noon, I was overcome by a longing to see
Atuona again. The voices of the friends who had
chanted their grief were in my ears. I landed at Ta-
hauku in one of the copra boats which were coming and
going, and walked along the cliffs until I came within
sight of the beach where, so often, I had ridden the surf.
I went at a fast pace down the hill, hoping for a familiar
face. At a point overlooking the cove, that very spot
Stevenson thought the most beautiful on earth, I heard
shouts and merry laughter.

I moved to where I could survey the spot. There
was a group of natives, half the village, at least, and in
the center of the chattering crowd was Brunneck, naked
to the waist, boxing with Jimmy Kekela, the Hawaiian.
The yellow hair of the American gleamed against his
sun-burnt skin, as he toyed with the amateur. Ghost
girl, an absorbed spectator, held the wreath of the
American. Mouth of God, Haabuani, and Great Fern
were dancing about the circle in glee. Exploding
Eggs, who had accompanied me, left me without a
word, and ran to the ring. I stood fifty feet away, un-
noticed. A new god had been thrown up by the sea. I
returned to the Saint Francois more content to leave.

When I awoke from a siesta, in the late afternoon, I
found preparations for immediate departure. The an-
chors were being hauled short, the hatches battened

470 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

down, and the cargo booms uphoisted. We waited only
the final accounts from Lutz. He brought them him-
self in the last boat, in which were also Mademoiselle
Narbonne and two nuns. She was again in black, and
greeted me in a distraught manner with ^'Kaohar the
native salutation, as if in her hour of departure from her
own island she clung to its language. She went below
to the cabins with the sisters, and only after the screw
had revolved and we turned head for the sea did the
three come on deck.

Tears suffused her eyes as^ we passed the opening of
Atuona Bay. When Exploding Eggs and others,
including Song of the Nightingale, shouted "Kaoha*
to us from their canoes, she put her head upon the breast
of Sister Serapoline and wept passionately. The night
drew on as, after many bursts of her sad emotion, she
leaned exhausted on the bosom so long her shelter. In
the flooding moonlight, she slept, while the nun placidly
counted her rosary.

The Saint Francois, steering in a smooth sea for
Taiohae, on the island of Nuku-hiva, the captain, Lutz,
and I gathered about the table for supper and wine.
The vessel had narrowly escaped shipwreck in the
Paumotus, and had lain for six days on a reef while the
barrels of cement, intended for some improvement at
Atuona, were thrown overboard to lighten her.

Lutz did not seek any moment of intimacy with me,
and said nothing to explain Mademoiselle Narbonne's
presence aboard. Conforming to strict native etiquette,
he paid no attention to her, and a stranger would have
thought he hardly knew her. Lutz said that he had

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 471

business affairs in Tahiti and had jumped at the chance
of a quick passage in the steamship.

At dawn, we were off the island of Nuku-hiva; high
up on a green mountain-side, we saw a silver thread
which we knew to be the waterfall of Typee Valley, the
valley in which Hermann Melville had Hved in captiv-
ity and happiness. We rounded Cape Martens, and,
as the sun lit the rocky forelands guarding the bay of
Taiohae, the morning breeze brought from Typee the
delicious odor of the wild flowers, the hinano, the tiare,
and the frangipani. This beach of Taiohae, months be-
fore, I had visited in a whale-boat from Atuona. I
hoped to see again my friend, the good priest, Pere
Simeon Delmas, who 'had held the citadel of God here
for half a century.

. In the first boat ashore went the captain and Lutz,
and, when after breakfast I asked the mate to be put on
land. Mademoiselle Narbonne, seeing me descending
the ladder, joined me.

"Where do you go?" she asked, when we set foot on
the sand.

"I have a message for Prince Stanislao from Le
Brunnec," I answered.

"I must be back before the nuns miss me, but I will
go with you," she said.

Leaving the settlement, we were soon on a trail with
which I was familiar and reached a little wood. She
took me by the sleeve.

"Attendez," she half whispered. "I am going to be
married to Monsieur Lutz in Papeete. He is a for-
eigner, and the priest could not marry us. At Papeete

472 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

the judge can do it. The nuns are going with me to
make sure. They oppose, but I am determined. It is
my one chance. Tell me, American, do I make a mis-
take?"

"Do you love him?"

"Love him?" she said hesitatingly. "I do not know
what love is. The nuns have not taught me. Always
it has been Joan of Arc, or the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
I want love and freedom, but I am afraid of stay-
ing there at Taaoa alone with those two old women.
They are true Canaques, and would make me like them,
and I am afraid of the convent. Mon dieu! I am puz-
zled by life!"

"Come!" I said, "you will have an hour of light-
heartedness with Stanislao. I am puzzled, too."

Hardly more than a youth, Stanislao was the last of
the blood royal of the family that had ruled the Mar-
quesas. Temoana had been the only king. The Mar-
quesans were communists, with chiefs, and had not the
corroding egocentrism of nationality until the French
crowned Temoana. He had been one of the few travel-
ers from here. Kidnapped, a dime-museum man in
foreign seaports, he returned on a whaler to find favor
with the bishop and to be set on a Catholic throne.
Prince Stanislao was not even chief of Taiohae, for a
half-Hawaiian, of the Kekela tribe, had that office, and
did the French policeman's chores.

We entered the house of Stanislao and met, besides
him, Antoinette, an odalisque, most beautiful of danc-
ers, who, like Ghost Girl, flitted from island to island by
the grace of her charms. I had known her in the Co-
coanut House in Papeete and her sister, Caroline.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 473

Neither she nor Stanislao accepted the gospel of Chris-
tianity. Her warm blood had in it an admixture of
French and Italian, giving an archness and spice to her
manner and a coquetry to her eyes — black and dancing
— that maddened many. In the days about the four-
teenth of July, when the French at Tahiti celebrated
the Fall of the Bastille, she was a prize exhibit, for then
governors and bankers, deacons and acolytes, lost the
grace of God.

These three, Barbe, Antoinette, and Stanislao, were
extraordinary in their unity with the teeming vivid life
here, the ferns and orchids and flowers on the sward,
the palms and breadfruit in the grove. By the alchemy
of the brilhant morning and the company of this pair
of youthful lovers, Barbe's mood was suddenly trans-
muted into joyousness. I took an accordion off a shelf,
and played the upaupdhura of Tahiti. Without a mo-
ment's hesitation, and with no sense of consciousness,
the three danced on the grass.

Carlyle praises that countryman who, matching the
boast of a doctor that "his system was in high order,"
answered that, for his part, "he had no system."

Few mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently blessed with
that felicity of "having no system" ; nevertheless, most of us,
looking backward on young years, may remember seasons of
a light aerial translucency and elasticity and perfect freedom ;
the body had not yet become the prison-house of the soul, but
was its vehicle and implement, like a creature of the thought,
and altogether pliant to its bidding. We knew not that we had
limbs, we only lifted, hurled and leapt; through eye and ear
and all avenues of sense came clear, unimpeded tidings from
without, and from within issued clear victorious forces. We

474 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

stood as in the center of Nature, giving and receiving in har-
mony with it all; unlike Virgil's husbandman, "too happy
because we did not know our blessedness."

Stanislao seized the instrument and I danced. We
four were the spirits of a rare and vital esthetic, a har-
mony with being that denied all knowledge but that
of our acute and delicately-poised senses of warmth,
delicious odors, fresh colors of the plants, and mutual
attraction. The ship, Lutz, the nuns, heaven and hell,
the Taua and the Tapus were forgotten by me and by
Barbe in the glowing hour of dance and play.

Tired we threw ourselves on the grass and drank
from the cocoanuts which Stanislao climbed a tree to
bring us. The prince told us, with solemnity in which
Marquesans speak of olden things, an incident related
to him by his uncle :

"A French governor here forbade the girls to go to
the war-ships in the bay. They ruined discipline, he
said. Nevertheless, three daughters of a powerful chief
swam out to a war vessel. The commander, discover-
ing them in the morning, sent them ashore to the gov-
ernor, who put them in prison for three days.

"Their father's rage was terrible. It had ever been
the custom for the young women to visit the ships, he
said, and that his daughters should be the victims of a
governor's whim, abetted by French sailors themselves,
was a deadly insult.

"He sent a message to the governor: 'I am a chief
who has eaten my enemies all my life. I will wash the
hands of my daughters in French blood.'

"The sailors were forbidden by their officers to leave
the beach. They had been going up the river to bathe

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 475

in shady spots, but they were warned of danger and a
line was drawn beyond which they were not to go. A
guard was stationed a httle higher up the stream, and
for weeks the barrier was not crossed. But sailors know
no authority when woman beckons," — it has been so
since Jason sought the Golden Fleece, — "and, when,
through the glade, they saw the alluring forms of the
three sisters, the governor's orders were damned as
tyranny. They outwitted the guard and climbed the
trail to the paepae of their inamoratas. The chief and
his warriors trapped six of them after a struggle. One
sailor, a man famed for strength, killed several with his
hands. They were outnumbered and were brought,
some wounded and some dead, to an altar up the valley,
and there the daughters, at the command of their father,
bathed their hands in the men's blood, as he had sworn.
Parts of the bodies were eaten and the remains fed to
the pigs.

"The governor had troops brought ashore to pursue
the chief. For a year he evaded them, but then Vae-
kehu, the widow of Temoana, sent him word to come to
Taiohae and be shot. He obeyed, of course, and met
death near the hill of the fort.

"That was the palace of Queen Vaekehu," said the
prince, pointing up the hill. It was by a pool, under
a gigantic banyan, a lonely site, a paHsade of cocoanuts
and tamarinds not availing to soften the gloomy im-
pression. Long before she died the queen forsook her
royal residence for the shelter of the convent, where all
day she told her beads, or sat in silent contemplation.

Bishop Dordillon who had written my dictionary, had
given the queen a Trinity, a Mother of God, and a band

476 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

of saints to dwell upon, and more, a bottomless pit of
fire, with writhing sufferers and devils from it ever at
her ear to whisper distraction and temptation.

Mademoiselle Narbonne, hearing a warning whistle
of the Saint Francois, bethought her of her strange posi-
tion, of the sisters and of Lutz. She trembled, turned
pale, and begged to be excused as she started running
to the beach to catch a boat about to shove off. I also
bade good-by to the two, with a sigh for their fleeting
felicity, and strolled to the Catholic mission.

Pere Simeon was seated aX a table under an umbra-
geous hao tree, writing. He was in a frayed and soiled
cassock of black. His hair was white, and his beard
grizzled, both long and uncut and flowing over his re-
ligious gown. His face was broad and rubicund, and
his remarkable eyes — a deep, shining brown, eyes of
childish faith — proclaimed him poet and artist. Aged,
he had yet the strength and heartiness of middle age,
and when I greeted him he rose and kissed me with
warmth.

*'Ah," he exclaimed, "Monsieur O'Brien, you have
returned to hear more of Jeanne d'Arc, is not that so?
You have been too long in Atuona. You should stay
in Taiohae, and see what we have here. We go along
well. Joan of Arc looks after us."

We entered the sitting-room of the mission, and were
soon with a bottle of wine, and cigarettes, in a discussion
of affairs.

I asked to see any recent poems he had written, and,
blushingly, he handed me the paper over which he had
been bending.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 477

''There has been an excess of drinking recently," he
said ruefully, as he took a sip of his mild claret. I read
his stanzas aloud:

''Comment peut-on pour un moment d'ivresse,
Par le demon se laisser entrainer?
Que de regrets suivraient cette faiblesse!
Je n'ai qu'une ame et je Veux la sauver.

**0h ! que je crains la perte de mon ame!
Pour la sauver je saurai tout braver,
J'ai mon refrain pour quiconque me blame,
Je n'ai qu'une ame et je veux la sauver."

Now I have no skill in rime, but, inspired by his
ready gift, I took his paper and wrote what might be
called a free translation. I read it to him as follows:

Oh, how can a man for a moment's- bibacity
Let the demon take hold of his soul?
Remorse is the fruit of such wicked vivacity ;
Hell follows the flowing bowl.

"Oh, how I fear that I weakly may lose it,

And, to guard it, will everything brave !

I '11 tell the world that would tempt me to bruise it ;

I have but one soul to save.

''HelasT commented the priest, "I cannot under-
stand one word of it. Doubtless it surpasses my poor
lines in excellence. "I will multiply copies of this
poem on my hectograph," said Pere Simeon, "and I
will distribute them where they will do most good."

"Captain Capriata will receive one?" I ventured, re-
calling that in the procession in honor of Joan of Arc's

478 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

anniversary the old Corsican skipper had fallen with the
banner of the Maid of Orleans.

Pere Simeon's face glowed with zeal.

"I will name no names," he said, "but Capriata is a
good man and comes often to church now."

For months, I had desired to ask a question of P^re
Simeon, since Lutz had told me that Robert Louis
Stevenson had written about him. The trader had
shown me his copy of "In the South Seas," and had
pointed out the error of the printer, who had made
Stevenson's "Father Simeon Delmas" "Father Simeon
Delwar."

"Pere Simeon," I said, "a writer about the islands
mentions you in his book. He was here a long time
ago in a Httle yacht, the Casco, and he says that he
went with you from Hatiheu, to a native High Place,
and that you named the trees and plants for him. You
had a portfolio, he said, from which you read."

The missionary stopped a moment, and plucked his
beard, inquiringly.

"There have been many come here, in fifty years,"
he said slowly, "yachtsmen and students. I do not re-
call the name Stevenson."

Something pricked his recollection, and he took me
into the rectory and produced his portfolio.

"Here is the list; I must have read that author," he
said.

"You gave an abstract of the virtues of the trees and
plants, Stevenson says in his volume."

''Le voildr replied the priest. "Stevenson? Do
you mean perhaps Louis, who was a consumptive?"

He made a rapid movement of the hand to his face,

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 479

and drew upon the air a mustache and imperial, a slen-
der figure with a slight stoop — in a word, the very-
shadow of the master of romance.

"He was much with Stanislao, the king's son. He
was tres distingue. He was here but a little time.
However, I remember him well, because he was very
sympathique, and a gentleman.

*'I will tell you why he impressed me particularly.
He was not French, but he spoke it as I do, and he was
curious about the cannibalism which was then practi-
cally eradicated. There was another priest with me
who was then very ill. He died in my arms. I re-
member the evening he told Stevenson of how he had
saved the life of a foolish French governor. There had
been rumors of a cannibal feast at Hatiheu, and the
governor was incensed. He feared that the in-
cident might be reported to Paris and injure his
prestige. He blamed the chief, and sent him word
that if it were proved he would personally blow out
his brains.

*'Soon word came that the Hatiheu people — I was
pastor there for a quarter of a century — had killed sev-
eral of their enemies, and were eating them and drink-
ing namu enata. The governor started off in haste
from Taiohae, for Hatiheu and the priest went with
him, as also several gendarmes.

"Hundreds of natives were grouped in the public
place, chanting, dancing, and drinking.

'Where is the chief?' demanded the governor.
'I am here,' said a voice, stern and menacing, and
the chief broke from the throng and advanced toward
the governor.

480 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

"The latter drew his revolver. 'You have permitted
this breaking of the law, after I sent you word that
I would kill you if you ate human flesh?'

"'Ef rephed the chief in a high voice. *I am the
master in Hatiheu. Do you wish to be eaten?'

"The war-drums sounded and the grim warriors be-
gan to surround the party. My friend, who was, for
safety, an adopted son of the chief, and thus taboo,
seized the governor and led him to the boat. They got
away by sheer courage on the priest's part. He de-
scribed this to Louis, who wrote it down. I recall it
clearly, because the poor martyr died the next week.
Did Louis write of the Marquesas much?"

I said that he had. I should have liked to stay and
gain from Pere Simeon all I could of his memories of
the poet, but a boy came running up the road to say
that the Saint Franfois was to leave very soon.

I embraced Pere Simeon. He kissed me on both
cheeks, and gave me his blessing. It had been worth
a voyage to know him.

Jerome Capriata, the eater of cats, was outside his
house. He invited me in to meet his wife, a barefooted
Frenchwoman who sat in a scantily-furnished room,
musing over a bottle of absinthe. I could stay only a
minute, as the Saint Francois whistled insistently. His
wife set out the bottle and glasses before us, and we
drank the farewell goutte.

On the way to the beach I met Mrs. Fisher, whom
Bishop Dordillon, my dictionary writer, had as adopted
mother, when he was old enough to be her grandfather.
That was because Queen Vaekehu had adopted him as

|l*Sf

3
I

en
■§

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 481

a grandson, and Mrs. Fisher as a daughter, and the
bishop had observed the pseudo-relationship strictly.

"Mrs. Stevenson gave me a shawl," said Mrs. Fisher.
"I have shown that to many people. Madame Jack
London wore it when she was here with her husband
on the Snark. They lived with Lutz, the German, who
was then here. PaiQore Stevenson! He had to die
young, and here I am, after all these years!"

I waded through the surf to the boat, and reached
the Saint Francois to find all the others aboard. We
shipped the buoy and were away in a trice. The last
sight I had of the shore was of the promontory where
Captain Porter raised the American flag a hundred
years before. I was never to see the Marquesas Is-
lands again. The fresh breath of nature was too foul
with the worst of civilization.

CHAPTER XXIII

McHenry gets a caning — The fear of the dead — A visit to the grave of

Mapuhi — En voyage.

IMAGINE my delight when the captain of the
Saint Francois set our course for Takaroa, the
atoll of Mapuhi, Nohea, and the crippled diver
who had possessed the great pearl of Puka-puka ! The
Marquesas Islands are only eight hundred miles from
the Society Islands, of which Tahiti is one, and between
the Marquesas and the Society Islands lie the strewn
eighty atolls of the lies Dangereuses or Paumotu
group. With steam we ran the half -thousand miles or
so from Taiohae in two nights and two days, and at
daybreak of the second day were due to see the famil-
iar, lonely figure of the wrecked County of Roxburgh
on an uninhabited motu of Takaroa. It was this star-
tling sight that informed the Londons in the Snarh that
they were out of their course and in danger, and it was
Takaroa the Stevensons in the Casco looked for, only
to fetch up at Tikei, thirty miles to windward. I had
no confidence in our Breton captain, to whom these
waters were as unknown as the Indies to Columbus.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the lofty iron masts of
the dismantled vessel loomed on the horizon.

After so many months in the frowning islands of
the war fleet, with their thunderous headlands, gleaming
streams, and green and black valleys, the spectacle of

482

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 483

the slender ring of white sand and coral, the verdant
banners of this first of the Low Islands lying flat upon
the jeweled waters, aroused in me again sensations of
wonder at the ineffable variety of creation ; the myriad-
mindedness of the Creator. The crash of the surf upon
the outer reef, the waving of the breeze-stirred cocoa-
nuts, the flight of a solitary bird, contrasted with the
marvelous fabrication of man, the metal ship, thrown by
a toss of the sea and a pufl* of the wind among these
evidences of a beautiful yet deadly design.

The Saint Francois crept along the coast of the atoll
and anchored opposite the pass, a good mile from the
breakers. Everybody was on deck, the black-gowned
nuns with Mademoiselle Narbonne — she also in a tunic
of religious hue. Since we had left Nuku-hiva they had
not appeared. The contrary currents and confused
trade-winds among these Pernicious Islands had kept
them in their cabin. The six -hundred-ton hull of the
Saint had see-sawed through the two hundred leagues
of the tropic of Capricorn, and only hardened trencher-
men like the ship's officers and myself could find ap-
petite for food. Lutz, too, had raised a mournful face
to the deck but seldom. A few hundred sacks of copra
awaited us at Takaroa, and we put off a life-boat to
bring it aboard. Lutz and I accompanied the second
officer with a command from the captain to stay no
longer than the cargo's loading. Lying Bill's schooner,
the Morning Star, was in the lagoon, and, seeing it
there, I wondered if Mapuhi, the great sailor of these
atolls, had steered it through the narrow pass. About
the landing, despite the uniqueness of the steamship's
arrival, was an unusual quietude, a hush that moved me

484 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

to fear, as a presage of evil. A cholera-stricken village
in the Philippines had that same dismal aura. A few
natives were upon the coral mole, and the Mutoi came
forward to examine our papers.

*'Let us go to the house of Mapuhi," I said to
Lutz.

''J a woJil/" he replied; "I have not met him in many
years."

We left the mate and walked along the path past
the traders' stores. The thousand feet that trod the
coral road and had gone in and out the dozen shops of
the dealers and pearl-buyers during my stay on Takaroa
were missing, but more than the stir and hum of the
rahid was absent. A depressing torpor possessed the
little village. Mapuhi's store was closed tightly, and
from no house or hut did a head show or a greeting
come.

We saw that the door of one shop was ajar, and,
going in, happened on a pleasant and illuminating
scene. Angry words in Tahitian we heard as we
mounted the steps, and smothered exclamations of a
profane sort in English which had a familiar note.
Back of the counter was a very large Tahitian woman
who, with a heavy fishing-rod of bamboo, was thrashing
a white man. She was, between blows, telling him that
if he got drunk or spoke rudely to her again, she would
"treat him as a Chinaman did his horse in Tahiti,**
which is a synonym for roughness. He was evading
the strokes of the bamboo by wriggling, and guarding
with his arms, and was cursing in return, but was plainly
afraid of her. He was McHenry, my ofttime com-
panion of revels at the Cercle Bougainville in Papeete,

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 485

who had come on the Flying Fish with me from Tahiti,
and had remained in Takaroa.

Many times he had boasted of his contempt for native
women.

"I 've had my old lady nineteen years," he said once,
"and she would n't speak to me if she met me on the
streets of this town. She would n't dare to in public
until I recognized her."

Lutz and I did not utter a sound, but quickly de-
scended the steps.

"I never before saw a native wife beating her hus-
band," he commented caustically. "That McHenry de-
serves it. Lying Bill often said McHenry's vahine
took a stick to him. Tahitian women will not be
whipped themselves."

Lutz should know. He had had fourteen years with
a Tahitian mistress, a wife in her own eyes as much as
if wedded in a cathedral. Would he not have to face
her in Papeete when he should be married to Made-
moiselle Narbonne? Perhaps she had a stronger
weapon than a rod! The tauas sorcery might stretch
over the ocean, and be potent in Tahiti.

Lutz and I were almost at Mapuhi's residence when
we met Nohea, my host of the fishing and diving. No-
hea was in a black cloth coat and a blue pareu, and his
countenance was distressed.

''la ora na, Nohea I" I called to him. "Is Mapuhi a
Mapuhi at home?"

"Mapuhi?" he repeated and shuddered. "Mapuhi
mater

Mapuhi dead I It did not seem possible ; the giant I
had known so recently!

486 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Nohea began to weep and left us. Outside the in-
closure of Mapuhi's house were a dozen men, and
among them Hiram Mervin, the Paumotu- American
who had described to me the cyclone of Hikueru. We
shook hands, and I asked of what Mapuhi had died.
Surely not of disease. The reef must have beaten him
at last. I could not think of that super-man yielding to
a clot or a kidney. He, who had made the wind and
currents his sport, who in the dark of night had sailed
through foaming passes the white mariner shunned in
broad daylight, who had given largesse to his people for
decades, and who had made the shells and nuts of his
isles pay him princely toll, despite the cunning of the
white, the papaa, who came to take much and give little.

"He was eighty," said Hiram Mervin. "He took
sick on Reitoru, that tiny island near here. He was
brought here. Some one wanted to give him medicine.

" 'No,' he said, 'my time has come. I will not live
by things. I die content. I have been a good Mor-
mon since I accepted the Word. What I did before was
in darkness, when I was a gentile.'

"He passed away peacefully. We lost a bulwark
of the church, but he will reign with Christ."

Lutz and I did not wish to intrude upon the kin of
Mapuhi, nor to remain longer within the sound of the
wailing that now issued from the house at the news that
I, the American, had come back on the steamship. This
extemporized burst of lamentation was a special honor
to me and to the decedent, an expression of a tie be-
tween us, and, though it swelled suddenly at my arrival,
was not the crying of hired mourners but the lacryma-
tion of sincere grief. In wakes among the Irish I had

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 487

found exactly the same spirit — an increase or instant re-
newal of the keening or shrieking when one who had
been dear to the dead person appeared.

We two walked away, and encountered McHenry,
who had learned of our presence. McHenry was
shaken by the castigation given him by his wife, and
assumed an air of brazen indecency and bluster to hide
his condition.

"One bottle of booze and I '11 make 'em all quit their
catabawlin' an' dance a hula," he said. "Much they
care for except the bloomin' francs the ol' boy left
'em!"

McHenry exposed his own vulturous desires, and not
the feelings of the tribe of Mapuhi. To them the pass-
ing of Mapuhi was as to the Jews that of their leader
by Nebo's lonely mountain. The great man had ex-
pired the night before, and preparations were being
made to bury him. In this climate the body hastens
to rejoin the elements. The chief was not to lie in
the common charnel in a grove on another 7notu of Taka-
roa. As suitable to his rank and wealth and his gen-
erosity to the Mormon church, he had retained for him-
self a piece of ground beside the temple. A coral wall
inclosed the small necropolis. Within a hundred feet of
the sea, in the brilliant coral sand, rugged and bare,
it was fit anchoring ground for this ship among canoes.
One tombstone leaned against the wall, a plain slab of
marble, inscribed:

Punau Mapuhi tei poke ite 30 Me 1899

Punau was the wife he had clung to under Mormon-
ism, and who had borne him the son and daughter

488 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

I knew. Many years he had survived her, and had
not married another. The rehgion of polygamy had
made of the old barbarian an ascetic, who had been a
Grand Turk under Protestantism and Catholicism, be-
tween which he had wavered according to the novelty
offered.

The body of Mapuhi was laid out in the principal
room of his house, the room in which I had met him
and the American elders on my first landing. Nohea
and others had worked through the night to build a
coffin. They had used the strong planks the dead man
had gathered from the deck or cabin of the County of
Roxburgh, and had polished them with cocoanut-oil, so
that they shone. The coffin was lined with the sleep-
ing-mat of Mapuhi, and in it he reposed, dressed in his
churchly clothes, a black frock coat, white trousers, and
a stiff white shirt. No collar cumbered his neck, nor
were shoes upon the ample feet that had walked on the
floor of the sea. Most of the people of Takaroa took
a last look at him, but some did not, for fear. I gazed
a few minutes at his face. More than in life, the hke-
ness to a mutilated Greek statue struck me; perhaps
the head of a Goth seen in the Vatican Gallery.
Strength, repose, and mystery were in the powerful
mold of it, the broad, low forehead, the rounded chin,
and wide-open eyes. I had seen many so-called impor-
tant men in death, when as a reporter I wrote obsequies
at a penny a line. This Paumotuan chief's corpse had
more majesty and peace than any of them — a nearer
relation to my conception of an old and wise child of
the eternal unity, glad to be freed from the illusion
of life.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 489

In the village, the huts were still closed. No fisher-
man put off in a canoe, and none sat making or mending
nets. McHenry and I paddled out to the Morning
Star, The skipper was on deck with Ducat, the mate.
Some native had hurried to them with the amusing gos-
sip of McHenry's vahine beating him, and he had to
bear a storm of ridicule. Lying Bill rehearsed his
boasts about her inferiority, and Ducat, who had hu-
miliated him before me long ago, taunted him with his
submission to her.

"I did n't want to kill her," was all McHenry could
retort. McHenry had a story of Chocolat which was dis-
tracting. Captain Moet of the Flying Fish had come
into Takaroa a -month or two before with Chocolat, a
fair-sized dog. The tricks Chocolat did when I was on
Moet's schooner were incomparable with his later edu-
cation.

"The bloomin' pup would stand on his hind legs
and dance to a tune Moet whistled," said McHenry.
*'He could count up to five with cards, and could pick
all the aces out of a piquet pack. He would let Moet
throw him overboard in port, and catch a rope's end
with his teeth and hold on while he was pulled up. He
was a reg'lar circus performer. You know Moet and
I ain't very close. He done me a dirty turn once. I
knew if I could ever get Chocolat to Papeete, an* on
the steamer from San Francisco, I could sell him to a
bloody American tourist for a thousand francs. Moet
watched me like a gull does the cook when he empties
his pail overside. Now, you know me; I ain't nobody
to say to you can't do this or that. I laid for that pup,
and, when I went aboard the schooner just before she

490 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

sailed, I took a little opium I got from the Chink pearl-
buyer here; and I put a pill of it in a piece of fresh
pork, and took it aboard in my pocket. Just before
I was goin' into my boat, after a drink or two with
Jean, I 'd been watchin' Chocolat stretched out nappin'
on the deck. I put the meat alongside of his mouth,
and he ate it like a shark does a chunk o' salt horse.
Soon I saw he was knocked out, an' I asked Moet to go
down into the trade-room an' get me a piece o' tobacco.
He 'd no sooner ducked than I grabbed the bloody pup
by the scruff an' stuffed him into my trousers' front.
He was like dead. I was in the boat in a second with
no one seein' him, and reached up to get the tobacco
from Moet's hand.

"Of course the purp never let out a bloomin' whimper,
an' I got away and to shore with no proof that I had
snared the bow-wow. Moet had trained Chocolat to let
out a hell of a yell if any one as much as took him to-
ward the rail, and so he would have to think that the cur
had fallen overboard on his own hook. I took him to
my store unbeknown to any one, and tied him to a chair.
He never come to for three hours, an' was sluggery for
a day or two. I was waitin' for Moet to sail, but the
next day he comes ashore an' makes a bee-line for my
joint. I saw his boat puttin' off, an' I give Chocolat
to my Penrhyn boy who tied him in a canoe, an' hiked
out in the lagoon with him. Moet looks me up an'
down, curses his sacres an' his Spanish diablos an' Sus
Marias, an' crawled through my place from top to bot-
tom, shoutin', 'Chocolat! Chocolat! Pettee sheen!' an'
half cryin'. He had to trip his anchor the next day,
and I had the sheen all right.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 491

"I was goin* to smuggle him on board Lyin' Bill's
cockroach tub an' to Papeete, when one day I come
back from Mapuhi's and found him gone, an' his string
chewed through. He had skinned out, an', though I
asked everybody on this island about him, everybody
knew nothin'. After three days I give the beast up. I
know the Kanaka, an' I knew that no fat little dogs
are let run loose very long. About two weeks later,
I went to another motu to buy some copra, an' the first
native I run into was wearin' Chocolat's collar on his
arm. He was a Mormon churchman, too, but he swore
he found the collar in a canoe."

Poor little brown Chocolat ! He had entertained me
often on the Flying Fish with his antics, and Jean
Moet had such dreams of his future! A kindly fate
may have bestowed on him the favor of a quick death
by hotpotting rather than the ignominy of circus one-
night stands or the pampered kennel of a millionaire.
He had had his year at sea, and died in the full flush
of doghood.

The news that Lutz was a passenger on the Saint
Franfois with Mademoiselle Narbonne brought a pro-
longed whistle from Ducat, and an exclamation from
Lying Bill:

"Well, 'e '11 bloody well get 'is! Mana won't take a
club to 'im because the 'usban' does the beatin' when
'e 's a Dutchman, but she 's not lettin' 'im walk over 'er
so easy. I 'ad a long palaver with 'er on the voyage
up. She says everybody in Taaoa knows Barbe is a
leper, an' she 's preparin' to 'ave the bleedin' Frog doc-
tors cage 'er up out there by Papenoo, if she goes to
Tahiti."

492 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

"I never heard before that she had leprosy," said
Ducat. "I think that Mana is spreading that report
to scare Lutz."

"I feel sure that it has not reached him," I said.
"Nobody in Atuopa would mention it to him."

Abruptly there occurred to me the cryptic assertion
of Peyral at my first sight of Barbe in the mission
church.

"I would n't be her with all her money," he had said.
"Me, I value my skin."

That was weeks or months before Lemoal had come
to me, or I had known of the taua, or of Lutz's court-
ship. If there had been a plot against her happiness, it
must have been laid early, or what did Peyral mean?

McHenry broke in on my train of reasoning.

"I '11 see that the German sausage learns about it
damn soon," he said spitefully. "He 's doin' too good
a business in both copra an' women."

The whistle of the Saint Francois blew the recall
of boats and crew.

"Why don't you stay, an' go to Papeet' with me,"
asked Captain Pincher. "We '11 'ead out in a day or
two when the wind is right. You 're in no 'urry. You
want to see 'em lay ol' Mapuhi in the grave."

I agreed, and paddled to shore with McHenry. Na-
tives were taking the last load of copra out to the steam-
ship, and I rode on the bags with McHenry. On the
deck of the Saint Francois I passed Barbe and the
nuns on my way below to get my trifling belongings.
McHenry stayed above, and, when I had bidden good-
by to the captain and the first officer, I sought the three
women, with my canvas bag in hand. The sisters were

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 493

my friends, and I shook their hands. I was about to
say au revoir to Barbe when she walked with me a few
yards to the gangway. I explained my intention not
to continue on the steamship.

''What shall I do?" she implored, as she squeezed my
hand nervously. "I am afraid of everything — "

The whistle sounded again.

Lutz, who was talking with McHenry, approached
me, and drew from me my reason for carrying my assets
with me. I thought he appeared relieved at my leav-
ing, and that his hopes to see me in Papeete were
shammed. In the boat I glanced up to see Mademoi-
selle Narbonne leaning over the rail, her black cloud
of hair framing her pale face with its look of sadness
and perplexity, and her eyes still demanding of me the
answer to her question.

"I bloody well put a roach in Lutz's ear," said Mc-
Henry, as we rowed back.

That he had even mentioned Barbe's name I did not
believe. Lutz would have taken him by the throat, and
thrown him overboard. On the strand at the atoll
again, I saw the smoke streaming from the steamship's
funnel as she set out for Papeete; and I sent an un-
spoken message of good will to the groping ill-matched
pair whom I could not call lovers, and yet both of whom
were searching for the satisfaction of heart and ambition
I too sought.

Mapuhi was interred that afternoon an hour before
sunset. In these atolls where there is no soil, and where
water lies close under the coral surface, even burial is
difficult. Cyclones as in Hikueru have torn the coral
coverings off the graves, and swept the coffins, corpses.

494 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

and bones into the lagoon and the maws of the sharks
and the voracious barracuda. For Mapuhi a marble
cenotaph would be ordered in Tahiti, and cover him
when made in a few weeks.

Nohea and two elders dug the grave. About four
feet deep, it was wide enough to rest the huge body in
the glistening coffin. This was borne on the shoulders
of six young men, nephews of Mapuhi, and in the cor-
tege were all of the Takaroans of age. Solemnly and
silently they marched down the road. All who owned
black garments wore them, and others were in white
trousers, some with and others without shirts, but all
treading ceremoniously with bowed heads and serious
faces. Nohea was the leader, carrying the large Book
of Mormon from the temple, and at the grave he read
from it verses about the resurrection, the near approach
of the coming of Christ, and Mapuhi's being quiet in
the grave until the trumpet rang for the assembling of
the just, the unjust on opposite sides for judgment.

"Mapuhi a Mapuhi will sit very close to Brigham
Young in the judgment and afterward will be among
the great on earth when the rejected are cast into the
terrible pit of fire, and the elect live in plenty and happi-
ness here."

The heavy ivory sand rattled on the wood, and the re-
mains of Mapuhi, last link between the healthy savag-
ery and the present semi-civilization of the Paumotuan
race, were 'one with the mysterious beach he had so long
dwelt upon. He had been born before the white man
ruled it, and his life had spanned the rise of the imperial
industrialism which had destroyed the Polynesian.

After the funeral I took my bag to the hut of Nohea,

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 495

to live the few days until the Morning Star left for
Papeete. Our frugal meal was soon eaten, and the old
diver and I sat outside his door in the cool of the sun-
set glow. We talked of Mapuhi.

"We had the same father but different mothers,"
said Nohea. "Mapuhi was twenty years older than I.
For many years he was as my father to me."

"Where is Mapuhi now?" I asked, to discover his be-
liefs about the soul. Nohea trembled, and looked about
him.

"Is he not in the hole in the coral?" he said, with
alarm.

"Oh, yes, Nohea," I replied, "the body of Mapuhi is
in the coral, but where is that part that knew how to
dive, to steer the schooner, to grow rich, and to pray?
Where is that varua or spirit which loved you?"

Nohea responded quickly: "That is with the gods,
with Adam, Christ, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young.
Mapuhi is with them making souls for the bodies of
Mormon babies on earth. When Israel gathers by and
by, I will see him again, for we will all live in America
and be happy."

"But Nohea," I protested, "you will not be happy
away from Takaroa. Your canoe and your fishing-
nets and spears will be left behind.

Nohea was confused, but his faith was strong.

"The elders have explained that in America, where
all the saved people shall live after the judgment, we
shall have everything we want. The fish will jump on
the hook, the canoe will paddle itself, and the cocoanuts
will be always ready for eating or cool for drinking."

I tried to draw our conversation around to Mapuhi

496 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

again, but Nohea, as the darkness grew thicker,
busied himself in making a fire of cocoanut husks and
leaves, and evaded any reference to the dead.

Only after the moon began to come up, he said, "I
must now go to ke^ watch at the grave of Mapuhi. It
is my duty, and I must go."

He brought from his hut a crazy-quilt, and wrapped
it about him, and with extreme hesitancy walked away
through the obscurity to carry out the obligation of
friendship.

Hardly can we guess at the horror he had to over-
come to do this. The remnant of fear of the dead that
our slight inheritance of ancestral delusions causes to
linger in some of us is the merest shadow of the all-per-
vading terror that weakens the Paumotuan at thought
of the ghost of the defunct which stays near the corpse
to threaten and perhaps to seize and eat the living. As-
sociated, maybe, with the former cannibalism, when the
living consumed thje dead, Nohea, though earnest Mor-
mon, believed that the tupapau hovered over the grave
or in the tree-tops, to accomplish this ghastly purpose.
Had Punau, the widow of Mapuhi, been living, she
would have had to spend her nights for several weeks
by his sepulcher. Being a chief, there were many to
perform this devoir, and before I entered the hut to
sleep I saw several small fires burning about the spot
where the watchers cowered and whispered through the
night. Of the dangers of this office of friendship or
widowhood, every atoll in the Paumotus had a hundred
tales, and Tahiti and the Marquesas more. In Tahiti,
the tupapau, the disembodied and malign ego of the
dead, entered the room where the remains were laid out.

Photo by Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland

Paumotiians on a heap of brain coral

Photo by Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland

Did these two eat Chocolat?

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 497

A frightening noise was heard in the room or in that
part of the house, followed by sounds and movements
of a struggle, and in the morning gouts of blood were
on the walls. In Moorea, near Tahiti. I met an edu-
cated Englishman, there twenty-five years, who said
that on analysis the blood proved to be human. A
cynic in most things, he would not deny that he believed
the circumstance supernatural.

The tupapau had many manifestations: knocks at
doors and on thatched roofs, cries of sorrow and of hate.
White it was in the night, and often hovering over the
house or the grave. It might be that the Ghost Bird,
the hurong-hantU; a reality which is white, and whose
wings make little or no noise when flying, was the
foundation of this phantom.

In the meanwhile the schooner Morning Star had
gone to Tikei for cargo. Lying Bill was to anchor off
the pass of Takaroa in a few days on his voyage to
Tahiti and to send ashore a boat for me. For nine
nights the vigil was kept by the grave of Mapuhi.
About four o'clock each morning the ward by the grave
was abandoned, and Nohea threw himself wearily on
his mat near me. Only one time, on the last evening,
I questioned him about the tupapau, and then realized
my discourtesy; it was for him to initiate this subject.

"Have you heard or seen anything rima atua nia-
natura? Anything by the hand of the spirit?"

Nohea wrapped himself more tightly in his quilt, and
his answer came from under it:

"This morning I heard a scratching. This is our
last night, thank the gods. I think it was the tupapau
saying farewell. We never look at the grave."

498 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

About two the next morning Nohea shook me.

"The Fetia Taiao is off the passage," he said.

He had heard in the still air the faint slap of her can-
vas as she jibed, I thought, but that could not have
been, as she was too far away. His awareness was not
of the ear or eyes, but something different — the keen-
ness of the conscious and unconscious, which had pre-
served the Paumotuan race in an environment which
had meant starvation and death to any other people.

I had my possessions already on the schooner, and,
forbidding Nohea to wait with me at the mole, I em-
braced him and left him. A wish to look at the grave
took hold of me, and I walked along the path to it.
The sun, though below the horizon, was lessening the
sombrous color of the small hours, and I could discern
vaguely the outline of the walled burial-ground. The
splash of oars in the water and the rattle of rowlocks
warned me of the approach of the boat for me, but I still
had five minutes.

I sat down on the wall at the farthest end away from
the grave. Soon I would be in my own country, among
the commonplace scenes of cities and countryside. I
would resume the habits and conventions of my nation,
and enter into the struggle for survival and for repute.
Those goals shrunk in importance on this strip of coral.
Never would I be able to express in myself the joy and
heat of life, and the conquest of nature at its zenith of
mystery, as had the man whose tenement of clay was so
near. Love had been his animating emotion. In all
the welter of low passions, of conflicting religions, and
commercial standards imported to his island by the
whites, he had remained a son of the atoll, brother and

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 499

father of his tribe, disdainful of the inventions and lux-
uries offered him for his wealth, but shaping his course
adroitly for his race's happiness.

Deep in this strain of reflection, I was recalled to ac-
tuality by a grating sound, a queer crunching and creak-
ing. It came from about the tomb, and was like a hun-
dred rats dragging objects on a stone floor — slithering
discordant, offensive. If I could have fainted it would
have been relief, for I was seized with mortal terror.
I could not reason. The boat from the schooner was
nearing fast, and would be at the mole in a minute or
two. I must go, but I could not move. Then suddenly
a bar of light flung up from the sea, the first of the
dawn, and by its feeble glimmer I saw a swarm of crea-
tures about the barrow. They were the robber-crabs
who had come out from the groves, and they were pull-
ing the pieces of coral off the burial heap, and digging
to pierce the coffin. Scores of the grisly vampires
were working with their huge claws at the pile, and, as
they rushed to and fro on their tall, obscene legs, they
were the very like of ghouls in animal form. This was
the "scratching" Nohea had heard when with their
back to the grave he and his fellow-watchers dared not
turn to see them.

I should have thrown rocks at the foul monsters,
have scattered them with kicks and curses, but my de-
liverance from the supernatural was so comforting I
could only burst into nervous laughter and run down
the road to the mole. I leaped into the boat, and gave
the order to shove off. In half an hour I was aboard
the Morning Star and our sails spread for Tahiti and
California.

500 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

AFTERWARD

A Letter from Exploding Eggs

Atuona, Hiva-Oa, Aperiri, 1922.

O Nakohu.

O au Kaoha tuuhoa Koakoau itave tekao ipatumai
to Brunnec; Na Brunnec paki mai iau, tuu onotia Kao-
ha oko au iave; Atahi au ame tao ave oe itiki iau Aua
oto maimai omua ahee taua I Menike ua ite au Ta
Panama ohia umetao au ua hokotia au eoe Ite aoe.

Mea meitai ote mahina ehee mai oe I Tahiti ahaka ite
mai oe iau Eavei tau I Tahiti etahi Otaua jfiti tia mai
mei Tahiti Ta maimai oe eavei tau I Tahiti Patu mai
oe itatahi hamani nau naete inoa Brunnec.

Eahaa iapati mai oe ukoana iau totaua pae ua pao
tuu tekao iave Kaoha oe iti haa metaino iau tihe ite
nei mouehua Upeau oe iau eiva ehua ua Vei hakaua
taua oia tau ete taiene ohua iva ehua.

Kaoha nui I Obriand.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 501

Feom Exploding Eggs

Atuona, Hiva-Oa, April, 1922.

It is I, Nakohu, always, my dear master, I have
been very glad to receive news of you by Le Brunnec,
and I have seen that you have not forgotten me.

It has given me much sorrow that I did not go with
you. I should have seen Panama and many things,
but I was afraid that you would grow tired of me and
sell me to other Americans.

If it is true that you will return here, write to me in
advance by Le Brunnec, and I will go to get you in
Papeete. For your stay in Atuona, fear nothing. I
have now a nice house of my own on the edge of the
river. There you will live and it will be my wife who
will do the cooking and I will go to get the food for
all of us; that will be much better than before.

I am very happy that you have not forgotten me in
so long. It is true that you had told me that you would
come back before nine years. I shall wait always.

Love to you, Obriand.

502 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Letter from Malicious Gossip

Atuona, Hiva-Oa, lunio, 1915.
E tuu ona hoa :

U Koana i au taoe hama ni, koakoa oko au i te ite i
ta oe tau te kao. A oe e koe te peau o Mohotu Vehine
hae, i te a te tekao, mimi, pake, namu, Tahiatini, aoe i
koe tola, ate, totahi teoko, tohutohui toia hee, mehe
ihepe Purutia i tihe mai nei io matou. Titihuti, na
mate ite hitoto. Te moi a Kake ua mate ite hitoto, i
tepo na mate, titahi, popoui ua mate, tatahi, popoui ua
mate, titahi, popoui ua mate, te moupuna o Titihuti.
U fanau au i te tama e moi o (EHzabethe Taavaupoo)
toia inoa pahoe kanahau tautau oko, aoe e hoa e koe to
mana metao ia oe, ua inu matou i te kava kona oko
Bronec, kona oko Tahiapii, kona oko au, ia tihe to matou
metao ia oe, ua too matou i te pora Kava a la sante, te
Freterick. Ena ua tuu atu nei i te ata na oe, upeau au
ia ia Lemoine a tuu mai te ata na Freterick. Mea nui
tau roti i tenei u fafati au e ua, roti ua tuu i una ou, mea
Kaoha ia oe, me ta oe vehine. Kaoha atu nei A poro
me Puhei ia oe, Kaoha atu nei Moetai kamuta ia oe.
Kaoha atu nei Nakohu.

Kaoha atu nei Timoia oe, Kaoha nui Kaoha nui Ua
pao tete kao.

Apae, umoi e koe tooe metao ia matou.

Nau na tooe hoa.

Tavahi.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 503

Atuona, Hiva-Oa, June, 1915.
Ah my dear friend:

I have received your letter. I was very happy to
have news of you.

Ghost Girl has not forgotten and still says, "Dance,
tobacco, rum."

Many Daughters is not over her sickness; she is
worse; when she walks she rolls like the Prussian ship
that came here.

Titihuti died of dysentery. The little daughter of
Kake died of dysentery. The one died in the evening,
Titihuti; in the morning the little girl of Titihuti died.
I have given birth to a little daughter; her name is
Elizabeth Taavaupoo, a pretty little girl, healthy and
plump.

We have not stopped thinking of you, dear friend.
We drank kava. Happy was Le Brunnec, happy was
Tahiapii (sister of Tavati, the little woman in blue).
I too was happy. Our thoughts went out to you.

We took the bowl of kava and drank to the health of
Frederick. Here I send you as a present my picture.
I told Le Moine to take my photograph for you.

I have many roses now; I took two of them which I
put on my head as a souvenir for you and your lady.
In this letter you have the love of Aporo and Puhei,
of Moetai, the carpenter, and of Nakohu and of
Timoteo.

Great love to you; great love to you.

I have finished speaking; farewell, and may you not
forget us in your thoughts.

I, your friend,

Malicious Gossip.

504 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Letter from Mouth of God

E tuu ona hoa:

E patu atu nei au i tenei hamani ia oe me tou Kaoha
nui. Mea meitai matou paotu. E tiai nei au i taoe
hamani, me te Kakano pua, me te mana roti, u haa mei
— tai au i titahi keke fenua kei oko, mea tanu roti. Eia
titahi mea ace au e kokoa koe nui oe i kokoa koe nui
oe i kaoha mai ian Koakoa oko nui matou i taoe hamani
A patu oe i titahi hamani i tooe hoa, o Vai Etienn ena
ioto ote Ami Koakoa, Apatu oe ia Vehine hae ena i tohe
ahi, o te haraiipe.

E na Tahiatini i Tarani me L'Hermier, Mea meitai
a fiti mai oe i Atuona nei Kanahau oko to matou fenua
me he fenua Farani meitaioko tu uapu O Hinatini ena
ioto ote papu meitai Kaoha atu nei tooe hoa Timo ia
oe, u tuhaa ia mei a oe, e aha a, ave oe i tiihaa meia ia.

E metao anatu ia ia oe. Kaoha atu nei Kivi ia oe,
E hee anatu i te ika hake Ua pao te tekao ^aoha nui.

Tavahi T, Mm. Timotheo.

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 505

Ah my dear friend:

I write you this letter to send you my good wishes.
We are all well. I have awaited in vain a letter from
you with the flower seeds you promised me. I have
inherited a very large piece of land where I could plant
roses.

We have been very sorry that you have not given us
more of your news. We have missed you much.

If you wish to write to your friend Vai Etienne, he
is in heaven far away.

As for Ghost Girl, she must have fallen into hell.

Many Daughters' soul must have rejoined I'Hermier
in France.

You would do well to return to Atuona. Our land
is very beautiful — our roads like those in France.

Vanquished Often is dead, but she must be in para-
dise.

Your friend, Timoteo, sends you greeting. If you
have forgotten him, he has not forgotten you. Come
back and we will again drink the kava together.

Kivi tells me that he still thinks of you and that he
still goes fishing.

It is finished.

Kaoha nui, Mouth of God.

506 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Letter from Le Brunnec to Frederick O'Brien at

Sausalito, California.

(Translation.)

Atuona, Hiva-Oa, June, 1922.
Cher ami:

You ask me what has become of Barbe Narbonne,
of the valley of Taaoa. I will tell you briefly, and
probably some of what I shall say you already know.
She was married to Wilhelm Lutz, the Tahauku trader,
in Tahiti, and all went well. Her mother was at the
wedding, but not Mana, his long-time companion in
Taiohae and Atuona. The married pair occupied the
upper floor of the German firm's big store. There was
much gaiety among the Germans and her Tahitian
friends. For the first time Barbe rode in an automo-
bile, saw a moving picture, heard a band of nmsic, and
attended prize-fights. They were married at the first
of July, and on the fourteenth was celebrated the Fall
of the Bastille, with tremendous hulas, much champagne,
and speeches by the governor, and even by the friendly
Germans, such as Monsieur Lutz.

Helas! The S charnhorst and Gneisenau, the kaiser's
cruisers, came here to Atuona, robbed my store, took
Jensen, the Dane, and steamed to Tahiti. When the
authorities there saw them, they must fire a pop-gun at
them, and provoke in turn a rain of six-inch shells. A
Chinese was killed, every one ran to the woods, and
many stores were set on fire and burned.

When the cruisers were gone. Monsieur Lutz and all

ATOLLS OF THE SUN 507

the Germans were imprisoned on Motu-Uta, the beauti-
ful little islet a thousand feet from Lovaina's Annexe
Hotel. Madame Lutz was reproached by the church,
the government, and by every one not in prison, for
marrying the "animal" Lutz, and immediately they be-
gan to give her a divorce on that very ground — that the
husband was a German, and therefore not a human be-
ing, but an animal. It did not take long, and again
she was Mademoiselle Narbonne.

Now she was free, rich, and in civilization. She
danced and sang and was dressed in your American
clothes, for no ships came from France. But, as in
Atuona, rumors began that she was leprous. That did
not matter much to the Tahitians who, if they like one,
care nothing for what one has, but the whites ceased to
be in her company. They did not say aloud what they
thought, but only that she had loved a German.

Mana went every day of good weather in a little
canoe about the islet of Motu-Uta, at a certain dis-
tance prescribed by the guards, and made a gesture to
Monsieur Lutz, who sat or stood within an enclosure
and looked out to sea. Poor Lutz! He died of an
aneurism, or, if you will, of a broken Prussian heart.

Mademoiselle Narbonne one day went toward Pape-
noo. At Faaripoo she saw the inclosure of the lepro-
sarium, where the three or four score lepers are con-
fined. She returned to the Marquesas Islands.

JPauvre file! Personne n'a voulu se marier avec elle
et elle vit avec un vieuoo Canaque de Taaoa. Elle est
retournee a la hrousse — Poor girl! Nobody wants to
marry her and she lives with an old Kanaka of Taaoa.
She has returned to the jungle.

508 ATOLLS OF THE SUN

I will tell you, my friend, that no matter what Le-
moal has said, or her own fears, Mademoiselle Nar-
bonne is not a leper. But the sorcery of the taua has
ended her. These Marquesans, even if half white, are
yet heathen.

Daughter of the Pigeon is dead of tuberculosis.
Ghost Girl died of influenza in Tahiti, where she had
gone to continue her joyous life. Peyral and his white
daughters have fled to France. Exploding Eggs has
taken the daughter of Titihuti; and her husband, from
whom he seized her, is content to live with them. Gov-
ernor L'Hermier des Plantes is governor of the Congo.
Song of the Nightingale is in prison for making cocoa-
nut rum. Seventh Man Who Is So Angry has lost his
wife of tuberculosis. Vanquished Often died of leprosy
in childbirth. Le Moine, the artist, went mad and is
dead. Grelet, the Swiss, is dead. Pere David, Pere
Simeon, Pere Victorin, are well, as all the nuns. Jim-
my Kekela is well; his sister is shut up in a leper hos-
pital. McHenry has been expelled from Tahiti for sell-
ing alcoholic liquors to the natives of the Paumotus.
Lemoal is dead. Hemeury Fran9ois and Scallamera
are dead. Vai Etienne, son of Titihuti, is dead. Com-
Tnissaire Bauda went to the wars.

I have named my second child after you, Frederick.
You remember her mother. At Peace, the sister of Mali-
cious Gossip. We dwell in comfort and happiness.
Return to live with us.

Votre devoue

Le Brunnec.

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Full text of "Atolls of the sun; with many illustrations from paintings, drawings and photographs"

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