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THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

.7 Day- Dream."

[Frontispiece.

The Log of an Island
Wanderer

Notes of Travel in the
Eastern Pacific

By
Edwin Pallander

Author of "Across the Zodiac," etc.

With 32 Illustrations

London
C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd.

Henrietta Street
1901

?mJL

To
EDWARD ENGLAND, ESQ.

OF TOORAK, MELBOURNE

THIS VOLUME

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED IN MEMORY OF

A CHARMING SUMMER SPENT IN THE

ISLES AND ENCHANTED GARDENS

OF AUSTRALASIA

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. IN AUCKLAND— THE DEFEAT OF TEWTOX .. . . 7

II. THE OCEAN OF KIWA 17

III. THE ISLE OF ORANGES 2$

IV. QUEEN MAKAE — JACKY — OFFICIALISM .... 34

V. MISSIONARY LAW — RAHERl'S DIPLOMA .... 43

VI. THE ISLE OF FAIR WOMEN 56

VII. CHINAMEN— MILITARY — " VI ET ARMIS " ... 70

VIII. A FASHODA IDYLL 8l

IX. OFFICIALISM— A STUDY IN RESPONSIBILITIES ... 91
X. TOUR OF THE ISLAND — A CHRISTENING — DRIVING

PECULIAR . . . IOI

XI. TOUR OF THE ISLAND (continued)— INDUSTRIES . -113

XII. THE OCEAN OF MARAMA 124

XIII. TERAUPO AND THE UNION JACK 137

XIV. BORA-BORA AND THE HOOLA-HOOLA 144

xv. "PAKE RAA TAI" (THE EBBING OF THE TIDE) . . 157

XVI. AN INTERLUDE 167

XVII. THE ISLES OF THIRST — A RUN IN A NATIVE SCHOONER 172

XVIII. ANAA — LIFE ON A CORAL ATOLL 190

xix. CHALLONER'S ANGEL 201

XX. MAKEMO — SURF-RIDING — SHARKS 211

XXI. THE WHITE DEVIL OF MAKEMO 217

XXII. HIKUERU AND THE PEARL-FISHERY 226

XXIII. HIVAOA — MISSIONARIES — THE CRUCIFIXION OF CRADOCK 235

XXIV. MISSIONARIES — VISIT TO A LEPER VILLAGE . ... 243
XXV. NUKAHI.VA — A CANNIBAL QUEEN — PICNICS — CONVICTS . 254

XXVI. THE STORY OF JOHN HILLYARD 265

XXVII. A NUKAHIVA GOAT-DRIVE 273

XXVIII. TAHITI AGAIN — PAPEETE IN GALA 284

XXIX. TAHITIAN SOCIETY . . 300

XXX. NATIVE WIFEDOM — A WH1TY-BROWN STUDY . . -313

List of Illustrations

" A Day- Dream" . . . . . . . Frontispiece

Up the Valley, Rarotonga ... . . To face page 32

A South Sea Royalty ...... „ „ 36

Picking Papaws, Rarotonga .... „ „ 46

Papeete, from the Sea ..... „ „ 60

Place de 1'Ancienne Prison, Papeete ... „ „ 66

A Remittance- Man's Dwelling .... „ „ 70

Marketing, Papeete „ ,,72

Terii Areva ........ „ „ 82

Fautaua Valley . „ „ 86

Broom Road, Papeete ,, ,, 94

Faaa Point, Tahiti . . . . , . „ „ 106

A Lesson in Dancing . . . ' . . . „ „ no

" Where mountain spirits prate to river sprites" „ „ 114

Drying Copra, Tahiti „ „ 116

Weeding Sugar-Cane . . . . . . „ „ 120

Kanaka carrying Faies (Plantains) . . . „ „ 122

Landing-Place, Huahine . . . . „ ,,130

A Hoola-hoola, Tahiti . . . . . „ ,,152

Beach Road, Bora- Bora . . . . » „ „ 160

A Picnic, Fautaua . „ „ 170

Avenue Bruat, Papeete . . . . . „ ,,178

A Trip on the Lagoon, Anaa . . . . „ ,,194

After the Day's Work, Paumotu Islands . . „ ,,196

A Makemo Schoolboy's Holiday . . . „ ,,216

Pearl-Diving in Hikueru „ „ 232

Girls in Canoe „ „ 240

Group of Natives, Marquesas Islands . „ „ 246

Jimmy Gibson „ „ 260

Roasting Bread-Fruit „ „ 264

Three Beauties, Tahiti „ „ 296

A Picnic, Fautaua „ „ 308

The Log of an Island
Wanderer

CHAPTER I

IN AUCKLAND— THE DEFEAT OF TEWTOX

" 'Twas beyond a joke

And enough to provoke
The mildest and best-tempered fiend below."

— INGOLDSBY.

AUCKLAND is the most respectable city in the
world.

The exact reason for this is difficult to deter-
mine. External appearance has a good deal to
do with it. The long, prim, soberly ugly streets
scarifying the pale heavens with their network of
telephone wire ; the chequered squareness of the
harbour frontage, and its rows of orderly steam-
boat funnels and glittering acres of plate-glass ;
the innocently temperate suggestions of those
ever-recurring " Coffee " Palaces ; the rows of
painted villas moulding themselves so persua-
sively to the curve of the hills — as beautifully
uniform in style and feeling as no doubt are the

The Log of an Island Wanderer

souls and political convictions of the occupants
— the prevalence of greys and greens in the
general colour-scheme ; the Puritanical hymn-
book air of the Union Company's clerks ; the
sombre copses of pine and cypress, and the end-
less frivolity-rebuking cemetery.

Maybe the climate has something to do with
it. The Auckland climate is, during the major
portion of the year, the softest, warmest, gentlest
thing imaginable. It is as mild as the kiss of a
curate on the cheek of a spinster. To realise
it adequately you should cling passionately to
something and think of crushed strawberries. I
know not whether holiness is of the line and
plummet, but if it be, Auckland is contracting for
a race of angels.

Auckland was not built in a day. Its growth
was as decently slow as everything in it. Auck-
land did not shoot up like a nouveau riche. It
began by honestly serving its apprenticeship.
Those were the days when, in the guise of
pioneer, it earned its living by the sweat of its
brow and the sureness of its aim, feasting mag-
nificently, knife in hand, between the rotting
timber-piles and the drifting camp-smoke — days
of the axe, the forge, the war-drum.

Auckland came of age, as most healthy scions
do, on the front doorstep. To that party came

In Auckland — the Defeat of Tewtox

from across the seas the merchant, the capitalist,
the grievance, the man-who-was-good, the woman
with a mission. The tone of Auckland's ances-
tral abode changed. A king arose who knew
not the pioneer, and he formed a kingdom of
Ledger — with inky-fingered courtiers and souls
to be saved — all the conquering battle-line of a
speckless bureaucracy.

Following the usual course of merchant-princes,
Auckland next set to work to unearth for itself
a pedigree. It was a queer one, rather — extend-
ing on one side to Lombard Street, on the other
to Hongi Heke — but the frames of the ancestors
were heavy in gold and carried weight with
the querulous. Auckland cultivated a paunch
swollen with intestinal red tape, learned to
eschew champagne, and go in for dry sherry,
to broaden her shirt-front and her vowels, to
eat cold beef on Sunday, to be grey, solid, heavy
— English. Like Trabb's boy, Auckland said
to her old archetype, the pioneer, " Don't know
yah." And the archetype, when he didn't drink
himself blind, drifted sadly away to the gum-
fields and hated the usurper. . . .

I had just arrived at this interesting stage in
my musings when some one — Johnson of the
Ovalau — stopped me abruptly and asked me
whether I cared to witness a cock-fight.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

A cock-fight ! In Auckland ! The thing
seemed weirdly incongruous. But was I not
booked for a tour in the South Pacific, and ought
I to be astonished at anything ? In most cases
where such an entertainment were offered one
would decline, and hastily — but in the present
case there were reasons for making the thing
especially interesting. Every one in Auckland
had heard of the redoubtable fighting-cock Tew-
tox, the tailless champion of the Pacific, who had
mortally inconvenienced every bird of his own
size from Rarotonga to the Pelews. Tewtox
was a wonderful creature. He was the property
of some sailor of the Union Company, and his
owner had made a fortune over him. Whenever
his vessel landed at an island it was Tewtox's
habit to challenge some local bird and send
him home bleeding and eyeless in less than ten
minutes. Indeed his victories had been so
frequent that the whole of Auckland — or that
section of it familiar with the technicalities of this
noble sport — took an interest in his movements,
and the first officer of the Ovalau actually had
a portrait of this talented fowl hanging on his
cabin partition.

It appeared that the challenging party were the
crew of the Pedro Valverde, a two-hundred-ton
schooner from Valparaiso. They were not known

In Auckland — the Defeat of Tewtox

to have any feathered celebrity on board, and
some curiosity was felt as to whom they would
present as a champion.

Johnson would willingly have attended the
performance himself, but Captain Pond of the
Ovalau was a man of morals strict, and was
known to disapprove of fighting in any form, and
cock-fighting in particular. So Johnson con-
tented himself with introducing me to a couple
of guides and wishing me all imaginable luck.
The sailors twisted me down along the harbour
into a region of skeleton hulks, rusting propeller-
blades, rotting varnish, and piles of yellow
lumber. In a side-street was a staid-looking
public-house with scarlet blinds, and the legend
"Coffee Palace" broidered in gold over the door.
In a dark passage whither we were admitted, a
fat man with a bottle-nose bounced out on us
like a puppet at a show, and on being told we
came to see the fight started dramatically, and
pretended to be shocked. Then he changed
tactics. He backed me mysteriously into a
corner, and with a wink :

"Sir," he said, "this ain't going to be quite
what you might call a fair fight. In fact, it's a
bit of a plant — and rough on the champion. But
if you should notice anything queer, for the love
of God don't let on — twiggy-voo ? "

The Log of an Island Wanderer

I didn't twiggy in the least, but I somehow
understood that the days of Tewtox were num-
bered, and that a scheme was rife for his im-
mediate smashment.

In a vast room lit by dingy windows an audi-
ence of about fifty sailors were collected, sitting
pipe in mouth on long benches ranged against
the walls. The place had once been a billiard-
room, but the racks had been dismantled and the
lamps abolished. The atmosphere of tobacco
made my eyes smart. A side-door led to another
apartment where a major-domo was dispensing
drinks. It was the most genial gathering I had
yet seen in Auckland.

Some one called Time. There were cheers
and clapping of hands from the Union sailors.
A canvas bag was produced, and out of it stepped
the redoubtable champion Tewtox. In appear-
ance he was a small bird, but the fact that his
feathers had been closely clipped and his tail cut
short may have altered his looks somewhat.
He was in first-chop fighting trim. He strutted
boldly to the centre of the room, pecked medita-
tively at a fallen orange-peel, flapped his clipped
wings, and uttered a defiant crow.

"He's all right," said the President, a lanky
man with iron-grey side whiskers; " bring on your
bird, you lubbers."

In Auckland — the Defeat of Tewtox

For answer there was a mysterious shuffling in
the darkness of the bar-room door behind me and
an oath from some one, hurt apparently. A second
big bag was placed on the floor, and out waddled
one of the strangest creatures imaginable. Its
form was that of a monstrous fowl, but there was
not a solitary feather on its body — all one could
see was a white swollen bag of flesh that quivered
and shivered and sank down in a lump, apparently
unable to move. On its head — or the portion of
its body where its head might have been — some
one had fixed with some sticky mixture a scarlet
flannel rag, similar to a cock's comb, and round
its neck were more frills of some pink substance.
There was a howl of derision and excitement.

"It's a turkey." "No, it ain't." "Pass it
round, and let's have a look at it." Then the
voice of the President shouting "Order, gentle-
men— order-r-r, please."

What the bird actually was it was impossible
to see. However, here it was, and Tewtox was
going to fight it. Any objection which the latter's
owner might have experienced in allowing his
bird to tackle a stranger of doubtful parentage
was silenced by the rum he had drunk and by
the curiosity of the rest of the audience.

" Go it, old boy ! " he shouted, waving his
cigar,

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Tewtox clucked encouragingly. He saw the
white lump of flesh, the beak, and the wobbling
red comb. Some instinct might have warned
him of possible danger lurking under that thea-
trical disguise, but success had made Tewtox as
giddy as his master, and he was stuffed as full of
conceit as a lady novelist of adjectives.

Tewtox protruded his head twice inquiringly,
rustled his quills in warlike fashion, crowed — then
seeing his antagonist showed no signs of life, ad-
vanced with a rush and pecked the flabby stranger
smartly in the side.

The mysterious one made no movement. Per-
haps the loss of its feathers had taken the spirit
out of it. It still lay quietly on the floor, its poor
head with the dangling strips of flannel turning
moodily from side to side as though trying to
fathom why it was brought here, and with what
object it was being tortured. There were cries
of " Shame ! " a crash of glass from the bar, and
a burst of laughter.

The noise roused Tewtox's spark of ambition.
He commenced dancing about like an indiarubber
ball, swelling and strutting to and fro, impudently
turning his back on his antagonist, and taking
pains to evince his contempt generally. Then
suddenly rushing to the attack he treated the poor
quivering body to a series of sharp pecking bites.

In Auckland — the Defeat of Tewtox

Even a skinless bird has limits to its endurance.
The stranger's eye lightened. It seemed to
realise that something was going on — that it was
being purposely maltreated, or worse — publicly
insulted. From underneath that formless mass a
great claw protruded menacingly, and as Tewtox
rashly swooped down a third time, the claw caught
him by the neck, and held him as in a vice.

There was a howl of excitement. Down went
the great beak, and before any one could realise
it Tewtox's head parted with a snap from his
body, and Tewtox himself rolled over bleeding
and fluttering in the agonies of death ! At the
same moment the strange bird rose, and there,
before us, tailless and disreputable, its artificial
comb wobbling foolishly on its poor bare head,
glaring round on the assembly with warlike fiery
eye — was the most ferocious bald-headed eagle
ever seen outside a menagerie !

Nothing can describe the fury of Tewtox's
owner when he found how he had been tricked.
The Valverde sailors tried to hustle the eagle
into the bag, but the bird's blood was up, and he
made his beak meet in the calf of his aggressor
in a way that showed he intended to stand no
more trifling.

"You rascally, macaroni-chewing, dish-washing
son of a dago ! " howled Tewtox's master, kicking

The Log of an Island Wanderer

the eagle aside and grabbing the nearest sailor
by the collar. " By your leave, gentlemen — no
fighting here ! " shouted the major-domo, but he
was too late, for the majority of the guests were
thirsting for a row with the Portuguese sailors,
and the room was filled with struggling, pushing
humanity. The tide surged down the passage
and into the street, smashing the stained-glass
doors and littering the pavement with fragments.
The last I saw as I vanished round the corner
was a lame white bird skipping in the mud and
the president trying to hit it with a soda-water
bottle. Next day I was on board the Ovalau
bound for Rarotonga.

CHAPTER II

THE OCEAN OF KIWA

" Our landwind is the breath
Of sorrows kissed to death,

And joys that were —
Our ballast is a rose,
Our way lies where God knows,

And love knows where."

IT was Tuesday, the 29th of September, and
Auckland had donned her mourning- dress of
rain -soaked wharves and dripping hawsers.
Rangitoto was hidden behind driving mist-
wraiths, and the trailing smoke of the north-
shore ferries accentuated the general atmosphere
of gloom, as lilies do a funeral. Finally, by way
of making the place a little wetter and more in
keeping with its surroundings, one of the men
started playing with a hose in energetic pretence
of washing the decks.

The Ovalau was a vessel of some 1250 tons
burden, with a diminutive engine that looked like
a toy and a miniature aping of the lines of a big
ocean steamer which would have been funny if it
hadn't been uncomfortable. The saloon was very

17 B

The Log of an Island Wanderer

far astern — which meant eating our meals to a
tremolo screw accompaniment — and there were
one or two hatchways that smelt as though the
man who designed them were decaying under-
neath. The only passengers were a French
military man and his wife, for Tahiti ; a genial
but sea-sick French doctor, and a tall handsome
lady with gray hair and eyes to match, whom
Pond introduced me to last night as Mrs. Irwin.

There was no cheering as we moved off — nor
would I have been in the mood to participate if
there had been. Thank God, sea-sickness and
heart-sickness don't go well together. The latter
had the start, but long before the Ovalau rounded
the Barrier light Neptune won in a canter. I
crawled meekly in between the white sheets of
my bunk, and resigned myself to misery.

Oct. 2. — On my sea-legs at last. I met the
little French captain in the companion. He was
affable and communicative — full of fun, a typical
Parisian. He has served his country succes-
sively in Algiers, Tonkin, Dahomey, and Pondi-
chery — but it is difficult to draw him out on any
subject connected with these countries. Scenery
or natives don't interest him. They are bar-
barians. They have no monde, no blue-book,
no opera. They have never even heard of the
Prince de Sagan. They are not men, they are

The Ocean of Kiwa

existences. And here — on the very threshold of
my fairy-tale, I get a preliminary glimpse of the
greatest and most failure-breeding weakness of
French colonial enterprise — officialism.

To rule, to command, to drill regiments into
scurrying sham-fights down tropical valleys, to
dance attendance on mysterious " functions "
beset with natives in livery, and gentlemen
whose decorations might — boiled down — make
very tolerable bullet-proof waistcoats, to re-
christen local byways after Parisian thorough-
fares, to play "parties" of dearie, to draw the
francs fresh and fresh, to return home with the
glitter of outlandish dignitaryship clinging to
one's name and urging one on to fresh social
dazzle — such and no others are the goals striven
for by young France in her policy of colonial
exiledom. But of the life, manners, history of
the country, not a word. They are dead letters.
Our little captain is, on the whole, a great deal
more intelligent than the average run of epau-
letted miscreant one meets in the South Pacific,
but even he is mildly amused at my keeping a
diary. What can there be to record on a tramp
across an abominable ocean full of savages ? I
tell him I never go to bed without writing up my
diary.

"And I," he retorts, drawing himself up, but

The Log of an Island Wanderer

leering amusedly at me out of the corner of his
eye to watch the effect of his words, " I never
go to bed without praying for the death of the
English."

The bloodthirsty little mosquito !

Oct. 4. — The ocean of Kiwa! The name
is weird, barbaric, full of mystery. And it was
here, in these very waters that the Ovalaus
propeller-blades are thrashing so remorselessly,
that the first primaeval canoe — the Mayflower
of the Maories — struggled and toiled with its
starving freight of islanders to reach the pro-
mised land, the bleak North Island of New
Zealand, with its spouting volcanoes and hissing
lakes of sulphur.

Whence came they ? No one knows for cer-
tain. They came from an island where a king
ruled by the name of Pomare : this naturally
suggests Tahiti, but just as you get ready to kill
the fatted calf in honour of your superior astute-
ness, that disgusting nuisance, the antiquary,
shivers your dream to atoms with the news that
there was no family of that ilk in Tahiti so long
ago. Queen Aimata Pomare is a recent institu-
tion entirely.

And so on — and so on. The more you dive
into that fell legend the more deeply you flounder
in the mist of contradictions. Best leave it alone

The Ocean of Kiwa

altogether ; at least leave the serious side of it
alone ; it reads better as a romance If you are
so minded you can even reconstruct it as a
picture. The details spring up only too readily.
You see the long clumsy boat with its mildewed
crust of sea-salt, the ragged sail of coco-matting,
the bowed line of men, the haggard faces of the
women — the tears, prayers, curses when each
succeeding dawn showed no limit to the merci-
less waste of water. And then that thrice-
blessed, glorious morning, when the survivors of
that perishing crew lifted their aching eyes to
see the long grey mountains of Coromandel
looming through the yellow sunrise. Think of
it ! The sailings of Columbus and Vasco da
Gama must have been a fool to the cruise of
that tiny dug-out canoe. Two thousand two
hundred miles across a tropical sea, with a bunch
of rotten bananas and a few miserable calabashes
of water to prolong your agony. The bare idea
makes one shiver.

But I am alone in my enthusiasm. Neither
the captain nor the doctor take much stock in
legends. Ideals become as brittle as glass on a
Union steamer, and hardly have you got the roof
on your palace of crystal when — presto ! — the real
steps in and crumbles everything to dust.

Oct. 5. — The real has stepped in at last. A

The Log of an Island Wanderer

shark has swallowed our log. The spinning vane
of metal trailing in the wake of the ship attracted
the creature's attention, and he bolted it, mis-
taking it for a fish. Such accidents are not
uncommon about here, and Captain Pond tells
me this is the second log he has lost since the
Ovalau commenced running.

Sharks, both of the land and sea variety, are
plentiful in the islands, and over the Papeete club
tables the shark-liar is as common and as vener-
able an institution as the golf or bicycle liar is
with us. Cuddy, the purser of the Ovalau, is a
man of sparkling resourcefulness. When the
Upolu — Cuddy's first ship — was lying at anchor
in Levuka some years back, the men used to
amuse themselves shark-fishing. It was a tedious
business at first, for the float — an empty biscuit-
tin soldered watertight — required watching, and
the long spells of waiting ate into Cuddy's soul.
His natural ingenuity suggested a way out, how-
ever. He undid the line from the winch, and
knotted it to the lever of the steam-whistle.
After that the crew used to be electrified by
blasts about once every hour, and the whizz of
Cuddy's coat-tails as he bounded up the ladder
to answer the summons and secure the prey.
Sharks came plentifully enough during the next
twenty-four hours. The Upolu 's decks reeked

The Ocean of Kiwa

of fishiness, and excitement flagged. The game
grew more wary, and bites were few and far be-
tween. Cuddy began to think he had sharked
the ocean dry. The captain of the Upolu was a
genial old salt of pronounced Irish extraction.
There was a long list of invoices to be made out,
and Cuddy chewed the end of his pen-holder
while the captain sat on the sofa and suggested
amendments. Presently, as the fifteenth invoice
was being dated — came a triumphant, screeching
blast of the whistle. Cuddy turned pale. He
would have given his month's salary to drop the
invoices and dash on deck, but the commander's
eye was on him and he must bide his time.

Whoo — oo — oo — up! — this time more viciously.
" A ten-footer ! " said Cuddy to himself with a
thrill, and in his excitement he mis-spelt his name
on the sixteenth invoice.

Whoo — whoo — whoo — whoop !

" Tare-an-ouns ! " said the skipper, who knew
nothing of Cuddy's fishing tactics, " have they
struck the English fleet or what ? Spin up on
deck and see what's the matter, like a good
fellow."

Off scrambled the purser. As he reached the
door of the companion there were three frantic
screeches, a shock, and a roar of angry steam as
the big thirty-foot monster dragged whistle, pipe,

The Log of an Island Wanderer

and steel-line after him into the ocean. The
damage done was sufficient to make a big hole
in Cuddy's salary, but the loss of the fish vexed
him more than the money, and he has nursed a
covert distrust of the shark tribe ever since.

The log has been replaced, and as the sun sets
on our shark yarn we have the satisfaction of
knowing that we are exactly one hundred miles
from Rarotonga.

CHAPTER III

THE ISLE OF ORANGES

" The gushing fruits that Nature gave untilled,
The wood without a path but where they willed."

—THE ISLAND.

I WAS awakened this morning by some one
shouting my name on deck. The doctor put his
head in through the port-hole, looking, in his volu-
minous squash hat with the pale light of morning
behind him, rather like an etching by Vandyck.

We have sighted Rarotonga. As I scramble
out of my berth long shadows are creeping up
through the grey mist to starboard, set off at
intervals by isolated lights — natives fishing on
the reef. The screw slows down, and as we
draw near the shallows the tall mountains start
out like developing photographs. Then the sun
comes out, and as the luminous spears strike the
floating wilderness of cloud overhead, the world
— the lovely South Pacific world — flashes on our
delighted eyes in a blaze of life and colour that
sets feeble pen and ink at zero. This is what
I see.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Three pointed mountain -peaks, their upper
saddles bathed in yellow sunshine, their bases
lost in clustering shadow save where some strag-
gling ray shoots its glory across a slope of
feathery palm-tops. Near by the waters are
roaring on the reef, and a layer of opal mist,
catching the light of the distant dawn -fires,
flashes it back in a myriad sparkles. By-and-
by, as the day grows whiter, the long roadstead
with its clusters of coral-built houses peers shyly
from between the palm-fringes, while the hills
above broaden out into a velvety sea of peaks,
crests, plateaux — reflecting and remodelling the
light in a thousand facets of green. It is a
vision of Paradise.

The Ovalaus launch put us ashore shortly
before seven o'clock, and we went for a peaceful
walk along the beach-road. These same beach-
roads are in their way an institution of the South
Sea Islands, and indeed are about the only really
practicable roadsteads these places possess. Even
in the bigger islands — Tahiti, for instance — no
effort has been made to hew a path into the in-
terior, and the Broom Road, which tamely follows
the sea, is your only salvation. One disadvan-
tage is the absence of bridges. Rivers are not
supposed to be a hindrance. As long as you are

within the postal radius you are all right. Leave

The Isle of Oranges

the district — and you are forced to swim. To a
native, clad in a crown of flowers and a loin-cloth,
this comes merely in the light of a refresher — but
to a European it presents its inconveniences.

Rarotonga is — at least in the neighbourhood of
the capita], Avarua — no longer the wilderness
of pandanus and bamboo that it was in the days
of Captain Cook, but enough of its beauties re-
main intact to render it yet interesting to the
artist in search of the beautiful. The majority
of the houses — whose modern-looking iron roofs
are to a certain extent mitigated by the gorgeous
tapestry of flowering creeper — are surrounded by
small gardens, and separated from the road by
walls of sun-baked coral, resembling the stone
fences of Galway or Armagh in their loose and
artistic irregularity. Occasionally a practical
shanty of corrugated iron, its verandah disfigured
by a flaming poster culled from the poetry-mur-
dering archives of Auckland or Sydney, brings
you back to the workaday world — but on the
whole you can dream your time away in lovely
Avarua without being more disillusioned than
anywhere else within the tropics.

In the post-office — which is a small ramshackle
structure of shingle, with a score of Kanakas in
shirts and blue trousers loafing on the verandah —
we were supplied with pens that would not write

The Log of an Island Wanderer

and stamps that had to be coaxed into position with
mucilage. On a small table in the back parlour,
a young man appeared — to judge by sound and
action — to be mixing a cocktail. " We only get
ice once a month," he explained apologetically,
"so we make the best of it."

There was a goodly crowd of loafers to wel-
come us as we came out. Smiling apparently
comes natural to these children of nature — I
don't think I noticed a severe or uncheerful face
among the whole collection. " They are per-
fectly happy," quoth the doctor, then— as a
logical afterthought — " they do no kind of
work."

The first glimpse of a group of Island ladies is
apt to give the over-modest bachelor a slight
shock. The costume adopted is nothing more
than a white peignoir of muslin — but the impres-
sion of deshabille is very emphatic, and neither
the loose flowing hair nor the bare arms and legs
tend to mitigate it, I assure you. As for the
men, they wear the broad panama, the scarlet
loin cloth (pareo), and cotton tunic. Some have
of late years taken to wearing duck trousers —
but the change is in no ways for the better, and
the European garb doesn't suit either the Kanaka
or the climate as well as his own airy costume.

" Hullo — well caught ! " Two tiny boys, with

The Isle of Oranges

grinning brown faces, in knickerbockers and pink
shirts, are engaged in a cricket match opposite
the gate leading to the school. An original kind
of match too — with a palm-leaf rib for bat and a
green orange for ball. Meanwhile a cluster of
girls — scarlet blossoms stuck behind their ears —
look admiringly on from the wall. Presently one
of them advances timidly with a sprig of white
tuberose, which she presents blushingly to the
doctor amid clapping of hands from the rest —
naughty, wasn't it ? But the worthy doctor has
worked many cures in these islands, and is one
of the most popular characters of the Society
group.

" And now," quoth our mentor, " what would
you like to do, gentlemen ? Pay an informal
undress visit to Queen Makae or ramble up-
country and eat oranges ? Well — um — it is only
seven-thirty, and the dear old lady may hardly
be quit of her royal slumbers. We will try the
valley."

A broad gravel walk, flanked by bushes of
flowering hibiscus and stephanotis, leads us
through a maze of sunny villas, where brown
girls are sitting by their sewing-machines — mild-
eyed, flirtation-provoking bundles of cloth and
buzz — away into the mysterious heart of the

woods. Almost before you are aware, the

The Log of an Island Wanderer

green twilight has closed in. You are in the
jungle.

Oh — the richness, the prodigal luxuriance of
those Rarotongan forests ! The sinful profusion
of fruit which a militant army of black hogs —
almost greater nature-lovers than their two-footed
superiors — are devouring in the shade of the
underbrush. The deep green of the bread-fruit,
the mangoes with their strings of rosy bulbs, the
avocas dangling their big heavy pears within
reach of your hand, the papaws like Chinese
feather-parasols, and over and above all, the lovely
areca-nut palms, nodding their plumed heads
above the beds of flowering lantana like the
guardian spirits of the glade.

And oranges — oranges everywhere ! Raro-
tonga is essentially a country of orange-trees.
Not the squat green-tubbed European version,
but massive trees as big as oaks, capable of
sheltering a hundred fugitive kings in their
spreading branches. I think a nervous horti-
culturist from Sutton or Kew would go into a
dead faint in five minutes. A scarlet glare on
the right attracts my attention — I am near a bed
of flowering canna. Farther on a sweet sickly
perfume makes my head swim. It is the blossom
of the wild ginger, a pale beautiful flower tremb-
ling on the end of its long rushes like a white

3°

The Isle of Oranges

butterfly stricken with catalepsy. There is a
suspicion of pink lilies in the pools, and long
tracts of sensitive grass wither to folded inno-
cence beneath our feet in mute rebuke at the
mortal who comes to invade the haunts of
Titania.

But who are these ? Three little maids in
blue and pink, with bags of oranges and satchels.
The eldest is chewing a piece of ginger-root and
staring us out of countenance with the unblush-
ingness of Eve before the fall. Now for a photo-
graph. The young ladies have seen a camera
before and are not a wee bit afraid of being
blasted, but show a tendency to giggle that is
annoying.

The doctor bargains with the eldest for oranges.
What is the price ? Well, properly speaking,
there is no price. Oranges in Rarotonga, like
colonels in America, are a drug in the market.
She will take anything in reason, from a kiss to
a fiver. The bag is opened and emptied on the
ground. Take your choice tan£ farani. Plenty
more where those came from. Her sister Vaitipe
— the Cinderella of the party — will shin up and
get more. A young lady climb a tree, and a tree
as tall as a mosque ! Who ever heard of such an
outrage ? Can't she though — she does — and sits
grinning in an un-Pickwickian manner on a bough,

The Log or an Island Wanderer

as indifferent to vanity and vertigo as her sister
— the one chewing the ginger-root — is to lucre
and lockjaw. Then down she comes and stands
blushingly with a load of fruit gathered in a loop
of her dress — a sort of South Sea parody of
Greuze's " cruche cassee," though our friend the
froggy won't hear of the simile.

Yes — money is of little value in Rarotonga.
The press of competition, the " sturm und drang "
of existence, have not yet fairly passed the reef-
opening. It is a moot point whether they ever
will. Nature has given the Kanaka an unlimited
grant of dolce far niente, and the requisite idle
disposition to enjoy it.

Staggering attempts at fruit export are made
occasionally. Even now as we return from our
ramble we find the wharf piled with plaited
baskets of pandanus containing bananas and cases
of green oranges. Go to D. & E.'s store in the
dusty loop to the south of Avarua. In a shady
outhouse you will find several tons of fruit piled
for exportation. Even the little smelly sea-sick
native schooners are loaded thick with odorous
cargo. But — bless you — it is only a flea-bite to
the vast productive forces of the soil, and eight-
tenths of the annual produce remain untouched.

Very different the case in our own beloved
latitudes, where — in Folkestone — you cannot get

The Isle of Oranges

a mackerel, in Skye you cannot get a terrier, in
Brussels any sort of velvet is pawned off on you
for the right sort, and in Mechlin you are told
that lace is shy that year. The Rarotongan be-
lieves in consuming his own produce, and inas-
much as an odd 1800 miles of sea separate him
from the grasping feelers of monopolists, it seems
likely that he will continue to do this to the end
of the chapter.

CHAPTER IV

QUEEN MAKAE— JACKY— OFFICIALISM

" The gentle island and the genial soil,
The friendly hearts, the feasts without a toil."

RAROTONGA is nominally governed by a British
resident — Mr. Gudgeon — and a score of petty
representatives ; in reality by the voces populi and
the picturesque machinery of chance.

They have a queen, of course ; as much from
necessity as from choice. Incidentally be it said
that a queen is as indispensable to a South Sea
Island as a tank to a theatrical company. The
Pacific is honeycombed with kingships — from one
to fifty people of royal blood being considered
the proper share for each island. The real line
of monarchs is, of course, as extinct as the dodo
— but Makae vahine (pron. Macare) and her
august spouse, Namaru, are left as landmarks in
the swamp to indicate the site of former ancient
regimes.

Makae is a dear old lady and very sociable.
She lives a quiet retiring life with her husband,
a score of attendant maidens, and "Jacky" — of

Queen Makae

which frail beauty more anon. Namaru himself
— oh, where are our introductions? The doctor
— our professed guide and protector, has gone off
to attend to a case of typhoid. Won't her Majesty
be offended ? Not a bit of it. We are tourists,
not pirates. And how do we like her island ?
Well — amazingly, and we are sinfully curious to
see her husband, good King Namaru. One of the
damsels goes to fetch him. Here he comes, the
whole six feet of him. As he grasps our hands
in his vast palm, that infidel maiden Jacky — who
is demurely plaiting a straw hat at one end of the
verandah — grins knowingly. Namaru is not a
Rarotongan born, but he is a splendid specimen
of Kanaka manhood, and though really as gentle
as a lamb, somehow impresses one as ferocious.

What will we have to drink ? A coco-nut, if
it please your Majesty. Jacky — the demure —
throws down her hat and goes to fetch one. We
hear the chops of the knife, and two lovely nuts,
the ivory rim with its crystal contents just visible
inside the smooth brown chalice, are handed us
smilingly. From her seat in the cane-chair
Makae catches the reigning merriment, and
smiles too. We have heard of her favourite
handmaiden ?

Indeed, we have — for the fame of Jacky has
gone abroad, and made her great with that

The Log of an Island Wanderer

peculiar greatness which only the completely
islandised can thoroughly appreciate. The girl's
existence has been a picturesque one. She was
originally a foundling whom Makae — who was in
need of a clever maid of honour — adopted and
brought up in the palace as her own child.
Matters went along swimmingly for some years
till, with the transition from child to womanhood,
the heart-interest developed — and it brought
trouble to Makae's menage.

Jacky fell in love. The object of her affections
— a tall, chocolate-coloured, lotus-eating Kanaka,
with an ear for music, and a soul for hoolas — was
not deemed a sufficient match for a member of
the queen's household, and, when he came round
to serenade Jacky on the accordion, he was told
to move on.

Jacky wept and dreamed of stolen interviews.
Makae, profiting by the digested lore of her own
youthful flirtations, proved an effective chaperon,
however, and poor Augustus Fitzgerald — I do
not know his other name — found himself check-
mated at every corner.

The end came one terrible day when Makae,
on brusquely entering the drawing-room, found
Jacky and her young man measuring love-ribbon
in a corner. The good queen's anger blazed.
Jacky was summoned before the household

Queen Makae — Jacky

tribunal, and ignominiously dismissed from office.
She was a resourceful girl, however. The Union
steamer Richmond was in port at the time, en
route for Tahiti. Jacky dried her tears on the
second mate's shirt-front, and begged for a pas-
sage— which was granted.

She reached Tahiti in time for the French
national/"^, and, her reputation having preceded
her, was duly lionised. Meanwhile in Rarotonga
things went from bad to worse. Makae missed
the cheerful buzz of Jacky 's sewing-machine.
Namaru couldn't find his shirt-studs. A message
of pardon was sent, and Jacky — who had been
experimenting in epaulettes in Papeete — was
duly recalled. Joy — repentance — floods of happy
tears !

Since then Jacky has had many more flirta-
tions with Augustus Fitzgerald, but has contrived
to keep the eleventh commandment serenely
through them all. There is no talk of her
moving now. She has become an institution.

Talk about institutions — if names go for any-
thing, Rarotonga has got plenty of them. After
leaving Makae's we visited the hospital — a
wooden structure buried deep in flowers at the
side of a grassy creek. There is a hospital board
of course, also a school board, a town board, and
a bored inspector of streets.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

It is positively delicious — this panoply of high-
sounding titles on a tiny coral reef in mid-ocean.
It is lovely to see a commissioner-general in
corduroys and braces. It is beautiful to see a
prince in pyjamas — or a lady mayoress flying
downhill on her bicycle, her solitary muslin shift
well up to her knees, and her straw hat bobbing
ignominiously over her shoulders. It is exquisite
to see a host of vague officials with titles as long
as a cathedral spire squabbling learnedly over
questions which any dusty jam-stealing lower-
middle "fag" would effectively settle in the
corridor between " prep " and beer-fight,

Ah, those blessed days of islandism ! when,
with the warm tropic breezes caressing our senses,
and the chatter of sleepy vahines l droning lazily
through the palm-stems, we fondly imagined our-
selves the centre of the universe, and our little
coral-dab the hub round which the wheel of
Destiny revolved. Foolish — foolish — foolish
dream !

On coming out of the hospital I noticed what
seemed like clusters of amber-coloured drops
clinging to the wooden ceiling. On nearer in-
spection they turned out to be something as
beautiful, but much more terrifying — viz., swarm-
ing masses of hornets, big enough and venomous

1 Girls.
38

Officialism

enough to kill a horse if one of those ill-used
quadrupeds chanced to offend their dignity.
They build anywhere and everywhere, and in
the winter months (June to August) they become
a positive terror. Efforts have been made of late
in some of the larger islands to suppress them by
offering money rewards for the nests — but the
preliminary thousand francs scared the French
Government, and the plan was abandoned. The
plague is all the more aggravating for the reason
that the hornets are Kanaka hornets, and with
the exception of buzzing and stinging, do no
manner of work. I can only unearth one solitary
case in which they have been known to play a
part in the economy of things — and it brings me
to the adventures of a man whose name flares in
the Rarotonga archives like a magnesium rocket
along a reef of blue-fires — A. B. Voss, Esq.

A. B. Voss was a politician of the old school.
He came to Rarotonga for the purpose of re-
forming it and saving it from perdition. He
held advanced views, and the fact that the island
was not big enough to contain them in no ways
damped his ardour. He wanted to rinse the
Augean stables. He wanted English laws —
compulsory education. The mother-tongue was
to be taught in the schools, cane in one hand,
Bible in the other. On paper this sounded mag-

The Log of an Island Wanderer

nificent, but the Kanakas didn't take kindly to
the new regime, and discontent grew apace.

With the election of a new hospital-board
trouble came to a head. There had been a vast
deal of fussing about " trusts " and " committees "
in all quarters lately, and Voss's discriminating
snobbery had wakened the spectre of jealousy
in the hearts of the simple-minded long-shore
loafers. The meeting was to be held in Osana
(Hosanna) Hall — a ramshackle structure of stone
and shingle close to Makae's. It was a grilling
day in December, and the electors came with
curses not loud but deep.

Voss came in his war-paint. Two doctors had
recently been appointed without his consent, and
the uncertainty of which way their professional
zeal would be directed filled him with jealous
dread.

The meeting was modelled on strictly European
lines. The members were ranged in a stuffy
semicircle. Voss — drops of sweat gemming his
patrician forehead — glowered darkly over his
blotting-pad and glass of water.

The balloting began. Voss divined that his
opponents were too strong for him. He called
order, stood up and made a bullying speech.
Presently — while in the act of speaking — a sight
met his gaze that brought fury with it. The

Officialism

opposing side had set two scrutineers to watch
the ballot-boxes. The lid of Voss's safety-valve
blew off.

" Hard ! " he said fiercely to the coloured wor-
thies, while the members grinned audibly. " Mr.
Vice, I demand an explanation. Remove those
men."

"Do nothing of the sort," said the leader of
the opposite side coolly — "stay where you are,
gentlemen."

Voss's shirt-collar swelled. He strode to the
door. " Police ! " he shouted.

Two half-caste Kanakas in shirts and frayed
knickerbockers ambled sleepishly in.

" Arrest those men," said Voss shortly, indi-
cating the scrutineers.

The Kanakas hesitated. The scrutineers
looked able to take care of themselves, and
some of the anti-Vossites were getting ready for
action. Voss stamped. The members laughed
approvingly.

Voss broke away into a speech, great beads of
perspiration rolling down his cheeks. " All those
in favour of law and order clear to side of hall,"
he bawled. The members separated, leaving
Voss standing by himself on the side opposed to
law. What a roar of vulgar laughter there was !
Voss was on the verge of madness.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Ha ! An idea ! Inside the locker on which he
was supposed to be sitting was a rolled-up Union
Jack, destined for festival use. Even the row-
diest of Englishmen is bound to respect his flag.
The Union Jack once unfurled, order would be
assured.

He pulled open the lid of the locker and waved
the flag in the air. Horrors ! From the folds
of cloth something brown fell with a thud on the
floor — broke — took wings and resolved itself into
the deadliest swarm of stinging yellow hornets
ever seen this side of Purgatory !

That finished the hospital-board question.
There was a general stampede. With one
accord the members made for the door. Voss
made his exit last, flicking frantically at his irate
foes with the dishonoured flag. The meeting
was adjourned.

And now I pray, if any one should be disposed
to unduly malign those yellow terrors of the island
jungle — let their charitable act in settling Voss's
electoral hash be taken into consideration, and let
them be judged leniently.

CHAPTER V

MISSIONARY LAW— RAHERI'S DIPLOMA

" On visionary schemes debate
To snatch the Rajahs from their fate,
So let them ease their hearts with prate
Of equal rights."

JUST lately an event of some importance has
taken place in Rarotonga — viz., the revision of
the old missionary laws by Mr. Gudgeon. It is
with misgivings that I touch on the subject at
all. If there be anything I loathe more than
anything else in a book of travel it is to come
across a detailed account of law-codes or political
questions. To begin with, it has an offensively,
priggishly learned appearance ; secondly, it is apt
to be very dry, and the reader who wishes to
be merely amused, and who naturally makes a
point of shunning useful or instructive information
wherever it presents itself, simply skips it, with
or without a malediction.

Such were my ideas — till I landed in Raro-
tonga and had the splendours of old missionary
law revealed to my wondering gaze. My inten-
tions faltered. My sense of humour was wiser

The Log of an Island Wanderer

than my head. I decided to lay aside prejudice
and grip the matter by the beard. It repaid me
— for it was very funny.

And who made these fantastic old laws?
Whoever he was, he had a strong appreciation
of the ridiculous, a scant smattering of pathos,
and as much ordinary humanity as a mud-dredge.
Here are a few culled at random from the lot
Korangi — the Avarua weekly paper.

The first one breathes a stern puritanical
morality worthy of Gilbert's Mikado.

" Sec. V. Any one found walking after dark,
their arm round a woman's waist, without a light
— five days' imprisonment."

The lantern is the saving element here you
see — maidens take note.

" Sec. VI. Any one found weeping over the
grave of a woman not related to him — five days'
imprisonment."

Sounds a bit apocryphal at first, doesn't it?
Oh — I see — of course. No one would be likely
to weep over a dead black lady unless he and
she had cherished immoral relations. If the lady
were your wife you would be allowed to weep all
right, I fancy — but who would weep over a mere
wife ?

" Sec. VIII. Consulting a sorcerer — three days'
imprisonment."

Missionary Law

There is a bit of egotism here, I fear. It can-
not be merely for the purpose of discouraging a
belief in the supernatural — for the latter's exis-
tence is in a way the best excuse for the mis-
sionary's. No — we shall have to cut the matter
finer. It is a question of monopoly. There is
only one rightful dealer in supernatural stickjaw
in the island — that is, the missionary. Anything
else in the same line might mean cessation or
depression of business. Avaunt ! brother palmist.
J uggler with beads — vade retro Sathanas.

Now come two delicious bits of humour. They
must be read together : —

"Sec. VII. Illicit intercourse with a married
woman — ten days.

" Sec. XI. Dynamiting fish in rivers — thirty

i i "
days!

This is utilitarianism in its highest sense.
Dynamited fish are no use to any one, but the
injured lady, though false, may still be fair, and
also quite capable of doing her share of work in
the taro-field.

Etc., etc. With this impious rubbish staring
one out of countenance, can the hatred of which
missionaries have at times been the object be
wondered at ? Can the covert sneers, the coarse
jokes, the ridicule with which the trader-element
loves to cover those who preach the Gospel in

45 '

The Log of an Island Wanderer

the Pacific be merely the outcome of envy or the
malice of naturally depraved imaginations ? What
are we to think of the ancient blunderbores who
framed these laws ? Were they men or devils ?
To see the faith of Christ inculcated by means of
bribery and money-gifts is foolish and fantastic
enough, but — oh, it is wicked to see it grafted on
savages with a poleaxe !

Now, after an indecently protracted thirty
years' squabble, missionary law has been done
away with, and by an Englishman. May it
never be revived !

There are several schools in the island, but
only one really important one — the Catholic
mission, superintended by the sisters of St.
Joseph de Cluny. It is unpretentious in design,
a long low white-washed building fronting the
sea, and surrounded, like every Rarotongan
establishment, with a luxuriant flower-garden.
It is divided into two wings, one for boys, the
other for girls. The majority of the pupils seem
to be of native blood, but there were a few un-
mistakable half-castes, and one genuine English
baby of six — a white pearl in a necklace of
black.

Just lately the school has suffered a loss. One
of the prettiest and most promising of the pupils
died of phthisis, under circumstances so peculiarly

Picking Papa-vas, Rarotonga.

IP-

Raheri's Diploma

pathetic that I cannot refrain from giving them in
the form of a narrative.

Raheri was born under an unlucky star. It
was a shameful case of desertion. For a pure-
blooded islander this might have been a thing
of little import, but Raheri's mother was a
Marquesan half-caste, and quite civilised enough
to know the sting of neglect. The child found
herself unloved from birth, and as though the
mother's woes were working in her blood, grew
up a wilful, lonely little atom, with a talent for
dancing in strange sunbeams, and an obstinate
dislike for human companionship. The neigh-
bours, on the mother's death, refused to adopt
her. Vaerua's house had been summarily claimed
by the owners, and for a few terrible weeks the
child led a wild life in the jungle. Rarotonga is,
however, as we have already noticed, not a place
to starve in. As the rains came down Raheri
crept back to the village, wilder, more savage,
more undisciplined than ever. There was a tiny
shanty of rudely nailed iron in a banana-clearing
at some little distance behind the mission-school.
It had really done duty for an outhouse, but now
they let Raheri occupy it, together with her two
pets — an old yellow torn cat and a disreputable-
looking sulphur-tailed cockatoo, of both of whom

The Log of an Island Wanderer

she was inordinately fond. Once Sister Lacey,
the mild-eyed Irish girl who taught the three r's
in the long white-washed school-building, chanced
to pass Raheri's hovel and found the child — it
was during the autumn rains — coughing on the
damp floor. She went back for a rug, and
Raheri's eyes lit with pleasure as she felt the
warm fur round her chilled limbs. Then, as the
sun drew the mists from the low-lying fields of
taro, her wild distrustful nature came back. She
balled up the rug and threw it disdainfully out
into the mud.

But Sister Lacey persevered. In the end she
not only won the child's confidence, but actually
succeeded in persuading her to attend school.
Raheri didn't take kindly to lessons at first.
The strange theories of the white people bred
contempt under that tangled mass of hair with
its limp flower-wreath. Love can do wonders,
however, and little by little the child's aversion
was conquered. Raheri learned to write in a
great round hand, to spell after a fashion. She
ceased believing that the sun came out of a hole
in the sea. She likewise learned that England
was not a den of unprincipled miscreants, but a
great and good country, where men that kick
women are publicly pilloried, and where girls wait
for teacher's permission before falling in love.

Raheri's Diploma

Her manners and costume, too, gained by the
change. She learned to do up her hair in a ball
instead of allowing it to hang loose, to omit the
immodest flower-wreath, to speak without shout-
ing— and when a South Sea girl learns to do
that, you may take it from me that she is in a fair
way to becoming civilised.

It was about this time that Raheri's rough win-
someness won her an admirer. Harry " Porotia"
was his name. He was a tiny boy enough, and
the son of a German trader resident in Raro-
tonga for his — and his country's — health. One
evening he met Raheri in a dark avenue of palms.
She had been spending her half-holiday gather-
ing oranges in a hot valley inland, and was in no
mood for sentiment. The impromptu declaration
did no manner of good. Raheri boxed the boy's
ears, and left him sobbing. But this in no way
cooled Porotia's ardour. He worshipped Raheri
with all the enthusiasm of his ten summers, and
was not man enough to conceal the fact.

With the new year a change came for the
island. Britannia decreed that Rarotonga must
have a new Resident. He came from New Zea-
land in faultless white ducks and gold buttons
galore. There followed a school-inspection as a
matter of course, and it brought disaster to Raheri.

The great man and his two daughters came to
49 D

The Log of an Island Wanderer

hear the girls read their lessons. Raheri was
absent. Some more than usually flagrant piece
of naughtiness had led to ruptures, and she had
been peremptorily forbidden to appear in the
school-house. The ordeal commenced. The
girls were put on reading one by one. The Resi-
dent was all attention.

There was a hurried step on the verandah, and
a prolonged ah — h — h of admiration from the
scholars as something sailed serenely into the
class-room and dropped defiantly on a seat.

It was Raheri — and she was decked in all the
panoply of Central-Pacific savagery — toe-rings,
forbidden wreath of tiare, necklace of pine-apple
seeds, and rattling bangles all complete, and —
horror of horrors ! — in her arms yowled and
blinked the old cat Mau. Miss Lacey came for-
ward quickly.

" Raheri ! What do you mean? Go home at
once ! "

" Oh, do let her stay, she's so picturesque ! "
pleaded the youngest daughter, conscious of her
sketch-book at home. Raheri might have stayed
but for the next move. One of the scholars,
deeming the cat an offender, grabbed the animal
by the tail and tried to pull it back. There was
an angry snarl and a fuff. Pussy turned and
struck smartly at the aggressor's hand. Raheri

Raheri's Diploma

bounded up, dealt the boy a ringing box on the
ear, seized the cat, and with a shout of contempt,
pitched the yellow brute right into the sacred lap
of the British Resident !

The great man started, and the motion was
too much for the rotten chair. It collapsed, and
Britain's honoured representative measured his
length on the floor.

" Oh, Atua (God)," prayed poor Raheri that
night in an agony of contrition, "make me a
better girl, Atua. As good as Miss Lacey."
Then (as an afterthought), " Better than Miss
Lacey if you can, Atua."

Fearful of overtaxing the powers of the Deity,
Raheri cried herself to sleep. Pardon was many
days in coming ; but time heals all things, and in
due course Vaerua's child was again allowed to
continue her studies.

The months wore on, and Porotia's boy-love
ached in silence. He was very small and insignifi-
cant, and Raheri, save when there was any pilfering
to be done, hardly found time to notice him. With
the speeding months, too, came the first footmarks
of the foe — the burning restlessness of the eyes,
the aggravated fits of coughing, the straining for
breath in the hot windless nights, when the stars
quivered dizzily between the ink-splotched palms,
and the waves were too weary to talk.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Not so Raheri. The fire of work had entered
the wayward little head, and the lithe fingers
were busy from morning till night. The term
was drawing to a close, and with it neared the
great final examination — the proudest moment of
an island-girl's life— when the long ribboned certi-
ficate would be handed her by the teacher, when
she would step through the school gates — the
plaudits of her classmates in her ears, and woman-
hood, with its soft mysteries and glorious pro-
mises, shining on her path in a cloud-land of
rosy fire.

Raheri worked — but the Grey Things of the
wilderness, the toupapahus that haunt the swamp
and rice-field, were beckoning with thin, wasted
fingers. The child was growing feebler from
day to day, and the ominous catching of the
breath as she bent over the long bench struck
terror to the hearts of the teachers.

A consultation was held, one hot day on the
verandah. There was a kindly man waiting to
interview Raheri as she came from the class-room
swinging her satchel on her arm, and the verdict
—though delivered writh bated breath — sent a boy
who had been hiding behind the flower-bushes
speeding into the twilight with a storm of sobs.

Raheri wras moved from her iron rabbit-hutch
into the vacant house of a missionary. She was

Raheri's Diploma

very pale and thin, and preferred studying full-
length on a heap of mats to sitting on those long
hard benches. They would have stopped her
studies altogether and sent her to hospital, but
Raheri had the certificate in view, and — the
doctor knew it to be a question of days.

It only lacked a week to the examination when
the final warning came — the wail of a voice fight-
ing for air between the lattice and the ringing
darkness. Miss Lacey spent all the night by the
sufferer, and next day

Next day the school set to work on a labour of
love. The pretty page of snow-white vellum with
its border of coloured flowers, Raheri's name —
beautiful in its neat lettering — and the pendant
ribbons that set off the whole in a fluttering
framework. They were short of ribbons in Raro-
tonga just then, so Miss Lacey tore them from a
favourite dress of hers, and cried as she did so.
Work as they would, it was midnight before the
trophy was finished. The certificate was signed
and dated. Raheri had not passed the exam., of
course — but there was no time to think of that
now, and the hearts of the school ached lest the
Grey Things might claim their own before the
message of love reached their playmate.

It was nearly two in the morning when the
teacher set off for Raheri's dwelling. A score of

The Log of an Island Wanderer

eager children were waiting to accompany her,
but Miss Lacey thought it wiser to dismiss them
and go alone. As she reached the steps of the
verandah something — it might have been an
animal — rose and slunk away in the underbrush.
She entered the hot room and felt about for a
light. There was none forthcoming. The oil in
the lamp had given out, and the match-box was
empty. Failing, she fell on her knees beside the
couch, and with a burst of tender words put the
certificate into Raheri's wasted hands.

It was some moments before the child under-
stood her happiness. When she did, life returned
momentarily in a flood of joy.

" Eha !" she said with a quick gasp of delight,
" but it is broad and decked with splendid ribbons
— like Dolly Mapue's — of a truth I can feel the
lettering. Would it were day ! Stay with me,
Sister Lacey."

" I shall stay, Raheri dear."

A paroxysm of gasping and coughing inter-
rupted her. The child struggled for breath, and
her thin fingers closed like a vice on the teacher's
hand. Recovering, she took the roll of paper and
pressed it again and again to her lips.

" Would it were light ! " she wailed ; " it is dark
here — so dark, and the night has been so long.
Is the dawn coming, Sister Lacey ? "

Raheri's Diploma

" It is coming, Raheri dear — fast." Fast in-
deed. The howling waters have well-nigh shat-
tered the frail skiff. It is all but sinking. From
outside, the roar of the sea came to them faintly
through the inter-crossing palm stems. The Grey
Things were very near now.

" Raheri — can you say a prayer, do you think ? "

The thin lips moved — but made no sound.
The teacher bent till her face almost touched the
matted, damp hair, and whispered some words in
the child's ear.

" E tuu noa te tamarii — Raheri, darling, speak
to me."

" E tuu noa te tamarii "

" E haere mai "

And then, while the strong woman knelt and
wept, the frail child — clinging to those fair words of
promise as a drowning man to a spar — glided out
into the sleep that knows no waking till the dark-
ness gives place to everlasting light.

When, on the following morning the two
Kanaka mutes came to bear away the tiny body,
the foot of one trod a draggled bunch of violets
that had been lying all night on the steps —
where the boy-love of Porotia had breathed its
humble and last farewell.

CHAPTER VI

THE ISLE OF FAIR WOMEN
" Where summer years and summer women smile."

WE left Rarotonga in a hurry. It is part of a
Union skipper's profession to be in a hurry — all
zeal — as Mr. Midshipman Easy found his superior
officer's blasphemy.

We are now fairly in the tropics. Whatever
may be the case in other parts of the world, the
change of climate on this particular run is sudden
enough to be very funny.

It is the eighteenth parallel that does the trick.
One goes to sleep dreaming of cool breezes and rain
— one wakes to find the crew in white ducks, and
the butter running like paraffin. The wind, too,
has taken on a more sultry feel, and the violent
orange glare seems to have calmed the waves
down to the consistency of oil. In the engine-
room the stokers are beginning to weep, and
when you take your morning's constitutional the
liquefied pitch of the deck-seams sticks to the
soles of your tennis-shoes and trips you up. The
eighteenth is the most playful of parallels.

The Isle of Fair Women

An odd 300 miles of sea separates the Society
Islands from the Cook Archipelago. Moorea is
the first to appear — the shadowiest of shadows on
the eastern horizon — so vague and evanescent that
they might well pass for clouds. Union officers
make poor liars, however. As you are girding
up your loins to doubt the fact of any land being
visible, the dark bank ahead splits up into a
collection of blue pinnacles — so weird and un-
practical-looking as to pass for the dream of a
delirious absintheur rather than the staid and
sober result of natural laws.

One of the peaks has a remarkable defect. It
is perforated close to its summit — an undeniable
tunnel chiselled as neatly in the wind-scoured
rock as though the primaeval architect had done
it with dynamite and stone-chisel.

The tunnel has its legend. Rumour says that
some island-hero threw his spear through the
peak in a fit of — well — boredom. Si non e vero,
e ben trovato. History does not relate what this
fellow's name was, nor to what particular scandal
he owed his reputation. One thing only is certain
about him — he was a very bad hero indeed.
None but a thoroughly bad deity could ever
have done a piece of work like that. Good
deities never work. It takes them all their time
to be good. This is why, in Ireland, the Devil

The Log of an Island Wanderer

claims all the punch-bowls, in Germany the pol-
tergeist all the historic villas, in Scandinavia Loki
all the earthquakes, and in India Shiva all the
brains. Strange, but true.

And now Moorea is on our beam — a diabolical
silhouette framed in the yellow of the sinking
sun. Voices are answering each other from the
bridge. There comes the clang of hidden bells.
Stand by ! You rush to the other side of the
ship and — lo ! — Tahiti, the nouvelle Cythere of
Bougainville, the " island of beautiful women "
of the old explorer De Quiros, lies before us in
her bridal veil of cloud, reef-girdled, her haughty
diadem of mountains bathed in the magic of the
rising moon — a Queen of the Sea, faint and
voluptuous as the breath from her own flower-
chalices.

As we near the shore the isolated forms of
women are visible under the dark trees — a
shadowy counterpoise to the white reflections of
the vessels anchored in the harbour. The sound
of the cathedral bell mingles weirdly with the
clank of the capstan, and the faint twinkle of the
shore-lamps is drowned in warm gusts of steam
from the winches.

There is no trace of a pier. The Ovalau
simply draws up along the crescent of coral,
whose grassy fringe comes right down to the

The Isle of Fair Women

water's edge. There was a motley crowd as-
sembled on the bank, and the adjustment of the
gangway was the signal for an army of girls to
tumble on board. I had long heard of the pro-
verbial skittishness of Tahitian ladies, and was
prepared to find a rampaging army of fiends. I
fell to scrutinising them curiously — much as Par-
sifal might have scrutinised the flower-maidens.
I rubbed my eyes. How quiet they were — how
demure ! No noisy tin-kettly Americanisms here
— no racy Austrylian chaff, no — not even a
wink or a Society smile. Willowy sedateness,
the dignity of island-womanhood haloed in its
own cigarette smoke — the modesty of Niobe
untouched by the censuring eye of the Lord
Chamberlain — strolling to and fro under the soft
electrics, with barely a look or a gathering-in of
the skirts to acknowledge your presence — the
dear innocents !

There, that will do. Why — why did I not
vanish downstairs before the fair vision fled ?
Why should that extra five minutes' curiosity
have brought about such a fell awakening ?

Alas ! I had still to learn the truth of the adage,
Est modus in rebus. There was a sudden flash
of light in the engine-room doorway ; a brawny
sailor, his bare arms streaked with coal-dust,
sprang out on deck, and walking unceremoniously

The Log of an Island Wanderer

up to the nearest girl, caught that demure damsel

round the waist, and

Let us draw the curtain. After all my poetry
too ! You naughty, treacherous, deceitful little
minx. Not a scream, not a word of rebuke, not
a single solitary quiver of outraged modesty.
Alas for my ideals !

" Oh shame, oh sorrow, and oh womankind ! "

Papeete (from Pape-ete, a basket of water) is
by no means a representative South Sea capital.
It is second only to Honolulu in jumbledom.
Within the few square miles composing the dis-
trict are stuffed heterogeneous colonies of China-
men, Atiu islanders, Mangaians, Marquesans,
&c. The European element is nearly as mixed
as the native, and the weird way in which each
section of the social element has contrived to
absorb the nationality of the next imparts a
flavour of gummy fraternity to the whole. When
we come to look into social matters in detail,
we shall see how this works. Viewed from the
harbour the town presents the appearance of a
straggling collection of villas, a row of pointed-
roofed warehouses, and a sea of green and red
foliage, with the white cathedral spire topping
everything like a toothpick.

The following morning being Sunday I had
a good opportunity of seeing the town in its best

I-

The Isle of Fair Women

dress. Even as London has its Row, New York
its Fifth Avenue, Venice its Rialto, and Mel-
bourne its Block, so Papeete has its market.
The fashionable hour is a godless one — 5 A.M. —
but it is your only chance of salvation. You must
make the best of it. All the islands are in fact
at their loveliest before sunrise.

The sun was fringing the top of Orofena —
which stands out above the town like a mon-
strous blue shark-fin — as I passed up the lane
of sycamores to where instinct and the hum of
voices told me the market was placed. Right
and left were Chinese stores, with strings of
pendant drapery and piled-up bars of soap.
Farther on there was an eating-house, where
two industrious Chows were rattling their beads
(Chinamen use the abacus to count with), and a
score of lively ladies in pink were absorbing
coffee in an atmosphere of fried bread and coco-
nut oil. I was in the market.

It is an oblong square shaded by sycamores
and scarlet flamboyants, and set off in the centre
by a shabby green tank half filled with duck-
weed. On one side is the Mairie, a low building
of wood with a fine display of plate-glass ; on the
other a row of open pillared sheds — an obvious
plagiarism of the Paris Halles — where fish are
being sold in strings.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

How paint the strange effects of colouring—
the scarlet-blossomed covering of trees, the rows
of gaily dressed women squatting behind heaps
of exotic fruits, the bunches of parti-coloured fish
dangling from poles, the fantastically painted
signs above the Chinamen's stores, the rows of
tiny flags (it is some festival day), and over all
the pale gold of the early sun and the dreamy
blue of the mountains !

There are about five hundred people collected,
I should judge. The general scheme of the
costumes resembles that of Rarotonga — though a
trifle more elaborate. The flowing skirt of pale
blue or pink, the dark trailing hair, the necklace
of berries, and the hat of thinnest straw with the
wreath of delicately scented flowers twisted round
the brim. Amiability is the rule here — especially
towards the stranger. Three sailors in blue
calico with square collars greet me good-morning.
A pretty girl carrying a scarlet fish by a string
grins suggestively. I am admiring the artificial
straw flowers on her hat, and she is fully con-
scious of the fact. A Kanaka passes smiling
with a heavy basket — marketing for his wife at
home like a dutiful husband. Then come three
girls arm in arm. One of them wickedly jogs
my elbow. "Hallo, mis' nary" (missionary), she

says.

The Isle of Fair Women

Incidentally I learn that "missionary" is the
term of contempt or approval applied to any
young man whose morals are above listening to
the overtures of Tahitian beauty. This argues
well for the missionaries, although some people
say — well, never mind.

Here one may get acquainted with a few of
the local celebrities. M. Cardella, mayor of
Papeete ; Prince Hinoi Pomar£, the sole sur-
viving something-or-other ; the Branders, univer-
sity men and cousins of the late queen ; M. Rey,
the governor, in his dog-cart — and a host of
female celebrities of all shades of morality and
colour. A goodly percentage of the latter are
demurely bargaining for coco-nuts, while others,
leaning coquettishly against the railings, appear
to be — more juventutis — simply flirting. Every
township under the sun has its perihelion of
giddiness, but yours, O lovely Papeete, begins
earlier than any of them.

And how magnificently the streets of this same
Papeete lend themselves to pictorial effect ! Verily,
all styles of art are here represented. The scheme
of things lends itself to the brush of all the masters.
The long leafy crypts belted with yellow shafts of
sunlight might have haunted the mind of a Rem-
brandt. Among the tiny cottages with their
broad flower-decked verandahs and army of

The Log of an Island Wanderer

strutting fowls, Hokusai might find congenial
inspiration. Your picture builds itself gradually,
the product of a new, ever-changing impression-
ism, and you dream of lacquered tea-work till the
drifting smoke of a bonfire mills the colours in
transparent fog, and lo !— you have a Whistler.

Besides being the most picturesque, Papeete is
likewise the shadiest capital extant. Not a street
is devoid of its double row of trees, which meet
overhead to form a sort of leafy cloister impervious
to the very hottest sunshine. And who planted
these trees ? Certainly not the French. Nor
yet the Pomares, whose disused and dishonoured
palace in the Rue de Rivoli is now a depository
for empty packing-cases and decadent sweetmeat-
vendors. Who then ? The trees are manifestly
old — the gnarled giants of the Fautaua avenue,
for instance, can count quite three hundred sum-
mers— and Tahitian history (luckily for the
Tahitian schoolboy) doesn't reach back as far.
Who built the tombs of Easter Island ? Who
built the Sphinx, the Colossus of Rhodes, the
pyramids of Colhuacan ? Ask of the winds. For
the men that fought at Minden were pilgrims
through the unborn seas of time when the ancient
line of kings sowed the foundations of those grand
avenues. Their names are lost to posterity. They
have died and made no sign.

The Isle of Fair Women

Shelter for the man, a stable for the horse. We
must see about housekeeping details. Let us go
and consult Mr. Raoulx. He is a very amiable
obliging old fellow and one of the political props
of Papeete. Yes, a friend of his, Madame D.,
has several houses on her hands. No doubt she
will accommodate us. But mind — no noise after
10 P.M. The Papeete police are a bloodthirsty
lynx-eyed set of miscreants, and longing to put
an Englishman in prison.

We start off along the shady street to where,
behind the closed lattices of a tall modern-look-
ing house, Madame D.'s daughter is practising
a Czerny exercise on her piano. Yes, for fifty
francs a month the house is ours. Madame D.
likewise informs us that she never (with a capital
N) prys into or occupies herself with what goes
on at people's houses. This means we can be as
wicked as we like — which is charming.

House rent is not dear in Tahiti, you see, and
the "remittance man," as Society so prettily terms
him, can live, for a very small sum, monarch of
all he surveys. This usually includes a four-
roomed cottage with latticed verandah, an out-
house with a water-tap which acts at intervals,
and a garden fifteen yards square, with bastard
coffee-bushes and mangoes. Plaited pandanus,
the time-honoured roof-thatch of the Pacific, has

65 E

The Log of an Island Wanderer

gone out of fashion, and in many houses the
abominable iron contrivance has crept in instead.
Unless one is lucky enough to get under the
shade of a branching tree this simply means get-
ting roasted out. Don't look too closely at things.
Tahitian architecture is essentially slipshod, and
the majority of the doors won't shut. This doesn't
matter, however, as money is not very valuable in
the Societies, and no one will bother to steal it.

In fact, money, as a means of getting what one
wants, is almost unknown in Papeete. Kanakas
cannot be paid to work. You will find this out
soon enough when you try to engage servants.
To any one who has been merely brought up in
the ordinary way, among the niggardly, hardly
earned fleshpots of Europe, the problem of living
entirely without an occupation of any kind is
naturally apt to be a stickler. Yet one need
not go as far as Tahiti to find such a state of
things. I remember once while touring through
Italy (it was in Naples) I tried to engage a porter
to carry my trunk from the boat to the hotel. I
was told porters were always to be had on the
landing for a small sum. I went down to -the
quay. Sure enough, a dozen picturesque raga-
muffins were lolling in the sun. I timidly stirred
one of them up and stated my requirements. The

man looked me over from head to foot, grunted,

The Isle of Fair Women

passed his hand weakly over his stomach,
and —

" I have eaten," he said with a smile.

And as the Neapolitans are, so are the Kanakas.
No Kanaka will work unless he is hungry, and
as bread-fruit and faies are common property in
this lovely island, the chance of such a favourable
state of things turning up is rare. Just suggest
to that lanky chocolate-coloured individual lying
so nonchalantly on the grass with his straw hat
turned over his eyes, that he should come and be
your bond-slave for pay ! He has the Neapolitan
independence and the pride of a Spaniard from
Aragon balled together in his fell carcass. Try
a girl. Here, if you are a young man and a pro-
fessional lover of the sex, you will probably be
more successful. Even then she will " size you
up " before accepting your offer, as a booky sizes
a race-horse, and should the cut of your coat or
the colour of your eyes displease her — woe ! You
will have to do your sweeping yourself.

Kanaka servants are the most unsatisfactory
on earth. Time, place, the binding power of a
promise are alike dead letters to them. The only
thing that goes regularly about them is their
tongue. They are the champion scandal-mong-
ers of creation. Hardly have one's toes touched

the grass of Papeete quay than the news of one's

The Log of an Island Wanderer

arrival, and the possible complications which may
or may not have led to it, become public property.
Good report spreads slowly, but bad flies like
wild-fire. Within four hours of your landing one
will be credited with having deserted one's wife,
conspired against the British Government, burned,"
forged, stolen, murdered — all the horrors of a dis-
eased savage imagination. There is no use in
objecting. It is part of the programme.

When the late British Consul, Mr. Hawes,
reached Papeete for the first time, he made ac-
quaintance with this unpleasant fact. The Con-
sulate is a very pretty villa, with neat iron railings
and hanging creeper-fronds. Hawes entered it
gaily. Besides being an English Consul, he had
a hobby. He was an amateur musician of sorts,
and loved playing on the trombone. That
evening a crowd collected outside the Consulate,
and Hawes's chromatics being misconstrued, a
report became bruited about Papeete that her
Majesty's representative was in the habit of sacri-
ficing pigs to the setting sun — a very cannibalistic
proceeding. Twenty-four hours later a friend
found Hawes sitting thoughtfully on an empty canoe
looking at the sea. Explanation was unnecessary.

" Come, come, my dear fellow," said the friend,
" we've all got to put up with these little griev-
ances."

The Isle of Fair Women

" I wont put up with them," contended
Hawes.

" What are you going to do ? "

" Build a wall round the Consulate."

Hawes was as good as his word. The trom-
bone episode was explained away, and when next
Papeete sought a pretext for scandal it was com-
pelled to draw entirely on its imagination.

CHAPTER VII

CHINAMEN— MILITARY— " VI ET ARMIS"

" And in that city every clime and age
Jumbled together."

— The Princess.

Now we have got our house. Food will be the
next difficulty. A man who values life and its
blessings should never try housekeeping in Tahiti.
Kanaka service makes people prematurely old.
A couple of restaurants engineered by French-
men offer decent fare. Should the food in the
said establishments displease one, there is, as last
resource, the Chinaman's.

There are three hundred Chinamen in Papeete.
Their arrival was a romance in itself. Forty
years ago, when the great Atimaono cotton plan-
tation was in full swing, the speculators cast about
for labour, and, recognising the uselessness of
expecting anything from the Kanaka population,
hit upon the plan of importing Chinamen from
Tonkin. The idea was a luminous one, and
regally carried out. Three hundred Chows, each
sitting on his own tea-chest, were carted Tahiti-

. f

Chinamen

wards and dumped ashore on the quay to work,
sin, and suffer " allee same Clistian."

For a while things went swimmingly. The
cotton-trade forged ahead, the Chows were con-
tent with their wages, and the easy life was
congenial to them. Then came the crash. War
broke out in America, and cotton fell to zero.
The Chinamen were thrown out of work. Had
they been Kanakas they would have solaced
themselves playing accordions, or dancing hoolas.
But the wily Celestial is made of more dogged
stuff. The unemployed Chinaman took matters
by the beard, built houses, washed, traded, and
established stores. Among the indolent, lotus-
eating crowd they rapidly became a power, and
at present two-thirds of the commerce of the
island is directly or indirectly controlled by them.

Where would Papeete be without the Chow ?
Whether it is a scratch meal, a straw hat, a
packet of cigarettes, a pareo to cover one's un-
dress beauty, or (for matrimonial agencies are not
unknown even in these flower-girt isles) a wife
—nine cases in ten, the Chinaman is one's best
friend.

He is gentle, affable, scrupulously honest.
Nay, he even has a trick of giving overweight,
which, to those who are used to the dealings of
the superior and cultivated Eurasian, is a per-

The Log of an Island Wanderer

petual source of surprise. As a restaurateur he
has qualities of his own. If he were just a little
more cleanly in his habits, a little less addicted to
mixing soot, dish-rag, and chewed cigar-stumps
with his viands, John would make a very toler-
able host. His temples are not on a gorgeous
scale. Let us enter one of them — Yet Lee's—
in the neighbourhood of the market. It is a
damp, vaulty place, set with rows of ghostly
tables and spotty table-cloths. A pile of newly
baked loaves is reposing on a dresser among an
interesting assortment of bottles and dirty soup-
plates. A score of French sailors and longshore-
men are noisily rattling their forks at the far end
of the vault. Three Kanakas are moodily loafing
round the door. What are you going to get to
eat ? The earthy smell pervades everything.
You stare idly (it is wonderful how soon the
climate begins to tell even on the most energetic)
at the half-filled bottles of claret — not above
suspicion of watering — the diminutive cold-cream
pots full of milk, the slices of purple taro, and the
plates of water-cress among the chatties and
broken-stoppered vinegar-cruets.

Hulloa ! A vahine in pink, her hat coquettishly
smothered in straw embroidery, takes her seat
opposite you, smiling sweetly. You are lucky if
she doesn't ask you to pay for her lunch, for

Marketing, Papeete.

[A 72.

Chinamen

modesty in such trifling matters is a vice un-
known, and the timid man is at a vast discount
in the Islands.

Chinamen are a hard-working set of sufferers.
Look at that almond-eyed, lotus-worshipping son
of Confucius yonder — him they call " Kitty."
There are few girlish suggestions about his
antique, be-raddled, cloth-draped, pig-tailed home-
liness— only the quavering cynicism of a mind
that has known better days, and the wrinkles of
a thousand lonely miseries.

" Kitty, darling — Kitty, dear boy — aita te
waina ? " (lit. is there no wine ?) The meal
commences. A cool draught from the dripping
gutter outside mingles with the wavy motion of
the street and the gleam of piled flour-sacks in
the store opposite. Two cutlets swimming in
grease make their appearance — a plate of salad
with the marks of Kitty's celestial thumb festoon-
ing the edge like lacework, a small soap-dish
containing squash and a couple of pancakes made
from a disused bicycle-tire.

If you are fastidious you can eke out the meal
with rice and chili vinegar — a cheerful respite
from those dread cutlets — anyhow you can con-
sole yourself with the reflection that while the
activity of sight-seeing lasts, indigestion is not
likely to set in.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Addio, Kitty. The cost of our visit is but
twenty cents (7d.), and it has given us an
insight into the utility of the Chow, which we
won't forget in a hurry.

Besides his utilitarian talents, the Chinaman
also has his romaritic side. These "Tinitos"
are confirmed woman-killers. The most raddled,
mouldy, coppery, elephant- hided, rat-tailed of
them can command his " posse " of sweethearts.
They are the policemen of Polynesia.

With what ingenuous presents of scraps of
silk, cigarettes, cakes of soap, and tiny paper
fans are they ready to charm the heart of Terii
or Tumata ! The peculiar cast of mind of the
Tahitian vahine, shaping itself, as it does, on the
existing circumstances and requirements of her
brush-clad island, assures easy conquest to the
Chow. Her ignorance of money is the vahine's
weakness and glory. What chance has a mere
Englishman with a rent-roll of ,£10,000 a year
against that urbane smile that advances to the
siege of Terii's heart with a two-dollar dress for
grapnel and a pocketful of cigarettes for scaling-
ladder? None whatever. In fact, if you happen
to possess a friend who imagines himself a
woman-killer and needs taking down — send him
to Tahiti. It doesn't matter who he is — send
him to Tahiti. He will get taken down all right.

Chinamen

And the last state of that man will be better than
the first.

Chinamen in Papeete also play the role of
barbers. In the Rue de Petit-Pologne (how
strangely incongruous these idiotic French names
sound !) there is quite a colony of these worthies.
Their stock-in-trade is inexpensive but con-
vincing. Almost the sole furniture is a gaudy
gold-framed mirror, a rickety washstand, and a
pile of greasy New York papers to pass the time
while your tormentor skins you. I once got
shaved at a Chinaman's. I did it for the sake
of an experience — which I got. The price was
microscopic, five cents including doing your hair.
It was very interesting at first, and there was a
breezy sans-gene about the rakes of High-Kee's
razor which lulled my soul into sympathetic non-
chalance. He finished shaving me, and started
to do my hair. He produced a comb. I eyed
it mistrustfully. It was long, yellow, with half
its teeth missing, and the remainder choked with
the accumulated sweepings of a million infidel
scalps. A weird chuckle came from the door,
where a committee of Kanaka loafers were ap-
parently enjoying the scene. I turned to rebuke
one of them, and as I did so I saw something on
his head that made me shrink up like a telescope.
I rose from my chair and prepared to depart.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

I told him he needn't mind combing my hair. I
explained that I was in the habit of going about
untidy — rather liked it, in fact. He said that
would make two cents less. I said I would be
generous and overlook the fact. I paid him the
full five cents, and from that day to this High-
Kee doesn't see me passing his shop without
salaaming. He thinks me the noblest of beings.

But — hark! — the cry is "soldiers." Was there
ever a country where the military are not adored ?
The curious faces of almond-eyed ladies peer
through the lattices. In the eating-houses the
vahines desert their plates of taro, wipe their
brown fingers in the table-cloth, and hurry out to
get a view. Here they come — a squadron or so,
all told, neat and tidy in their white helmets, but
with a certain unshavenness about the chin, and
a certain hang-dog stoop in the shoulders that
our own Tommies would rise above. A decent,
orderly set of men on the whole, with their baby
officer strutting in front like a gamecock. A
little bit of France in miniature.

Papeete is, in fact, a fortified city. The small
sluggish stream dividing it from its disreputable
suburb Patutoa is lined with baby ramparts.
What are they there for? ^sthetically speak-
ing, smothered as they are in hibiscus and flower-
ing ti-tree, they are very pretty. Strategically,

Military — uVi et Armis"

about as effective as a towel-horse. But they are
only on a par with the rest of the idea. Not for
one blissful instant are you permitted to forget
the atmosphere of militarism that hangs over the
island. The very landing-stage, where old dis-
used cannon take the place of mooring-posts,
breathes mute remembrance of former conflicts.
In the dim hours of the morning it is the call of
trumpets, echoing with Wagnerian suggestions
across the glassy water, that rouses you from
slumber. In the afternoons there are marchings,
counter -marchings, bugle -practice in the leafy
nullahs where the banana-fronds fight the lantana
as certain upright souls combat parasites — hope-
lessly. Through the sunny vista of trees you
catch the flash of gun wheels and the distant bark
of commando. At the foot of the soft hills that
lead away under their mantle of green to the still
blue cloudland of Orofena, loom two portentous
barracks. The French model has been closely
followed, and but for tropical suggestions of
foliage we might imagine ourselves in Neuilly
or Meudon. The same stiff railings, magisterial-
looking sentry-boxes, green shutters, scarlet-tiled
roofs, and square gate-pillars plastered with official
"annonces." Yet Tahiti is in no danger of
assault. Neither is there anything to be feared
from internal revolution. The Kanakas will

The Log of an Island Wanderer

never be so foolish as to revolt. The very
meanest accordion-playing, wife-beating, work-
fearing, hymn-singing of them could not be so
blind to his interests as all that. Is there any
country on the face of the earth where the law of
the usurper plays into the hands of the natives in
such brotherly fashion ? I doubt it. French law
is as beautifully drawn up for the protection and
emolument of the Papeete market-contingent as
it is for the confusion and overthrow of the weird
industriously minded foreigner. The Kanaka is
required to do anything but work. There is no
species of land-tax. Bread-fruit and faies are
common property, and people live on tick to an un-
limited extent. Lotus-eating in any form pleases
the authorities amazingly. As soon as the Kanaka
has got to the end of his pasture there will be a
kindly gendarme waiting round the corner to take
him by the hand and lead him to a new one. It
is the dream of a Watteau materialised, a Sevres-
china idyl in pareos and kharki — it is Tahiti.

No, there is no danger to be feared in Papeete
from internal rioting, but from without there
seems just the slenderest possible likelihood of
its being stolen one day or another. Not that
there is any particular reason why any one should
want to steal it. On the contrary, it would un-
doubtedly pay best to leave lovely Tahiti alone.

Military — "Vi et Arm is ':

But some countries love stealing for fun. And
this brings us to the history of the most comical
military episode of recent years, the Fashoda
scare. It was brought under my notice in the
following manner : —

I had been lunching at the Louvres Hotel with
a friend — a Mr. De Smidt — and had driven out
to his country-place, three miles from Papeete, to
bathe and spend the afternoon. On reaching his
house my host shouted for the servant to take
charge of the horse. No one appeared. On
investigating matters we found the man — a lanky
Kanaka named Tipuna — asleep under a spread-
ing mango in the garden. We stirred him up,
and persuaded him to take charge of the horse.
He consented grumblingly, but presently on
coming from our bathe we found him asleep
again — this time under a rose-bush. I was a bit
startled, but De Smidt was all sweetness. He
re-issued his orders for the horse's welfare, and
escorted me into the house. An hour later we
were roused from our scientific and literary con-
versazione by the wheezing sound of a Kanaka
melody executed at some little distance in the
garden. We reconnoitred, and found Tipuna
sitting on a tree-stump playing the concertina to
an audience of one nut-brown scullery-maid, three
cows, and a Brahma hen.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

" Great Scott ! " said I petrified, " do these fel-
lows ever work ? "

" Sometimes," said my host smiling. " Tipuna
once worked for a week."

"Is that possible ? "

"It does seem funny — but there was a girl con-
cerned in it, and Come and have a whisky

and soda and I'll tell you all about it."

CHAPTER VIII

A FASHODA IDYLL

" Tahiti never did and never shall
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror."

— King John (French edition).

HER name was Terii Areva, but Terii for short
is all that it is necessary to memorise. From
a strictly European point of view she was not
beautiful, but to Tipuna's eyes she appeared
divine. His soul clave to Terii in love.

Terii's people objected to the match. Her
father was the hard-working foreman of a vanilla-
curing establishment in Papara, and the financial
status of his would-be son-in-law was not to his
liking. Tipuna did not care for work. He took
odd jobs when they presented themselves with
credentials, and deserted them in a gentlemanly
manner on pay-day when the accumulated wealth
of dollars offered prospect of a prolonged loaf.
At night Tipuna used to issue forth like a butter-
fly from its chrysalis, and a scarlet flower stuck
behind his ear, play the accordion on the stone
rim of the market fountain, while the vahines

81 F

The Log of an Island Wanderer

wriggled and jabbered approval, and the melon-
sellers deserted their tables to throw in an occa-
sional chorus.

But Terii's father had no ear for music. Tipuna
must work, or hang up and quit. Terii divined
this was no mere jest. She slumped down on the
mat and wept.

Let Tipuna prove himself capable of even one
week's honest work and she was his. Terii
screamed and clawed the matting with her nails.
Her Eden seemed unapproachable. Nevertheless
it came, as follows : —

It began with the hoisting of the tricolor flag
on the Nile and Major Marchand's refusal to
move. Dame Rumour had exaggerated things
with her usual thoughtfulness, and in Papeete
people's nerves had been on a quiver for some
time past. An awful prodigy of some kind was
expected, and it only needed the ravings of a
couple of silver-braided French naval officers to
set matters by the ears.

Lying in the harbour, in all her majesty of
brass and new paint, was the Republican steam
schooner Aubrevilliers. One evening, an hour
after the bang of the six o'clock gun had startled
the pigeons from the neighbouring lumber-yards,

one of the ship's lieutenants, having ascended the

Terii Areva.

[/>. 82.

A Fashoda Idyll

bridge to take an observation, reported lights on
the horizon.

A homely band of natives may have been fish-
ing by torchlight, or some naughty boys may have
kindled a fire on the dark limits of Moorea reef.
No matter. Rumour had done its work. Within
fifteen minutes the whole town knew that the long-
expected catastrophe was at hand. The English
were descending on Tahiti ! The whole island
was going to be murdered in its bed !

The gasoline launch panted hurriedly ashore.
The major portion of the officials were either
sleeping under their virtuous mosquito-curtains
or shaking for drinks at the felt-topped tables of
the Cercle Militaire. The stampede commenced.
Bugles tooted at each other along the leafy tunnel
of the Rue de Rivoli ; from her verandah the
scared proprietress of the Louvres Hotel saw the
gaunt shapes of white-robed squadrons defiling
under the sycamores.

The Aubrevilliers was possessed of some
twenty guns. Fronting the volcanic trident of
Moorea lay the little palm-dot of Motu-Iti with
its embryo fort and baby powder-magazine. The
long shingle-roofed coal stores of Fareute were
full of precious combustible. There was also a
little matter of ^"70,000 in the treasury which
needed attending to.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

The bugles sounded again — in an ever-increas-
ing crescendo of viciousness. Under the trees
of the market the army of Papeete virtue was
dancing the hoola-hoola. The news came and
they scattered. Trembling fingers dropped their
pennies while bargaining for melons. The melon-
sellers forgot themselves, gave correct change,
and fled like hiving bees. Along the length of
the beach-road, from Taone to Papara, beneath
the shade of the Fautaua avenue, across the
palm-embossed cane-fields of Patutoa, swept that
fell bugle-signal. The startled forms of women,
crushed coronets of tiard hemming their oily hair,
flashed to life under the torches of the soldiery.
The roads were choked. " Ua rohia tatou ati "
(trouble is coming) wailed the females. From
the pretty creeper-clad villas, back of the cathedral,
frightened mothers emerged to hurry their off-
springs off to places of safety — to the convent
of the Holy Sisters in its deep grove of palm,
to Vienot's with its flaming Bougainvillia, to the
Carmelites, choked in a maze of dusty coffee-
bushes.

The Aubrevilliers was lying some little dis-
tance from the shore. Now her anchor was got
up and two hawsers tautened in the moonlight
as she edged inch by inch up to the line of grass
and coral. Her guns had to be unshipped and

A Fashoda Idyll

disposed where they could be worked to better
advantage against the invader than from her old-
fashioned carriages. A stone's-throw behind the
artillery barracks, on a ridge of red ochreous
soil, rose a long platform commanding the major
portion of the town and lagoon. The guns were
to be moved thither. Rails of steel were brought
and laid in position. The guns were hoisted and
made fast on trucks of riveted iron. As the dawn
yellowed the peaks of Moorea, they looked out
from the fringe of red earth like so many bee-
stings— a truly formidable armament. The man
of artillery felt pleased.

With the day the gasoline launch returned.
She had been fussing outside the reef all night
in the hope of finding the English fleet and defy-
ing it. The spray had spattered her neat brass
funnel, and the salt bitterness had eaten its way
into the hearts of her crew. They were angry
and sea-sick. The enemy had not turned up.

But the captain of artillery worked on. Counter-
feited energy is often as effective as the genuine
article. Should reports of his valour reach Paris
it might mean the Legion of Honour and a dozen
other shadowy titles. His wife would drive a
"carosse" in the Bois. She would cultivate a
society smile, and the catlike way of saying
"my dear" peculiar to petticoated celebrity. She

The Log of an Island Wanderer

would see her afternoons chronicled in the Figaro,
and pretty fair-haired debutantes would grow green
under their layer of Cr2me Simon.

The bugle tootled relentlessly along the Taone
road and up the winding pass leading to the de-
nies of Fautaua, where a rushing ribbon of water
binds earth to heaven over an eight hundred foot
precipice. The summit of the precipice really
marks the site of an ancient fort, for years con-
sidered the most impregnable position of the
island. The way up is anything but easy, and
to further unsettle things a roaring torrent veins
the valley at its deepest gulf. The captain of
artillery decided that the river must be bridged,
and at once.

Labour in Tahiti is none too easily secured.
There were a hundred and fifty soldiers, it is
true, but they were either busied in the fortifica-
tions or in stropping their swords for the expected
fray. The sergeants hurried off through the leafy
compounds of Mangaia-town, Atiu-town — clear
away from Haapape to Faaa. Labour must be
got at any price, even if they had to whack it to
life with the flat of their swords.

Tipuna, the love-lorn, had gone to sleep on
an overdose of orange rum and was in no mood
for parley. Nevertheless the recruiting-sergeant
had winning manners. A dollar a day was not

Fautcnia Valley.

I p. 86.

A Fashoda Idyll

to be despised, and with luck he might manage
to evade the really trying portion of the work.

The seedy army of pink-shirted, straw-hatted
men moved forward by forced marches to where
the river roared under its overhanging fronds of
green. The valley rang with the thumps of the
pile-driver and the execrations of the foremen.
Shafts were sunk in the ooze, and logs of rimau
driven into the openings. In the meantime, from
higher up the hill where the banana-fronds thick-
ened into a vertical sea of foliage, a girl's face
peered down over the army of working bees.
Terii, the dust of the road cloying her dark hair,
was watching the scene that was to mean matri-
mony to her — matrimony and honourable love.

The interstices of the logs were filled in, and
by the close of the third day two massive pillars
defied the stream, but the road leading up to the
fort was still unkempt, and a body of soldiers were
sent forward with pickaxe and shovel to hack it
into something like decency.

Tipuna excelled himself. He had been in the
forefront of the pile-driving crowd, and had worked
like a nigger. Once, when a heavy log came
down on his thumb and nipped it into a jelly, he
felt very like throwing up the job — then he
thought of Terii, and manhood came back in all
its glory. He tied up the finger with a piece of

The Log of an Island Wanderer

waste, and went on with his work as though
nothing had happened. The foreman waxed
enthusiastic. " Quel homme ! Quelles epaules ! "
he said.

In Papeete, bellicose yearnings had reached
their apogee. In fact they had boiled over. A
rumour, that had taken its origin in the gasoline
launch's disappointment, now swelled to a roar
that deafened the noise of the Fautaua River. It
was a sad blow for the poor hard-working French
officials to learn that England had changed her
mind, and was not coming after all. The project
of choking the reef-opening with dynamite tor-
pedoes fell through. In the barracks, infantry
officers ceased stropping their sabres and took
to betting on the Grand Prix as a substitute.
The commander of the Aubrevilliers wanted his
guns back. Frivolous ladies said they were sick
of bugle-practice, and merchant skippers began
to hint that the altered beacons, whose positions
had been changed for the enemy's benefit, were
a nuisance to navigation. The irony of the
situation penetrated as far as the Fautaua Valley.
The very landscape took on an ironical colouring.
The great overhanging comb of green derided
the men by day, and the stars, twinkling mischie-
vously between the Magellanic clouds, mocked

them by night. Long before the first detach-

A Fashoda Idyll

ment of horse had paved a way for itself up to
the fort, people were beginning to feel ashamed
of themselves. Officials were slinking back to
their desks. Women gave up praying, and
assaulted the schools to have their children
back.

Then came the bill. The picnic had lasted
ten days. Three hundred Kanakas at a dollar a
day run things up. There were expenses to the
tune of ^5000 against the budget, and save for
the bridge and the improved road up to the fort
— a boon to future picnickers — no one was a whit
the better. There was a general exodus from
the valley, and the novel experience of being
drunk on the proceeds of real hard work came
sweetly, as the blush of first love, to the market
population.

Tipuna had worked one whole week. Seven
dollars were his by right of contract, but the
foreman, taking the crushed finger into account,
increased the sum to ten. Tipuna hired a dis-
used ambulance-waggon, and with Terii by his
side to beguile the moments on a mouth-organ,
drove out to Papara to exhibit honourable scars.
The cut finger and the ten dollars were proof
positive. The old blunderbore of a father
scratched his head, wavered, gave his consent.
Terii slumped down once again on the mat

The Log of an Island Wanderer

and wept — this time for joy ; Tipuna and she
were married.

Since his marriage Tipuna has lived very
happily on his reputation. That one fell week
during the Fashoda scare taught him what work
was, and why it should be avoided. At night
when the windows of the Mairie reflect the
smoky flicker of the market lamps, when the
tables glow under their tender pink burden of
sliced melons and the vahines loll over the China-
men's counters to smoke cigarettes, you may see
Tipuna — blue pareo, pink shirt, a red flower stuck
behind his ear — sitting on the edge of the oblong
slime-choked tank that does duty for fountain,
while the army of Papeete virtue crowds to
listen.

He still plays the accordion beautifully.

Such is the veracious history of the Fashoda
scare, and such the picturesque train of circum-
stances that saved France's most lotus-gorged
colony from the ill-conditioned progressiveness
known as Anglo-Saxon civilisation.

CHAPTER IX

OFFICIALISM— A STUDY IN RESPONSIBILITIES

" If all be atoms, how then should the gods,
Being atomic, not be dissoluble?"

ONE of the most touching soft-heartednesses of
the French island administration is the way in
which it contrives to saddle a man with a salary
and a nominal sphere of activity where any other
Government would make him work for a living.

It requires five hundred officials to keep Ta-
hiti in harness. What they do with their time
is only known to themselves. Provinces of
energy, which in England would barely fill the
hands of one man, here require an army. There
is only one road in Pomare's island, but it takes
a small houseful of clerks to keep its ruts in
working order. The average of crime is a
burglary once a month, and a midnight assas-
sination every ten years — yet seven judges are
required to effectively muddle justice. There is
barely capital enough in the entire island to float
a liver-pill, yet it takes a quarter of a mile of
benches placed end to end (from Pomare's palace

The Log of an Island Wanderer

to the quay de Something-or-other) to keep track
of financial matters.

And the elaborateness, the complexity of it!
The dovetailed, angle-ironed, water-logged, steel-
faced, time -locked completeness of the whole
thing! A German verb is nothing to it. It is
the apotheosis of protocollardom.

Try to get something done in this dear little
island, no matter what. Try to bridge a river,
to muzzle a dog, to make a false income-tax
return. You will tackle it bravely at first, but
you will give.it up in time. In this paradise
dignitaries sprout like mushrooms. You will be
referred, and referred, and referred. There will
be papers to sign, and papers to sign, and more
papers to sign. You will struggle through
wildernesses of quill-scratching, past gaping
catacombs of pigeon-holes, till your efforts die
away in that peopled solitude as the would-be
conquerors of the Golden Fleece died before the
earth-born warriors of Aietes.

As a general instance of how things are
managed in Papeete — what lawyers call a pre-
cedent— I will narrate a story told me by Captain
Macduff of the Union Company. The details
are scrupulously correct in every particular.

It began in the stoke-hole of the Upolu, ten
feet below the water-line, between the glare of

Officialism

the furnace-mouths and the glimmer of the
bobbing tail-rods. "Long" Allen and "Fight-
ing" Jimmy had served the company faithfully
for one calendar month. A prolonged bondage
at sea sets an edge on most things, and both
men were spoiling for an orgy. Moorea had
been sighted from the mast-head at 8 A.M., and
when, an hour from sunset, the vessel finished
tautening her cables opposite the tin-roofed
Customs, both men were reported missing. The
vahine-haunted alley-ways of Papeete had en-
gulfed them — lank hair, dirty finger-nails, and all.
The voice of discipline knew them no more.

The captain of the Upolu was annoyed, for the
Company's agent was hustling things on the wharf,
and steam was needed for the winches. Mutiny,
at such a time, could not be tolerated. Captain
Macduff decided on appealing to the Consul.

The dignitary in question, W. H. Milsom,
Esq., was a man of the very mildest type.
Socially, he was a trifle out of place in Papeete.
He was distinctly religious, had developed
seventh-day adventist leanings of a pronounced
kind, and systematically avoided impact with the
more godless amusement-seekers of the island as
likely to cheapen or annul that aegis of myste-
rious vastness which a British Consul in southern
seas loves to claim for his own.

Milsom's views on politics, ethics, art, history,
and sociology resolved themselves in Milsom's
mind into one dread formula — the dignity of the
British Consul must be maintained.

Early next morning Captain Macduff called
and aired his grievance. The case was not a
novel one in Papeete, but to Milsom, bolstered
behind barriers of protecting epigram, it pre-
sented insuperable difficulties. " I think you
had better bring them here to me," he said in
his ladylike voice, "and I'll see what I can do."

The men were found, and brought. They
were in a state of daze, and preferred the grass
plot to any other lounge. Milsom in the interim
had been thumbing a book of law. The situation
appeared to him a delicate one, and the more he
thought over it the more delicate it became.

" Are you going to have these two fellows
arrested, or are you not ? " queried the captain
angrily.

Milsom's universe was splitting into chips and
wedges. Had the two stokers only managed to
break a lamp-post or maul a vahine, instead of
getting decently and systematically drunk at
Lambert's, all would have been lovely. As it
was, a medley of scattered phrases from the
statute-book — consul in foreign ports — subject
to consent of authorities — unalienable rights of

Officialism

British seamen, &c., swam luridly before his eyes,
and he quailed.

"Perhaps if I were to speak to them"-— he
suggested.

"Stuff!" said the skipper, "might as well
speak to a barrack."

Milsom stepped to the door. An amused
audience of Kanakas were grinning through the
gateway. Allen shuffled to his feet. Jimmy
contented himself with shifting his position on
the grass, and eyeing the consul drunkenly.

Milsom began a harangue. He combined the
sweetness of a mother chiding her first-born with
the persuasiveness of a Wesleyan Methodist in
his maiden sermon. We do not give his speech in
full. " I wish you to understand, &c., this evasion
of your duty, &c., flagrant breach of discipline,
&c., much trouble to your employers, &c., &c."

The demon of square-face here prompted
Jimmy to attempt a say.

" What in 'ell are you gassin' away at us for ? "
he drawled — " gassin' away like a bloomin' old
parson ? Garn wid ye — old stick-in-the-mud ! "

Milsom looked sick. He popped back into his
office, and closed the door. " If they don't come
back on board within two hours and tackle to, let
me know and we'll have them arrested," he said
shortly.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

The skipper departed fuming. Allen and
Jimmy ambled down town arm in arm to have
one last farewell spree before braving the majesty
of the law.

A short distance behind the cathedral, in a
Mohammedan paradise of accordions and clothes-
lines, lived Allen's " reputed wife " Manou. She
received him coldly, for loafing eats up money,
and Manou wanted a new dress. " Maama oe"
(silly fool), she said as he joined her on the
verandah. Jimmy drifted into a rabbit-hutch in
the Rue Vigny, and went to sleep. He had no
more time to waste on consuls.

Midday struck. Things on the Upolu were
going from bad to worse. The engines needed
doctoring, and the efforts of amateur stokers were
making inroad into the bunkers. Milsom's hand
was forced. He indited a note to the police-
sergeant down the street, and gave it to a Kanaka
to deliver.

The then officiating sergeant was a musical
Frenchman of twenty-three with a healthy taste
for orchestral solo-playing — one of the adorn-
ments of Vermege's Saturday Philharmonics.
Also, he was conscientious.

" Arrest ? Certainement, monsieur. One hour,
two hour — you are not in a hurry, saire ? "

"Hurry? Of course I'm in a hurry," said the

A Study in Responsibilities

bewildered skipper. " I want them taken and
brought on board now — at once."

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. " I
am sorry, saire, my supdrieur he gone uphill —
Fautaua — picnic vat you call."

The skipper wrung his hands, entreated, tried
threats. The Frenchman quailed. He had
heard of England — and had reason to believe her
an implacable foe. But island-law, with its dark
web of sinuosities, was too strong for him. Touch
one brick of that marvellous structure, and all the
others would have to be shifted to prevent a
collapse. The skipper turned on his heel, and
left the office.

The cathedral clock had chimed eight and the
market lamps were well advanced in smokiness
before the neat four-horsed drag deposited the
supdrieur, happy and flushed with champagne, in
the hands of his subordinate. Then the order
was given, but — oh, how warily ! how dis-
creetly !

The two sailors were to be found and brought
"without violence." The suptrieur had, like his
subordinates, a wholesome regard for England
and the majesty of her navy. Were Allen or
Jimmy injured in any way, M. Lapeyrouse's neat
villa (which was visible from the sea) might be
blown to Hades as an opening sacrifice.

97 G

The Log of an Island Wanderer

The gendarmes sped on their mission. The
day was Saturday, and a sprinkling of the stores
were closed in deference to the prejudices of
seventh-day adventists. Towards 10 P.M. they
reached Manou's hut in the Rue de la Cathedrale,
where Allen was allowing his hair to be combed
on the front verandah, while Jimmy amused him-
self with an accordion at the back.

Half-an-hour later they were escorted, meek as
lambs in May, down to where the Upolu lay
puffing in the crescent of sycamores. The skipper
was overjoyed. He hastened to congratulate the
minions of the law on their success and offer them
refreshment in his cabin.

There is many a slip, &c. The gendarmes
were bowing and scraping on the afterdeck.
There was a hurried chatter of natives on the
bank and a shrill yell of laughter as the two men,
clambering over the Upolus gunwale, slid like
lightning down the bow-chains and vanished
among the trees.

The chase began again. While Jimmy scudded
chuckling along the Taone road, Allen dodged
down a byway into the dwelling-place of his
indignant wife, where he took a fresh pull at the
rum bottle and entrenched himself behind a
second-hand chest of drawers by way of delaying

retribution.

A Study in Responsibilities

The police arrived in due course, heralded by
a guffawing army of Papeete loafers. Allen stood
at the door and whirled a camp-stool round his
head.

"Come on, you d — d Frenchmen," he howled
— " come on, the whole (carmine) lot of you."

The policemen paled. They had express orders
not to use violence. Should a gill of Allen's
sacred blood be spilt, outraged Britain would
land in her war-paint and eat Tahiti raw. Allen
swung the chair through the air till it hissed and
shouted defiance. He was very far gone in
liquor.

Then, as the moment drew near which was to
usher in a third period of official helplessness, up
stalked the only real power in the ballad — Allen's
redoubtable wife Manou. She pulled the chair
unceremoniously from the bully's grasp and took
him by the ear.

" Hare — maama," she said as she pushed him
into the arms of the astonished constable.

Jimmy came home next morning in the arms
of two Kanakas. He had been found under a
hedge in Mangaia-town senseless and incapable of
resistance. The Upolu was a day late in starting,
but Captain Macduff made light of the matter.
He was well pleased at having escaped so easily.

And now, comes the moral. It is mightily

The Log of an Island Wanderer

difficult to point properly. There are too many
factors in the equation altogether. For Milsom
is afraid of the Foreign Office, Tahiti is afraid of
Milsom, the police are afraid of English sailors,
and Long Allen is afraid of nothing, unless it be
his wife. Furthermore each functionary in the
height, depth, and breadth of the Island- Adminis-
tration is afraid of the next man above him, and
the lot of them are afraid of England.

And this is why, when pretty Auckland ladies
call at the big brown stone office of the Union
Company for news of absent island-cousins, the
sleek formula "delayed by stress of weather"
should be more rightly worded "salivated by
excess of responsibility."

100

CHAPTER X

TOUR OF THE ISLAND— A CHRISTENING-
DRIVING PECULIAR

" A populous solitude of bees and birds.
And fairy-formed and many-coloured things ;
Nothing to mar the sober majesties
Of settled, sweet, epicurean life."

TAHITI measures some 150 miles in circumfer-
ence. About one-third of this, between Papeete
and the commencement of the Taiarapu Peninsula,
is decent roadstead ; the rest is virgin jungle.
Tahitian driving, be it said, is of the most reck-
less kind, Jehu-ism of the deepest dye. Also the
great thing in the eyes of Papeete youth in going
round the island is to break the record. Break
the record and come back alive, if possible, but
break it anyhow.

There are two so - called livery - stables in
Papeete, with a varied collection of uncouth
vehicles for hire that would do honour to a
Mayfair surgical museum. We visited the first
of these establishments, one kept by a noble
Frenchman whose ancestor was beheaded in the
Revolution. A lanky Kanaka — a variant on the

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

obelisque of Luxor — was sleeping on a bed of
straw. We stirred him up. He smiled faintly,
blinked at the sun, blew his nose in workman
fashion, adjusted his pareo, walked leisurely up
to the nearest tree, plucked a flower for an ear-
piece, looked us over, yawned, smiled again, and
announced himself ready to help.

De Smidt, my co-mate in the enterprise, and
a regular patron of the noble Frenchman, ex-
plained. The Kanaka kindly feigned under-
standing. He ambled towards the shed, and,
his red drapery flapping prettily round his heels,
drew out a thing that looked like a disused Black
Maria. It was boxed up like a hencoop, and
painted in funereal green, with a solitary square
window in the back. I tapped one of the springs.
It was undoubtedly cracked ; in fact, both were.
The right pole was intact, the left had been
mended with string. We backed the Kanaka
up against the wall of the hay-loft and put him
to the question. He admitted the waggon had
been used on Government service once, but had
been shelved on account of the scarcity of crimi-
nals. I felt my visit to the island to be distinctly
an event in history, but judged it unnecessary
to advertise on such an alarming scale. We
passed.

The Kanaka drew out another conveyance.
102

Tour of the Island

It had once been a noble ship's locker, but some
barbarian had added wheels and spoiled it. It
was innocent of springs, seats, or cover. We
couldn't hope to cram ourselves in, luggage and
all, and even had we been able to, we should
have got sunstroke and perished miserably.
Nothing was left but to pass again.

The Kanaka then exhibited a C-spring buggy
with one wheel off, two perambulators, a milk-
van with divisions for bottles, and a hay-waggon
with the front knocked out. I began to look
sick. De Smidt was serenity itself. The
Kanaka banged and shuffled about, and pre-
sently dragged out his masterpiece — a sticky-
looking char-a-banc with three lovely seats, a
roof, and two solid poles. A few of the wheel-
spokes were snapped here and there, but they
were nealtly mended with bits of old biscuit-tin
and copper nails ; a creditable vehicle on the
whole — very creditable indeed.

De Smidt said, " You jump in and drive out
to my house while I go and order provisions."
I said I knew little of Papeete streets, and still
less of Papeete horses. " That's all right —
whack 'em and pray," was the answer.

The plugs were produced and harnessed.
One, "Quinze Piastres" — named after the price
paid for him (about 305.) — was a drowsy beast

103

The Log of an Island Wanderer

with triangular suggestions of starvation about
his hocks and withers. The other, "Prince,"
probably called after Hinoe, looked as though
the springiness which ought to have been under-
neath the waggon floor had crept along the shafts
and lodged in his legs. He was a lively repro-
bate of a horse, and, as we found out later, a bit
of a humorist.

Allez ! The start was a glorious one. I
rattled along at a cheerful fifteen - mile gait
through a double cordon of women and scurry-
ing infants. An aged Chinaman bearing two
heavy tins of food crossed my path. The pole
struck him in the middle of the back and sent
him and his dinner rolling in the mud. It was
a royal disaster, and executed with the precision
of a Wilson- Barrett murder-scene. I consoled
the weeping Chow with a dollar and fled, for
through the vista of roof-thatches I caught the
gleam of distant epaulettes, and knew a gendarme
was coming up to inquire.

We spent the night at Taone and rose at
3 A.M. Quinze Piastres and Prince had passed
the night tethered in the scrub, and had eaten
everything within reach. They were in fine
healthy condition. The morning was one of
misty light and shade. On the one side the sea,
and the salt smell of the reef; on the other, the

104

Tour of the Island

lightening fringe of mountains and the aromatic
breath of the jungle. At a Chinaman's, a mile
along the road, the gleam of kettles through the
window attracted us. Half-a-score of Kanakas
in shirts and pareos were imbibing coffee at
wooden benches. What would life in South Seas
be without Chinamen? And they tell me the
Government are girding up their loins to expel
them. Egad — 'tis a wicked, wicked sin !

The long thin arm of Point Venus passed like
a flash, and at the foot of the red-clay hill the
jungle swallowed us pour le bon. The road dis-
appeared, leaving two picturesque yellow ruts
enclosing a long strip of velvety green. Some-
times the gloom of the wood envelops you,
sometimes the curtain of leaves parts to allow a
free view of the landscape — that smiling careless
Tahitian landscape where the weeds laugh at the
idea of road boundaries ; where the sea, disdaining
regular shore-line, straggles prettily among its
hundred islets ; where the mountains flout all
known laws of natural architecture, the wind
disdains regular blasts ; the sun, as careless as
the rest, shining above the palms clear as frosted
silver, anon permitting —

" The basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face "-

it is a kingdom of laissez-faire.

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

Island driving, in the present state of the roads,
is a breakneck performance. If one could manage
to keep in the ruts it might be all right. The
cart would slide along like a train on rails. But
this is impossible. The banana roots straggle
over the ground in such fashion as to throw the
boasted Virginia corduroy roads into the shade.
Also the work has to be done in semi-darkness,
a dim cloistered twilight being all one has to
work by. This makes it thrilling. Tahitian
driving is not a good thing to bet on — no matter
how good a driver one is. The road is never
alike for two weeks at a time. Just as you get to
what you fondly remember as a soft level stretch,
a murderous banana root pushes its nose out and
you fetch up with a hiccup that loosens every
tooth in your head, and snaps everything within
reach.

Tahiti is one of the wettest places of its size
extant. In its circumference of 150 miles, at
least, a hundred odd streams, some half-dozen of
them respectable-sized rivers, carry their burden
of flower-dust seaward. Needless to say, once
clear of Papeete postal radius there is no trace of
a bridge anywhere. There are various ways of
getting across. The best plan, in the case of the
smaller ones, is to give a piercing yell, loose the
reins, and make the horses take them at a rush.

1 06

Tour of the Island

If all goes well there is a splash, a halo of flying
water, and you dive back into the foliage at the
other side like into a railway-tunnel. If all
doesn't, you either miss the path and crash into
a tree, or else get bodily overturned. Then it
takes half a day to get her back on the track,
and another half to repair the damage.

Hiteaea, a village situated half-way between
Papeete and Teravao, is a Paradise in miniature.
One-half of the settlement is smothered in giant
bamboos, the remainder dotted among the palms
at the water's edge. The houses are in true Tahi-
tian style — oval tents of bamboo with thatches of
woven pandanus and hanging curtains of " tappa."
There is a broad lawn with copses of stephanotis
and tiart, a warm wide loop of coral, a flashing
necklace of reef, and the blue hills of Taiarapu
thinning in the noonday haze — such is Hiteaea.

In the interim of awaiting a scratch meal at the
Chinaman's, we get a bath in the river. Tahitian
streams come from a great height, and, flowing
through deep, shady canons, the sun has little
chance to strike them. As a result the pools are
cold as ice, and sudden immersion gives one a
shock. There are no crocodiles, no salamanders,
no vipers, no water-snakes. Nothing but clusters
of floating blossoms and buzzing wasps. The
latter are the only nuisance. They can be over-

107

The Log of an Island Wanderer

come by diving. For the rest the borders are set
with thick carpets of blue hyacinths, vigorous and
prolific enough to positively dam the river in
places and cause overflows.

A goodly party was assembled at the chiefs
house (an offensively modern shanty of wood by
the way) ; knots of girls were parading the lawn,
matrons crowned with flowers presiding — 'twas a
christening ! The proud mother, arrayed in a sort
of balloon of crushed yellow silk, did us the honour
to shake hands. The baby was invisible. Pre-
sently out she came — a tiny wee brown dot, like a
piece of chocolate confectionery. And the name?
Oh yes, the name ! Mary Martha Elisabeth Isa-
bella Cleopatra Terii Mapue — or words to that
effect. She fingered De Smidt's watch-chain and
said goo-goo in English, but burst into tears at
the sight of the camera, and had to be taken back
to bed.

We were thirsty, and the papaw trees were
thick with fruit. After some ineffective attempts
at dislodging the nuts with stones the old chiefess
got a pole and mended matters. Some one then
thoughtfully suggested a hoola. Three of the
young ladies got out their instruments — guitars,
if you please, not concertinas — and sluddered
down amicably on mats. Three more took up
their position in front of the players and com-

108

A Christening

menced to wriggle in danse du venire fashion.
The performance was hardly graceful and did not
look difficult. I suggested, in fun, that the old
chiefess should teach me. To my unutterable
surprise and confusion, she consented. I was
compelled to stand by my offer. Half the vil-
lage looked on and laughed while the old lady,
a broad grin on her good-natured face, tried to
teach me the steps, and De Smidt — lest the price-
less record be lost to the world — officiated behind
the camera.

We left Hiteaea late in the afternoon. As
De Smidt gave the preliminary flourish of the
whip, three beauties, one of whom had officiated
in the hoola, edged forward and clamoured to be
taken. They had come all the way from Teravao
and wanted to ride home. They would be good
— oh, so good — " mitinaries " every one of them.
" Very well, jump in," I said. " Where are they
going to sit ? " for the place was stuffed with
baggage like a gipsy caravan. The girls climbed
in. The eldest commenced by sitting on my
camera case. As soon as she was rebuked and
settled, a fourth girl appeared, chewing liquorice,
and clamoured for admittance.

De Smidt said, " Hang it all — it's not fair on
the horses." But the girl had her way, and was
allowed to clamber in. Four Kanaka boys then

109

The Log of an Island Wanderer

ran after us and howled to be taken. De Smidt
cut at them with the whip, but presently, at my
entreaty, relented and permitted two of them to
hang on behind.

We moved off amid cheers. De Smidt said
"If this gets round Papeete the Government'll
tax me for starting a private lunatic asylum."

The jungle closed in. The girls and their
cavaliers had imbibed freely before starting, and
evinced a disposition to sing. It was an awful
ride. The road was the worst we had struck yet
The twigs and creepers slapped and scratched our
faces till we looked like Brigham Young after a
family jar. And the more we swore and suffered,
the more that giddy sextet of Kanakas howled
and sang.

The bushes thinned. A broad river con-
fronted us, rushing through a bed of scrub from
a deep purple cleft in the mountains. How to
get across? The stream was too wide to be
"rushed," and indications of a ford there were
none.

" Let's make 'em get out and swim," I sug-
gested. De Smidt cracked the whip valiantly.
" I'm not going to allow myself to be beaten by
such a trifle," he said — "we'll show these dar-
lings what a European can do. Hold tight!"

A soft black sandspit led out into midstream.

Driving Peculiar

As the wheels sank in the ooze the girls stopped
their song. We entered the water, and as we
did so we felt the char-a-banc tipping from right
to left. The water came higher, gurgling prettily
round the spokes. The horses whinnied, and
two of the girls began to chatter nervously.
The cart tilted till its contents showed a tendency
to topple. The girls screamed. One yard more,
only one yard — then something slid away beneath
our left wheel and over we went into the water !

When I rose three girls were standing im-
mersed to their waist, shrieking and wiping mud
out of their eyes. The char-a-banc had righted
herself, the packages were floating tranquilly
about. De Smidt, hatless, water running down
his face, waded to the nearest sandbank and
laughed. We cursed each other freely.

" This comes from trying to show off. You
know as much about driving as a cat about conic
sections."

" My driving's all right ! It's your chock-
headed imbecility in wanting to take these
savages. If they hear of this in Papeete my
reputation's ruined."

"Anyway, you got us into the mess, and
you've got to get us out of it — look slippy,
there's one girl beginning to cry."

We waded about collecting our property and

The Log of an Island Wanderer

piled it into the cart. Then we took the horses
by the head and, up to our shoulders in water,
piloted them across the stream. The girls found
a ford higher up the river and joined us presently,
but not all the gold of Arabia could tempt them
to take a seat in the cart again. They had seen
enough of European driving, and, willy-nilly, we
had to travel on to Teravao alone.

112

CHAPTER XI

TOUR OF THE ISLAND (continued)— INDUSTRIES
" Drones suck not eagles' blood, but rob bee-hives."

TERAVAO — a straggling settlement of Kanaka
huts and iron-roofed planter-villas — lies on the
side of the island diametrically opposite Papeete,
at the commencement of the Taiarapu Isthmus.
We put up at the usual Chinaman's, and foolishly
allowed ourselves to be persuaded into playing
poker with him. The wily Chow chiselled us out
of twenty dollars, and, seeing that the gambling
debt was punctually paid (a rare circumstance in
Tahiti), proceeded to villainously overcharge us
on the plea that we were millionaires. " For
ways that are dark and tricks that are vain," &c.

The road leading round the south side of the
island to Papeete crosses a series of lovely palm-
fringed bays, warm, sheltered and fragrant as a
Kentish conservatory. For miles across the un-
dulating hills the forest of scrub rolls on — not as
thick jungle or tangled brake — but in fold after fold
of luminous thin-foliaged trees dense enough to
grant a sort of half-shade, and sparse enough to

113 H

The Log of an Island Wanderer

let the breeze through. Most of this is what
is called vanilla country, the vanilla-bean having
become, thanks to its easy mode of cultivation,
a lucrative field for native energy.

In fact, the Kanaka, try hard though he may,
cannot very well remain completely idle. It has
never yet been definitely ascertained what \\ill
not grow in Tahiti. Tobacco, coffee, cotton,
vanilla, hemp, sugar, rice, indigo, opium, copra,
pepper, cinnamon — all the tropical fruits and two-
thirds of the temperate vegetables flourish with
an ease that has something of the supernatural
about it.

I once consulted an authority on the subject —
an American, a Mr. Kennedy — owner of the
largest and most prosperous sugar plantation the
island possesses. It was impossible to mention
a substance that Kennedy could not theoretically
produce from the raw material of the soil. Soap,
sugar, hair-oil, silk, champagne, railway grease,
rice pudding, lightning rods, antibilious pills—
anything, from a wife to a weather prophet I
am not sure whether these last two items were
warranted to give satisfaction, but I don't mind
taking shares in the others if somebody will
help.

Let us examine things in detail. Fifty or sixty

years ago cotton used to be the mainstay of

114

Industries

Tahiti, Raiatea, and the Marquesas group. It
has now been dropped altogether. The plants
were rapidly becoming hybridised, and the quality
of the yield has deteriorated. This might have
been combated by the introduction of fresh seed
and the partial destruction of existing plants.
The American Civil War, however, brought the
price of cotton so low that it was hardly thought
advisable to risk the expense. Cotton is now a
thing of the past.

Vanilla — thanks to the increased demand for
the article during the last seven years — has now
taken its place, and indeed has become, together
with copra (the dried kernel of the coco-nut),
the principal resource of the Tahitian peasantry.
The work involved is of the simplest The
vanilla-bean, being an orchid proper, requires
both damp and shade, and a partial clearing of
the land only is necessary. Within from eighteen
months to two years of planting it commences to
bear, and continues to do so during a period of
from ten to fifteen years without replanting. A
few days' labour in each year devoted to pulling
down shoots that climb too high, or replacing
broken supports, are all that is needed.

A strange feature of the culture is that, owing
to the entire absence in these islands of humming-
birds, moths, or lizards, which in other countries

The Log of an Island Wanderer

serve to fertilise the flowers, each blossom (which
is hermaphrodite) must be artificially fertilised by
hand, by transferring the pollen from one portion
of the flower to the other. This is, however, no
great task, one person unaided being able to fer-
tilise a thousand or more flowers a day. The
bean hangs for six months or so on the tree, at
the end of which time it is plucked, dried in the
sun, and packed in tinfoil for shipment

Copra — the shrivelled inside of the coco-nut —
is perhaps the most popularly accepted industry
of the South Seas. There is hardly an island
in the Pacific which does not harbour the coco-
palm. The tree itself is the most hardy known
to natural science. It needs neither earth, mould,
sand, nor manure, and will sprout on bare rock if
nothing better offers. The result is that the
process of copra-making essentially belongs to
the smaller, more insignificant islands of the
group, for in the larger islands whatever labour
is available can be more profitably expended on
vanilla culture.

A copra plantation is simply a palm forest on
an ordered scale. The amount of land actually
available in each island for coco-planting is rela-
tively small. The coco-palm is indifferent as to
soil, but it requires sea air and a certain per-
centage of salt, also a fairly level stretch of

116

Industries

ground and the ozone of the trade-wind, to
flourish properly. The long stretch of alluvial
soil, strewn with boulders of coral, lying between
the base of the mountains and the sea is in all
the islands eminently the site elected by and for
the coco-palm. The labour of clearing brush-
wood for a new plantation is not a difficult under-
taking. The nuts are planted methodically in
rows — about thirty feet apart being the pre-
ferred distance to ensure maximum bearing-power.
With the first appearance of the feathery tuft of
green at the top of each nut the work of the
planter begins. Domestic animals and robber
crabs are not the only nuisances. The tender
shoots are looked on as a tit-bit by the Kanakas,
and a single night's depredation in quest of " coco-
nut salad " may mean several thousand pounds
gone to Jericho. Unceasing vigilance and a
shot-gun are the most approved remedies. At
the end of the first year your tree is able to
take care of itself. It is slowly developing into
a stately palm. Your labour in the immediate
present is done ; there only remains for you to
sit down and wait. From eight to ten years are
required to bring the trees to maturity. The
yield naturally varies. From seventy to eighty
nuts per tree is looked on as a good annual
average, though cases of a hundred are frequent,

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

and with care, it seems even a higher record
might be attained.

The process of converting the ripened nut into
copra is puerile in its simplicity. Every step too
is characteristic of the far niente island-life. No
need to bother picking up the nuts. They are
allowed to drop on the sward of themselves, two
boys being daily sent round with a handcart to
pick up what has fallen during the night. The
fruit is then split open with an axe or machete
and left lying in the sun, its white inside exposed
to the glare. When the kernel has finally
shrivelled to the consistency of shoe-leather it
is detached, shovelled into a bag and packed
for shipment. The profits are certain, the de-
mand regular, the scheduled market value subject
to no kind of fluctuation whatever. Copra-
planting is the champion lazy-man trade.

And pray what is copra used for? Well,
principally for making railway-grease — though
its other less legitimate uses are legion. Copra
is a most convenient substance, and lends itself
to endless adulterations. It is the sheet-anchor
of the oil-merchant. Once get rid of its villainous
smell and you can turn it into any kind of oil you
choose. Hair-oil, machine-oil, cod-liver oil, salad-
oil — a bushel of labels and an elastic con-
science are all that is required. Both articles

118

Industries

can be procured within two thousand miles of
Tahiti.

This chapter is becoming horribly technical.
Sugar, as a staple export of the South Seas, is
as yet comparatively a dead letter, partly owing
to the natural laziness of the natives, partly to
the contradictory vacillations of the Government.
Land for sugar requires clearing, real systematic
clearing, not the desultory amateur axemanship
that suffices for vanilla. Sugar also needs plough-
ing, triennial planting and weeding. It is too
much like hard work. Yet the productive powers
of the soil when finally under way border on the
sublime. Those genial Americans, Kennedy and
Fritch, have hardly a mile under cultivation, yet
the output of their baby sugar-refinery suffices for
the local consumption of the main island and some
twenty other islands in the Cook, Paumotu, and
Marquesas groups. Their establishment is well
worth a visit, if only to see what the dogged
Anglo-Saxon can do when he is allowed to tackle
to "on his own."

The mill, which is worked by steam, is situated
on the north side of Papeete on the edge of a
waving cane-field midway between Mangaia-town
and the historic Fautaua avenue. The building
is divided into a basement and two storeys, the
former containing the boilers and engines, the

119

The Log of an Island Wanderer

latter the refineries and residue-pans. A pon-
derous structure of iron, twenty tons or more in
weight, occupies the centre of the hall. Engineers
are scarce in these latitudes. I am not surprised
when my host informs me with some pride that
he was compelled to superintend the setting up
of the machinery himself.

The place is a whirl of life and buzz. A tiny
toy railway brings in the trucks loaded with
odorous green stalks. In the dark under the
shed the great rollers are clanking sullenly. The
cane is thrown into the shoots and you catch the
complaining screech of the torn fibres as the cane
squirts its treasures into the reservoir. A pump
raises the liquid to the second storey, where it is
allowed to trickle through a series of vats arranged
stepwise in paddy-field fashion. Here your
attention is turned to the ponderous iron struc-
ture before mentioned. A Kanaka in blue ducks,
but minus the ear-flower (no fripperies allowed
here) opens a tap. A horrible sticky substance,
molasses, sand, and bilge-water, oozes out. It is
not nice to look at. But put a bucketful in the
centrifugals and watch the result. With the
expulsion of the moisture the stuff changes colour.
It becomes pale chocolate, maroon, coffee, cafe
au lait, mulatto, Spaniard, Eurasian, consumptive
American, Grecian nymph. Kennedy stops the

120

Industries

machine, bends, takes out a handful of pure white
table-sugar and offers it you with a " How do you
like that, my buck ? " twinkling from the corner of
his eye.

Indeed, the more the intricacies of the process
are explained, the more the wonders of this un-
seen mill in the desert confound and delight you.
The Kanaka workmen are as marvellous as the
rest. A Kanaka paddling a war-canoe, a Kanaka
among roses, a Kanaka carving a missionary —
these are pictures that have grown with us from
childhood. But a Kanaka civilised, a Kanaka
industrious, a Kanaka minding a steam-engine,
these are things to be considered with bated
breath. The sun of their philosophy has not yet
risen.

With all the acres of land devoted to coco-nut,
sugar, and vanilla, the existing trade of the Socie-
ties is, as in the case of Rarotonga, a mere pin-
prick to what might be done under another
administration. The French island-policy is of
course at the bottom of the mischief. Here are
a few of the minor aches, briefly considered :

There is no land-tax. Nine-tenths of the
arable land belongs to the natives, who, as they
have no rent to pay, naturally refuse to till it.
Kanaka families want but little here below. A
weekly supply of faies (plantains) from the bush

121

The Log of an Island Wanderer

will keep the best of them in opulence. Why
should the Kanaka sell his land ? It costs him
nothing to live on, and it gives him facilities for
lying on his back and studying the habits of
clouds which he could never hope to enjoy else-
where. So he stays on his land and loafs and
growls, and the French officials loaf and growl,
and the English settler follows suit, and loafs and
growls too, and everybody is busy and nothing is
done.

I doubt if (with the exception of Kennedy's
cane-fields) its maximum yield be drawn from a
single square mile of Tahitian soil. Even the
coco-plantations hardly pay the way they ought
to. A coco-tree is not a jealous vegetable. Most
kinds of fruit, particularly the pine-apple, can be
grown to advantage in its shade. What is to
prevent an enterprising Yankee or Briton setting
up a canning factory on a large scale and supply-
ing the Australian or American market ? De
Smidt and I once began a calculation of the pro-
bable profits derivable from a combined copra and
pine-apple plantation. We paid off the national
debt in half-an-hour. Then, as we were pre-
paring to finance the Nicaragua Canal, the French
Government stepped in, cracked on a rattling
impost, and spoiled our game. It is a little way

they have.

122

Industries

As it is with the harvest of the land, so is it
with that of the sea. The waters literally swarm
with fish, from the stately patui which could swal-
low Sandow at a gulp, to the microscopic sap-
phire-blue minnow whom nature seems to have
designed to grace a lady's bonnet-pin, so pretty
and wee is he. Papeete market ought to be a
perfect museum. Alas ! A few pitiful strings of
scarlet bonitos (flying-fish), and an occasional
baby shark, are all you can find, and unless you
or your cook are particularly early risers, you run
the risk of being obliged to do without either.

Verily, verily, such arrogance of inaction pre-
cedes a fall. Despite the retrograde efforts of
the French, the dollar is moving onwards, steadily,
remorselessly, as the car of Juggernaut. And the
time is not far off, nay, it is even now at hand,
when, under the aegis of a newer and more
materialistic administration, the cable-car shall
buzz, the telephone squeak, and the book-agent
lie in the leafy avenues of Papeete.

Till then, brother Kanaka, enjoy your paradise.

123

CHAPTER XII

THE OCEAN OF MARAMA

" I could say more, but do not choose to encroach
Upon the privileges of the guide-book."

TAHITI is the largest of five islands — stars in
Pomare's lost crown — of which the other four
bear the names of Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea,
and Bora- Bora respectively. The geographical
grouping of the lot is very simple. The five
islands follow each other from east to west, be-
ginning at Moorea, twelves miles from Tahiti ;
Huahine, sixty miles farther on ; Raiatea with
its sister-island Tahaa ; and Bora-Bora, the last
and most westerly of the group. If you are
particular you may add to these the little motus
(island-dots) of Tubai, Bellingshausen, Maupiti,
Mapetia, and Scilly. These latter are negligeable,
however. It is true that the tern and the tropic
bird (the big black one with the scarlet feathers
in his tail) find them admirable for roosting pur-
poses, but as they will roost on floating hencoops,
old barrels, &c., their testimony is valueless. It

124

The Ocean of Marama

is with the five larger islands we are mainly
concerned.

Were the French entrusted with the sole
navigation of the Archipelago I fear the islands
would remain unvisited for the greater part of
the time : even to-day there is but one vessel,
the humble Southern Cross, and she belongs to
hated England. Nay, even of late years there
have been serious cabals got up in Papeete for
the purpose of suppressing her. What right
have Englishmen to intrude on waters sacred to
the tricolor? The question has been argued
over and over again in the Tahiti parliament
with all the viciousness of island tape-pulling.
But no French boat is forthcoming, and as M.
Goupil, one of the oldest and wisest of the
residents, says, " We prefer an English boat to no
boat at all."

The Croix du Sud starts at two, and the grassy
lawn, which the name wharf obviously libels, is a
blaze of colour. The vahines are assembled in
full force under the trees. The starting of a ship
is the signal for the darlings to put on their best
dresses. Orofena has donned her nightcap of
cloud — she is a sleepy mountain at all times — and
the tiny American flag floating over the Con-
sulate cuts the blue precipice neatly in half. It

is 2.30 P.M. Gazing at the cathedral clock, just

125

The Log of an Island Wanderer

visible above its grove of flamboyants, by way of
setting my watch, I notice that the hands point
to 11.15. M- Goupil is on deck and I ask him
the reason.

" Ah," he replies grimly, " that clock is a repre-
sentative clock, and (with a sigh) it is wound by
a representative man ! "

A clanging of engine-bells. Kedge hauled in.
We are off.

Moorea — to a traveller with that most dire of
all gifts, the bump of poesy — is in a sense the
artistic complement of Tahiti. If God made
Tahiti, the devil made Moorea. And he made
it well. Such grim fortresses, such a frowning
desolation of stone has surely never been seen
or heard of outside the nightmares of Dante or
Edgar Allan Poe.

At all times of the day the spectacle is an im-
pressive one, and this whether seen through the
blue haze of distance or from the nearness of its
own breaker- fringed shore. Its tall needles are
the first to greet the light of day, hanging above
the shadows of the nether world like luminous
cones set in space. Then the light shifts, and as
the sun creeps up to noon the ruggednesses don
their midday dress of green. The island knows

you are watching it. It tries to smile. But it

126

The Ocean of Marama

is the smile of a sycophant. No light that ever
played on sea or land can bring kindliness to those
cruel lances of stone, to those unhealthy fefe1-
haunted valleys. The afternoon wears on, and as
the sun goes to his grave in the cold scent of the
furze, you see Moorea once more in her true char-
acter— as a world of titans and monsters. Great
fan-shaped sheaves of light stab the zenith from
behind the dark monstrosities. The peaks appear
cut out in silhouettes against the fierce fires. The
bastions shaped themselves into heads, and the
timeless things of the wilderness wake as beneath
the touch of a fiend. Small wonder that Tahitian
mythology placed the abode of departed souls on
the highest summit, the peak of Rootia. Then,
even as you look, the grim glow wavers, flickers,
dies, and gaunt Moorea sinks into the shadows
of the night, monstrous even in death.

The Croix du Sud was not a sumptuously fitted
boat, but quite good enough for the service re-
quired of her. Among the passengers we counted
an American doctor, commissioned to investigate
the mysteries of elephantiasis, three missionaries
and their wives, a French official of vague and
indeterminable importance, a dozen Papara pigs
and as many Taiohae mules, the period of whose
durance had not yet begun.

1 Elephantiasis.
I27

The Log of an Island Wanderer

We reached the Moorea landing-place after a
couple of hours' tossing. Several officials armed
with ponderous bags of Chile dollars chose to land
here. On being asked what their particular line
of business was I was told "electioneering." The
rain came down presently, and the tall needles of
Papetoai Bay were blotted out behind a ground-
glass curtain of mist. The evening was cold and
windy.

On the forward deck a score of natives attired
in all colours of the rainbow were entrenched
behind odorous heaps of pine-apple. It was my
fate to share one of the larger cabins with the
French official, who turned out to be none other
than the governor of Raiatea in person. As I
crept into my bunk, luckily a top one, the natives,
whose Mark Tapleyism dictated happiness under
all circumstances, set up a himent to pass the
time. I thought the music pretty. One of the
women would begin by pitching on a high note,
then working her way down into the medium
register, when the chorus joined in, and the origi-
nal tune was lost sight of in a maze of ebbing,
pulsating harmony. I thought I recognised one
of the Tahitian national love-songs —

" Terii tie tepaa ehau."

My visits to the Papeete market had made me
familiar with the refrain, but the novelty of the

128

The Ocean of Marama

situation lent it a new charm. The general tone
of the music was plaintive — almost painfully so —
and the exotic, semi-Chinese colouring of the har-
mony took away nothing from its pathos. Indeed
it seemed to add to it. The wind, too, and the
sleepy wash of the sea played their part in the
general effect. I felt strangely stirred, and hoped
the song would continue indefinitely. Not so the
great man beneath me.

" Cre nom d'un chien ! Jamais j'ai vu un bateau
ou Ton menait un chahut pareil."

I feigned sympathy. The light from the saloon
was wobbling unpleasantly over the white ceiling.
We were fairly out into the current that runs
between Moorea and Huahine, the legendary sea
of Marama (the moon), where native tradition
cradled the ark of Toa (Noah ?). I closed my
eyes and fell asleep.

Huahine came in due course the following
morning. A long line of undulating hills shut-
ting out the yellow sunrise, palm-splotches, a
smell of guava-scrub, and a deep-green line of
water where the coral grows hard enough and
spikily enough to do for the keels of a million
ironclads. It was very early, and the strings of
girls sitting along the tiny pier, like rows of
parrots, rubbed their eyes languidly, as becomes

ladies of fashion startled from their slumbers.

129 I

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Huahine, as usual, has its little nucleus of
intrigue. It is still squabbling over the claims of
two rival queens, and inasmuch as facilities for
marriage in this charming country are truly
Edenic, why — you cannot very well throw a brick
in any given direction without hitting a princess,
or a girl related to one.

The island also has its picturesque and histori-
cal sides. The roads are even more densely
wooded than those of Tahiti, and the coast-line
is a medley of little blue bays overhung with
snaky palms and fringed with scarlet and yellow
lines of hibiscus and gardenia bushes (tiare
Tahiti).

At the south end of Huahine rises a singular
structure of stone, a marae (temple) sacred to
Hiro — the redoubtable Hi-Yu-Muckamuck of
Leeward doxology. Artistically speaking, the
marae is not much to look at — a badly cemented
platform of limestone blocks half-hidden in ti-tree
scrub. Historically it is very interesting. Hiro
was a curious kind of god. Morally, he was a
sort of cross between the Scandinavian Loki and
the Indian Hanuman. His speciality was high-
way robbery and the subtler varieties of brigand-
age. He was no snob, however, and when the
supply of brigands failed even the humble house-
breaker found favour in his sight. When Captain

130

The Ocean of Marama

Cook landed here in 1760 he made practical ac-
quaintance with Hire's sphere of activity under
circumstances which deserve detailed narration.

The natives at that time were leading a cheer-
ful open-air Kneipp-cure existence in houses of
woven pandanus, and Cook — with that overdone
charity that characterises the old-time explorer in
his dealings with savages who merely want to be
left alone — determined to initiate them into the
mysteries of European carpentry, free, gratis, and
for nothing. A house was designed for the chief
on approved English sanitary principles, and the
ship's carpenter was sent on shore to execute it.
Among the crowd of onlookers there chanced to
be a priest of Hiro, a pious, simple-minded rascal,
and presently, while the worthy carpenter's back
was turned, his saw vanished.

The carpenter said a bad word — and went on
with his work. Presently the adze followed the
saw — a keg of nails followed the adze, and the
despoiled knight of labour returned to his ship to
mourn the loss of his tools and cuff his subordi-
nates.

Cook complained — in vain. The tools had
disappeared for good and all. The house of the
chief had to be left unfinished.

A few weeks later Cook departed. Great were
the rejoicings in Huahine. From the secret re-

The Log of an Island Wanderer

cesses of the marae the stolen implements were
brought to life and examined. A solemn con-
clave was held. The powers of these magical
weapons must not be lost. They must be pre-
served, duplicated if possible for the island's
benefit. A field was selected and blessed. The
tools were wrapped in odorous leaves and solemnly
planted. It was expected that a crop of saws and
adzes would result. Hire's blessing was invoked.
The island sat down to wait.

For three months floods of happy tears
washed the steps of the marae. Hiro's altar
was smothered in flowers, his high priest ex-
tolled to the skies. People waited — at first
meekly, then cynically, and at last angrily. The
harvest had miscarried. Women began to regret
having slobbered over Hiro's marae. Some went
as far as hinting that the god was an impostor,
and suggesting the cutting down of the high
priest's salary. The reigning queen caught the
blasphemers, and had their ears cut off. In vain
— disbelievers were springing up on every side.
The queen, after a decent period of obstinacy,
ended by going over to the majority.

Hiro was dishonoured, his temple given over
to the creatures of the wilderness, his high priest
compelled to shovel coal for a living.

This was why, when, a year or so later, the
132

The Ocean of Marama

body of missionaries came with Bible and rum-
barrel to save these erring children of nature, they
found to their surprise that circumstances had
paved the way for their sophisms. Huahine had
lost faith in its old gods, and was ready to try a
new one.

Thus — ushered in through the mediumship of
an humble burglary — was Christianity, with its
mystic symbolisms, its consolations and glorious
promises, first introduced and consolidated among
the races of the Eastern Pacific.

Raiatea, the next island to Huahine, and the
third on the list, is visible at a distance of thirty
miles as a long low shadow hemming the western
sea-rim. It is, taking it all round, by far the
most important island of the group — as well from
a social as from a commercial standpoint.

As usual in these seas it is girdled by a vast
coral-reef, and this reef also includes the twin
island of Tahaa, separated from Raiatea by a six-
mile channel. Navigation is very dangerous, as
the reefs cross and recross in mazy confusion, and
the French charts are said to — need polish.
. The landing is not nearly so pretty as at
Huahine. A great corrugated-iron shed dis-
figures it, flanked by unsightly whitewashed
railings and piles of packing-cases. The next

133

The Log of an Island Wanderer

thing you sight is a silver-braided French police-
man, who looms up as we have seen a beggar
loom up on reaching Italy, a cabman with a
crushed top-hat in Ireland, or a brass spittoon in
New York. It is the little touch of local colour
— there is no fault to find.

A genial lot these Raiateans ! We are greeted
by a hail of ioranas. And what is the latest
Papeete scandal, pray? Has Miss Thing-um-
bob got tired of her What 's-h is- name yet ?
Bless us — these pensive-eyed, thoughtful young
ladies who eye us so abstractedly from the
shade of the buraos are quite as fond of having
two strings to their bow as anything on the
sunny side of Belgrave Square.

Also they are expecting a distinguished visitor.
As I walk along the flat, sunny road, with its
gardens of hollyhock and rhododendron, a pretty
lady, gorgeously attired in gala, sleepy as an
odalisque, fan and all complete, bounces out of
a rose-covered doll's -house and electrifies me
with the question —

" Is the prince on board ? "

The prince ! Were we in England this might
mean H.R.H. ; here it means Hinoe Pomare.

Alas! Hinoe Pomar£ has other fish to fry.
The Papeete world of naughtiness has him in its
clutches. Raiatea will have to wait.

The Ocean of Marama

" That's a shame," quoth the odalisque. " Here
we are, killing pigs and roasting taro to do him
honour, and he doesn't turn up, the villain ! "

Shades of disappointed hostesses ! Through
the verbena trellis-work pretty faces peer shyly.

"Couldn't he be replaced by proxy?" sug-
gested the doctor wickedly. A pout and a
giggle. Bashfulness has struck the doll's-house.
The flowers swallow them.

Yes, indeed. Raiatea has its own little social
importances. It is the cradle of island royalty,
the birthplace of the Pomares, the Mecca of the
Polynesians. Besides this it has the reputation
of being the second stage of the Tahitian pur-
gatory, of which the first, it will be remembered,
was situated on the summit of Mount Rootia in
Moorea. A Tahitian's soul is a restless kind of
organism. It is first compelled to make a twelve-
mile jump across to Moorea, then a sixty-mile
one to Raiatea, and a thirty-mile skip to Tubai,
a tiny island-dot in the far west of the group, to
finish with.

Here, too — in Raiatea — ruled the Napoleon of
the Society Group, the great Tamatoa, a man
whose name is so shivered into the traditions of
the islands as to cause even now those whom the
Raiatea Blue- Book accuses of propinquity to be
regarded with superstitious awe.

135

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Fine fellows these old savages were. Fine,
manly, skull-cracking old warriors, whose names
recall those of the North-American Indians in
arrogant and tooth-loosening hyperbole. Here
are a few : —

Tamatoa — tree of iron.

Teriitaria — man of big ears (lit. man-who-can-hear-the-
grass-grow).

Tetuanuieaaiteatiea — adornment of God (hereditary
title of the Pomares).

Last, but not least —
Teriinuihohonumahana — biter-of-the-sun.

He ought to be able to reach it, anyway.

As may be guessed, viewed by the light of
such stupendous ancestry, Raiatea has had its
aches. It has even had its revolutions. The
last of these occurred in 1895, and was headed
by a pertinacious old vagabond named Teraupo
—now abiding in Noumea for the benefit of his
chilblains. As the British Foreign Office and
the angel that watches over the subtleties of
island-administration both played a part in it,
my readers may find a detailed account inte-
resting.

We will entitle our story —

CHAPTER XIII

TERAUPO AND THE UNION JACK

NONE knew how the discontent started. Per-
haps in a dollar-bred trader-tiff, perhaps in a
case of lese - majesty perhaps in the dilatory
squabbling of French officialdom. Anyway, start
it did, and one bright morning in December 1895
all Papeete was electrified by the news that the
inhabitants of Raiatea — at Opoa — had hoisted
British flags, and were prepared to defy the
accumulated force of the earth in general and
France in particular.

The French authorities were annoyed. When
you have been vegetating for years in a palm-girt
island at the back of nowhere, the prospect of
righting — real bullets in flesh and blood— is not
pleasant.

The quills of the administration began to rustle
and the music of their rustlings struck the British
consul as he lay on his trellised verandah, fatigued
from the exertions of that morning's bicycle ride.

The consul — W. H. Milsom, Esq. — was, as we
have stated elsewhere, a man of the mildest type.

137

The Log of an Island Wanderer

The Commissaire-General had indited a winning
epistle, and Milsom nearly wept as he read it.

" It is supposed," wrote the man of red-tape
ingenuously, " that the inhabitants of Raiatea will
recognise the unreasonableness of their attitude
as far as help from England is concerned, that
they will respect your authority and haul down
the flag."

Milsom thumbed his law-book, fitted a new
J-pen into the well-chewed holder, and exploded,
as gunpowder explodes, along the line of the
least resistance. He wrote a motherly note to
Teraupo. It is not necessary to give the
contents in full. It was a variant on the
pedagogic "If you go on like this, you know,
you'll get yourself into trouble." Teraupo
got the note a week later and used it — as a
celebrated historical snob once used a bank-note
— to light his pipe with.

The British flag made a picturesque red splotch
over the palms of Opoa, and the natives of Tahaa
across the strait, recognising the prettiness of such
a landmark, followed Teraupo's example and
likewise hoisted a flag.

The French Government growled. Teraupo
had organised a regiment of native desperadoes
in red shirts — red being the nearest approach to
British colours — and armed them with scythes

•38

Teraupo and the Union Jack

and battle-axes. In out-of-the-way villages people
were boiling down lead in frying-pans and
sharpening up old fish-spears. The girls took to
singing " God Save the Queen " as a himend, and
their ever-increasing taunts incommoded the white
ladies of the island. There was a hurried flight
of settlers. Some found refuge in Bora- Bora or
Huahine ; the copra-schooners landed others,
angry and rumpled, in Papeete.

Across the hissing network of reefs the two
flags still fluttered. Opoa and Tevaitoa were
English — quite English. Teraupo had dropped
his French garb like a mask. He took to wash-
ing regularly, and his wife's five-o'clock teas were
the talk of the Broom-road. The French
Government lost patience. Milsom was again
bombarded, and this time he found himself
compelled to put a little more ginger into his
remonstrance.

"The forbearance of the authorities having
become exhausted," he wrote, "the local adminis-
trator has been instructed to take such measures
as may be necessary for definitely subjugating
the rebellious natives of Raiatea and Tahaa."

Teraupo and his regiment danced. The great
moment was at hand ! They were to meet the
French face to face and eat them.

The Aubrevilliers left Papeete with a flourish,

The Log of an Island Wanderer

and dropped anchor before Opoa. Milsom was
on board. The mightiness of his mission had
infused a warlike spirit into his nature. He
forgot to be sea-sick and kicked off his bedclothes
slaying imaginary Gorgons. Teraupo must haul
down the flag or be smashed. There was no
other alternative.

Next morning as the long-boat's keel grated
on the coral there were forty bloodthirsty Kanakas
with muskets and flower-wreaths assembled on
the beach to welcome her. Teraupo's ultimatum
was short and decisive.

" Let the English consul come to see me," the
message ran ; "all others I will kill."

The officer in charge of the boat paled and
hesitated. He had barely twenty men with him,
and the forty Kanakas looked horribly as though
they meant business. The commander of the
Aubrevilliers hugged himself. Matters were
falling out exactly as he wished. Milsom would
go on shore, get himself converted into long pig,
and then —

Then the village could be shelled, and from a
safe distance. The guns of the Aubrevilliers
were getting rusty from disuse, and a gallant
avenging of Queen Victoria's representative
would look lovely in print.

Milsom saw matters in a different light. He
140

Teraupo and the Union Jack

had no wish to be converted into long pig.
The French officer in charge of the boat too was
visibly affected. He embraced Milsom, whom
he loved as a brother, and besought him to run
no needless risks. But Britannia's work must be
done, and the consul was the man to do it. He
left his watch with the officer, dashed away a
tear, and started off to face the enemy.

The meeting-house was a fair type of native
dwelling — an oval structure of bamboo with a
pandanus roof. The parliament, a dozen stal-
wart Kanakas with scarlet flowers twisted into
their snaky locks, squatted contentedly on mats.
There was a squeaking of women from the
clearing behind where Teraupo's favourite pig
was guzzling the remains of last night's feast.

Milsom began a harangue. He besought
Teraupo to reconsider his evil ways — to haul
down the flag. Teraupo snorted.

Let him give up trying to be English, hand
his fish-spear to the commander in token of
submission, and become once again a great and
loyal Frenchman.

Teraupo laughed and spat. He had hoisted
the flag as a means of protection against
French aggressiveness, and preferred to let it
stay.

" I warn you," said Milsom brokenly, "if you
141

The Log of an Island Wanderer

refuse I shall be compelled to haul down the flag
myself."

Teraupo spat again and laughed — this time
more derisively. At his nod two Kanakas
armed with clubs came from a dark recess and
stood behind Milsom, chuckling.

Milsom's blood froze. British consuls are only
human — sometimes very human. He was very
much alone in that vast place, and the clubs were
very near, Teraupo, the anglified, grinned — and
it seemed to Milsom that the grin carried canni-
balistic suggestions. He rose, and backed to-
wards the door.

The commander of the Aubrevilliers had been
following the movements of the shore-party
through his binocular, and had been anxiously
awaiting Milsom's dying yell as a preliminary
formality to shelling Teraupo's chicken-coops.
To say he was disappointed at the consul's re-
appearance would be to put things mildly. He
swore hideously.

Milsom, urbane but shaken, clambered on
board and explained. Affairs were indeed at an
alarming crisis. Teraupo had got his war-paint
on. To talk of hauling down the flag was
absurd. It was nailed up there as solid as a
rock. There was only one resource left — to
shoot it down.

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Teraupo and the Union Jack

The commander would have preferred to shoot
something else — but justice is justice, and it was
clearly the flag-staff that was at fault. The six-
pounder was loaded and slewed round. Milsom
stopped his ears.

Bang ! Teraupo's women screamed and an
army of pigs fled shrieking. Missed. Sacrt
bleu !

Bang again — ditto. Five bangs. The flag-
staff topples and falls. Vive la France ! Vive
la Republi-i-iq2ie !

And now, what Papeete (the French portion
of it) wants to know is why their brave sailors
didn't land and fight the barbarians, man to beast.
What the English traders want to know is why
Milsom allowed their flag to be fired on. What
the Aubrevilliers commander wants to know is
why Milsom didn't shin up the pole and get
himself converted into long pig on reaching the
bottom. What Milsom wants to know —

Well, dash it all ! He gets ^800 a year for
doing it, anyhow.

CHAPTER XIV

BORA-BORA AND THE HOOLA-HOOLA

" Strike up the dance ! The kava-bowl fill high
Drain every drop — to-morrow we may die ;
In summer garments be our limbs arrayed,
Around our waists the Tappa's white displayed."

THE Croix du Sud left Raiatea the same after-
noon. Not without interruption though. As the
vessel neared the green strip of shallows mark-
ing the reef there was a halloo from shore and
the flash of a red blanket among the palms. A
tiny canoe, its outrigger almost under water, was
skirting the reef with a view to intercepting us
before we reached deep water and liberty. One
of the men, the second mate I believe, shouted
something from the bridge in native, and Captain
Pond, the very slightest tinge of impatience in
his manner — for he was the most amiable of men
—grabbed the handles of the telegraph. As the
canoe drew near we could see it contained a girl
and a boy.

"Wants to go to Bora- Bora," grunted the
mate — "why couldn't she have made up her

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Bora-Bora and the Hoola-Hoola

blooming mind before? Tapeka, by all that's
lively ! "

"Has she money to pay her passage ? " queried
the captain cautiously — "if not, she can jolly well
stay behind. We've had enough of these stow-
aways."

The ladder-chains rattled and the girl climbed
on deck, the boy handing her up sundry bundles
tied up in pareos. One of the bundles squeaked.
It was very much alive. The others might have
contained clothes, and, to judge by angular ex-
crescences, tins of food. As Tapeka's bare feet
trod the dust of the after-deck I caught sight of
her face. She was still very young and pretty,
with that savage style of prettiness only found
in the smaller and more unmolested islands
of the group — a prettiness consisting of round
puffed-out cheeks, woolly hair, and lips that seem
made for anything rather than kissing.

She looked very ill, very fagged, and worn.
She was not unknown to the men of the Croix
du Sud either. Her record in Papeete had been
brilliant — and bad. Also fate had dealt hardly
with her.

Now she paused, drew from her bundle three
isolated Chile dollars, passed them to the mate,
and with a grin which the malpractice of years
had worn into a scowl, climbed the bridge and

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

descended with her baby into the forecastle.
Had she been of a sensitive nature she might
possibly have jibbed at the way in which the
two missionaries' wives, anaemic-looking ladies in
loose white gowns, drew their virtuous skirts
aside as her red robe threatened to brush the
fringe. As it was, she merely said "iorana" and
vanished down the ladder. A moment later she
was waving a draggled handkerchief to the boy
over the lee bulwarks. We were under way
again as though nothing had happened.

" That's the way with these creatures," solilo-
quised the doctor cynically as the roar of Raiatea
reef sounded behind us — "they make a bee-line
for Papeete as soon as they're able to toddle, and
go cruising round till some fellow leaves them in
the lurch, then back they go to their blooming
island and ship off a cargo of their relations to
follow their example. I hate the whole lot of
them, by G — I do. Beasts — that's what they
are, beasts ! "

I cannot pretend (a fact for which I had reason
to be thankful later) to having precisely echoed
my worthy companion's sentiments, but then I
was new to the islands and he was not. Here
too — alas ! — familiarity sometimes breeds con-
tempt.

The mate of the Croix du Sud was a smart
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Bora-Bora and the Hoola-Hoola

fellow, with curly hair and dancing black eyes —
fhomme afemmes to the tips of his fingers. The
captain met him in the companion.

"No nonsense this trip, Jessop, eh? We've
ladies on board, mind."

"Ay ay, sir. She paid her fare all right, sir."

" I know. Wouldn't have let her on board
otherwise. Had enough of that game, savvy ? "

The mate grinned. At 2 P.M. the twin peak
of Bora-Bora peered shyly from behind the
palms of Tahaa. Chancing to pass the cabin of
the second mate, a man named Lakin, the cur-
tains parted and I caught the white fire of a
double row of teeth in the opening. Tapeka
had found friends.

At 4.30 we dropped anchor in the harbour of
Bora- Bora, before the long whitewashed abomi-
nation that does duty for schoolhouse. Right
overhead towered Mount Pahua, its yellow,
velvety buttresses falling sheer into the sea of
palms and yellow - blossomed buraos. Farther
along the undulating coast-line tiny bouquets of
shrubbery rose from patches of shallow, leading
away to where, dim on the southern sky-line,
rose the blue triangle of the Tubai-Manou, the
last and loneliest soul-asylum in the Tahitian
Hereafter.

The boat put us ashore at the rough jetty of
H7

The Log of an Island Wanderer

stone, where a few half-naked boys were amusing
themselves fishing with sticks of bamboo and
bent pins. Tapeka was one of the party. Un-
like what we had experienced in Huahine, there
was no welcoming crowd to receive us. The
place looked singularly deserted. The long lines
of burao-trees fringing the beach-road melted im-
perceptibly into the tangled sea of undergrowth
whence the tall palms shot skywards at intervals
like rockets. Not a sound, not a native, not a
single solitary flower-crowned lady to welcome us.

Indeed, there was an all-sufficient reason for
this. We had landed on an awkward day, at an
awkward hour.

Bora- Bora was at Sunday-school.

Very proper too ! What a pity, like many
beautiful things, the goodness of these dear
innocents didn't bear a little more looking into.
Vanitas vanitatum. And yet the outward signs
were pretty enough. The sobbing cadence of
voices through the bread-fruit, the gleaming white
walls, and scattered dots of children sitting or
lying outside the school-door.

Shall I tell it ? There are some things about
these paradises which one shrinks from relating,
but it often happens that these are just the very
things one ought to lay particular stress on.
They are so thoroughly, so very thoroughly

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Bora-Bora and the Hoola-Hoola

Society-islandese. Here it is — and don't tell
Exeter Hall.

We were waiting, oh, so demurely, so patiently,
on the grass plot outside that school while the
army of young ladies inside warbled himent after
himene and the native teacher talked and talked.
It seemed to me he must be trying to talk the
ocean dry. And so good his flock were too !
Jessop tried to ogle the nearest one through the
door, but the venture fell as flat as Koko in the
" Mikado." Not a smile, not a wink. Only a
drooping of the long lashes and a renewed study
of the lesson-book.

We were desperate. "What are you fellows
waiting for ? " queried a gallant trader of the
devil - may - care sort, slouching up, hands in
pockets, his broad hat tilted comfortably over his
eyes.

We explained, in all modesty. We wished to
see the sweetness of the land and pay our
respects to it. Also take snapshots. But not
on any account would we interrupt

The trader scratched his head. "If you'll
swear not to tell my wife," he said, "I'll engage
to fetch 'em out."

We thrilled. The proposition looked wonder-
fully, deliciously wicked. A second later we
blushed. The trader threw his hat on the

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

ground, walked unceremoniously into the school-
house, grabbed that innocent maundering native
teacher by the arm and — shook him !

So violent was the shake that the poor gentle-
man's book (I believe he was a "reverend" too)
flew one way and his spectacles the other. When
he recovered, he turned to his flock and shouted
out something which I suppose was a dismissal.
Anyway, up jumped those young ladies with an
alacrity which either argued ill for their piety or
the teacher's eloquence — I don't know which.
And once outside ! What winks ! What antics !
Wha-a-at frolics on the green ! Who would have
recognised a bevy of converted South Sea
proselytes interrupted on the road to Parnassus
and Paradise !

Bora-Bora, being on the uttermost fringe of
the eastern Pacific island-world, makes a rather
good place for a short stay. It is perhaps more
truly native than any of the others of the group,
and here, thank Heaven, there is only a slender
sprinkling of those poetry-destroying iron roofs
to make the landscape hideous. Once clear of
the village and fairly out in the woods, all is
typically Robinson Crusoe. The long bamboo-
walled huts, the parties of fishermen mending
their nets on the white coral curves, the naked
brown babies sprawling on mats, the women with

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Bora-Bora and the Hoola-Hoola

baskets of taro, the long clumsy canoes and
curiously shaped paddles — it is an exotic doll's-
house which the story-books of our infancy have
taught us to wander in, the pretty savagery of
nature beside which the workaday realities of our
modern world seem impertinent and de trop.

And this — our blameless worship at the shrine
of the eternally -natural — brought us to the
threshold of our evening's entertainment, a
hoola-hoola.

The trader beguiled us of course. Dances of
a really typical kind are none too easily arranged,
and the searcher after knowledge is ofttimes
obliged to have recourse to diplomacy. The
saintly brotherhood of missionaries don't exactly
encourage this kind of devilment. Worse than
that — on some islands the hoola-hoola is sternly
repressed by law — and in Papeete the sight of a
parcel of sorrowful beauties elbowed along by a
majestic half-caste policeman is one of the most
touching the market has to show. Here, how-
ever, island-law is at its thinnest, and Bora-Bora
morality is (shades of Bernardin de Saint Pierre !)
at least the equivalent of the French.

We had our hoola all right. It was placarded
to begin at midnight and we spent the preliminary
hours fortifying ourselves with gin and bitters in
the cabin of the Croix du Sud. Gin and bitters

The Log of an Island Wanderer

help scenery wonderfully. The row ashore was
an impressive experience. Nowhere are nights
so exquisite as in the Pacific. By way of en-
hancing the magic of drifting flower-scents and
twinkling shore-lights it was full moon, and the
water where the oars struck it blazed with silver
fire. This time at all events there was nothing
ambiguous about our reception. The jetty was
lined with vahines in all stages of gala-attire.
On the lawn before the Chinaman's (it is the
only establishment of the kind Bora-Bora has to
show, butcher's shop, draper's, and furniture-
emporium rolled into one) wicks of paraffin were
burning. Benches for the spectators had been
stolen from the schoolhouse. Among the more
eager ones were the captain, the doctor, and the
two missionaries' wives. The presence of the
latter at this ultra-mundane entertainment shook
me up a bit at first, but they explained that they
were new to the islands and bent on following the
native character to ground at any cost — so I let
it go at that and apologised.

A dull booming sound came from the darkness
of the palms. There is nothing peculiarly musical
about the tone of the native drum, but on this
unique occasion the surroundings lent it a weird
mystery. The tall forms of white- robed women
crept noiselessly into the outer rim of lamplight.

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Bora-Bora and the Hoola-Hoola

There were sheeted-ghost suggestions about their
slender wrappings that jarred disagreeably at
first, but a nearer inspection presently showed
them in a livelier light. The costumes were much
the same as those worn by the Papeete market-
contingent, an extra allowance of bangles and a
floating plume of riva-riva being the only notice-
able additions. The latter is a preparation of
coco-nut fibre and the nearest thing in the world
to homely tissue-paper, though the name lends it
originality. Two Kanakas armed with mouth-
organs came forward and saluted. The dance
began.

The men and women were drawn up facing
each other. Through her disguise of drapery
I recognised Tapeka, whose failing health didn't
apparently suffice to damp her spirits. The dance
is difficult to do justice to in print. It begins
demurely enough — a slow undulating swaying
movement, left to right and back again, a jelly-
fish waving of the arms and a sideward gathering-
in of the long skirts to exhibit the lissome figure—

" Strait-laced, but all too full in blood
For puritanic stays "-

as far as propriety permits. The men respond,
making corresponding gestures — far less grace-
fully, however, and looking abominably prosaic

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

in their blue overalls and straw hats. The falling
coloured pareo, where worn, is more endurable.
Thank Heaven ! the moonlight redeems things.
Presently the mouth-organs strike a livelier tune.
The dance begins to animate. Isolated girls
spring out from the group and begin improvising
al fresco, each trying to outdo her neighbour in
the complexity or audacity of her figures. There
is a kind of shake — a triple-expansion quiver
beginning at the head and ending at the heels —
which conies in very effectively here. Also it is
an excuse for innuendo. A neat compliment,
according to Bora-Borian ideas, is for a girl to
get in front of you, cross her arms, stare you
straight in the face, and shake till her floating
cloud of riva-riva rustles like aspen, and her
whole form seems wrapped in a luminous halo of
quivering, flashing drapery. Our worthy Captain
Pond — a bit of a lady-killer on the quiet, though
his wife doesn't know it — was among the more
favoured ones. Girl after girl took up her station
in front of him, smiled winningly, and shook her-
self till the rest of us jealously hoped and prayed
she would shake herself to pieces. This sort of
thing ends in two ways. Either the beauty
retires warm, blushing, and exhausted, amid
plaudits from the crowd, or else she loses her
head completely and, tearing off some portion

154

Bora-Bora and the Hoola-Hoola

of her floral caparison, flings it shyly into your
lap in token of her deep and innocent affection.

Have the Bora-Borians acquired the language
of flowers ? I don't know. They have certainly
invented one. But does the pale island-gardenia
with its lily-like suggestions serve as emblem of
a passion which the glowing hibiscus, the rose,
the carnation, might surely expound more aptly ?

Those lovely tiare-flowers ! One attribute at
least is theirs which to the cynically minded
might appear truthful enough. They fade quickly.
One short half-hour in your button-hole will kill
off the most exuberant bloom that ever embalmed
the air. At least, it will kill the outward form.
The aroma, the soul of the flower, remains, and
with the magic of memory to aid it, may possibly
cause heart-ache. Better not keep them. Latet
anguis in floribus — there is a latent anguish in
flowers. What need to wait till your dream
wither in the breath of the smoke-girt city ?
Drop them in the cool sea. Peace will come to
heart and fireside alike.

No — save to hyper-aesthetic missionarydom —
there is nothing especially improper about the
hoola if carried out under classical island rules.
But then there is the by-play. The impromptu
present of a bunch of flowers of doubtful import
is embarrassing enough no doubt, but to feel,

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

while you sit bolt upright by the virtuous side
of a European duenna, the slender fingers of a
vahine tangling your back hair, is truly mad-
dening. On these occasions it is the height of
bad policy to turn and rebuke the nymph.
She won't take the snub, and it only advertises
matters. No, you must grin and bear it. When
the dance is over shake her off — if you can.

And here the inevitable trader steps in and
takes me down from fairyland by informing me
that what we were witnessing was not the
genuine hoola, only a base and civilised counter-
feit. The real thing, it appears, is not permitted
to be performed on any account. " But what
does that matter?" genially, "you've seen the
girls. That's all you want"

A consoling philosophy, in sooth ! Like the
supposed talking parrot who couldn't talk, but
"was a beggar to think." Blow high, blow low,
there is generally a fairy of consolation waiting
round the corner for him who seeks. I am glad
we saw the hoola, and in default of the wicked
original am well pleased to put up with the harm-
less civilised version as a substitute.

CHAPTER XV

"PAKE RAA TAI" (THE EBBING OF THE TIDE)

" The palm waxes, the coral grows —
But man departs."

— Tahitian saying.

OUR trip, the doctor's and mine, ended in Bora-
Bora for the present. A month would elapse
before the Croix du Sud would come to restore
me to the civilities of French infantry officers in
Papeete. I knew nothing of the island, but had
letters of introduction to several settlers, one of
them — a Yankee named Morgan — being the
champion copra-fiend of the district, and a noted
authority on vanilla. The population of Bora-
Bora is Kanaka to the backbone, i.e. neither
rich nor poor, unenterprising, unambitious, and
lazy. There is a queen of course — a descendant
of Tetanui — who doesn't live in the island, and
who couldn't do much harm if she did. The
principal export is copra, and, as in Tahiti, no
attempt has been made to modernise or perfect
the manner of its preparation. Here, too, the
major portion of the available land is allowed to
go naturally and beautifully to seed. There is,

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

as at Huahine, a marae, founded by Orotefa,
a historical swell with religious leanings d la
Torquemada. The social element is composed
of some half-a-dozen traders and an equal number
of Celestials, and to them the beauty and fashion
of the island turn for consolation as Kensington
does to the "inner set," or midland villages to
the curate and master of the hounds in our own
country.

The great twin-peak of Pahua dominates every-
thing, an idol for heathenism, a landmark for
wandering sailors — once seen, never forgotten.
Pahua has its story. It is said in former ages to
have been the residence of the first and brightest
of Bora-Bora landlords, the Sun-god Raa (how
about Ra of the Egyptians, Messrs. Haggard and
Lang?). Raa's ideas, unlike those of his descend-
ants, were essentially progressive. This brought
about his ruin. A jealousy on some minor point
of celestial etiquette put a term to his lease. Raa
hurled himself from the peak of Pahua and van-
ished. His present residence is unknown to
authorities.

While reflecting on the providential beauty of
these occurrences I was wandering undecidedly
along the Broom-road between the glare of
the beach and the deep shade of the forest. I
had no idea where Morgan lived, but trusted to

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Pahe raa tai

chance, or the willingness of kindly minded
natives to enlighten me. Passing a house buried
deep in shade, my eye caught the well-known
gleam of a scarlet dress. A girl stepped into the
light. It was Tapeka. The ragged silhouettes
of the bread-fruit leaves pricked out her thin form
in mottled patches of light. She looked even
paler, more emaciated, than on the previous day.
A native boy of ten or twelve, shreds of fern
woven into his unkempt locks, followed at her
heels.

I showed her the letter. She tried to decipher
the address, sliding one arm lovingly around the
boy's neck as she did so. The youngster was
clearly a relation of hers. She was in her native
island — a sort of returning princess, no less.

She handed me back the letter and tried a
smile, but a dreadful fit of coughing took her and
forced her to lean against the wall of the hut for
support. In these lost atolls of the Pacific, the
old Arab maxims of hospitality hold good. The
stranger comes from God. She said something
in broken gasps to the boy, who dived into the
house like a rabbit, and returned with a snowy
crown of dare- flowers. Tapeka smiled.

" Coulonne Bola-Bola, ^a va bien," she said
with indiscriminate massacration of the r as she
handed me the crown.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

I put the thing round the brim of my straw hat,
albeit with some misgivings, for I had no desire
to pose as a lunatic should we be unlucky enough
to get pounced upon by Morgan or any other
settler.

The girl was coughing on a bole. Now she
rose, balanced herself playfully on her heel, and
started off along the path, motioning me to follow.
Considering her poor state it was kind of her to
volunteer as guide. We strolled along under the
dark covering of leaves which glistened here and
there from the reflected glare of the beach. At
the mouth of a shallow valley, under some spread-
ing willows, a handful of men were squatting on
mats sorting newly - dredged shells. Tapeka
stopped to exchange salutations, while the small
boy slashed with his stick at a bush of flowering
hibiscus, and grinned like a cannibal.

It struck me to wonder what Tapeka had done
with her baby. Left it in some hut along the
road, perhaps. Certainly she was too weak to
carry it. We said good-bye to the men, and
stumbled on over the spreading banyan roots
which covered the ground everywhere like mam-
moth spiders' webs. Tapeka's hair was wet and
draggled. On her forehead the drops of perspi-
ration stood out like beads.

There was the glint of a pandanus roof between
1 60

Pahe raa tai

the trees, and the shrill squeals of a litter of pigs
scampering into the underbrush. An old woman,
her front teeth disfigured by unsightly gaps,
came to meet us, followed by a demure child
chewing a piece of water-melon. As Tapeka
turned to me I could see her eyes were shining.
The long lashes drooped.

" Ma mere," she said in French. The old
dame shook hands while Tapeka panted on a
seat. Then she muttered something, went into
the house and brought out a coco-nut, which I
drank more for amiability's sake than thirst. I
was loth to bother the girl further, but as I made a
move to continue my way she jumped up, ran after
me, and took my arm. Clearly she was deter-
mined to see me through, if it cost her her life.

At the deepest recess of the bay, under the
shadow of a wooded hill, was something that
looked like the promise of an avenue. As I
turned up to Morgan's I saw the last I was ever
fated to see of Tapeka in health and strength —
the flourish of red between the dark leaves, the
glimmer of sunlight on the white hat with its halo
of enveloping flowers, and, at the very moment
the trees swallowed her, that terrible paroxysm of
coughing that winged its way through the flower-
scented air like a death-warning.

Morgan received me kindly. He made ar-
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The Log of an Island Wanderer

rangements for lodging me at a creeper-clad
villa opposite the Vaitape wharf, belonging to
an absent trader-cousin, and took me through
some phases of his private life as a copra-planter.
The open hospitality of these men is almost
embarrassing to the new-comer. It takes some
weeks for you to realise that it is the outer world,
not yourself, that your host is saluting. You are
the solitary link that binds him to home, family,
and the blessings of civilisation, and he worships
you accordingly. No use rhapsodising over the
pictorial possibilities of his island. He is long
dead to them, and won't sympathise.

Three days later, coming back to Vaitape
through the bread-fruit, I chanced to pass
Tapeka's hut. She was lying on a mat in the
shade, her younger sister bending over her with
a fan of plaited palm-leaf. Inside the hut the old
woman was preparing food. They were all very
silent, and the customary greeting came from un-
willing lips. Tapeka's cheeks were hollower than
usual, and this time she dared not smile.

On the following afternoon I met the doctor.
Perhaps he guessed what was uppermost in my
mind, for he began without preamble.

" These people's constitutions are wretched,"
he said; "if it was a civilised Anglo-Saxon
woman I might have pulled her through, but it's

162

Pahe raa tai

the natural cussedness of these natives that out-
wits me. She's simply letting herself slide. It's
my opinion the girl doesn't want to live."

I found nothing to say. The rude winsome-
ness of Tapeka's manner had done its work. I
choked and felt silly. " Have you been to see
her?" I said.

" I have. Father Bonnefin's with her now.
He's the priest that brought her up. I'm afraid
it's all u-p."

There was no sleep for me that night. The
heat under that roof was like a foretaste of the
Inferno. To soften matters there were no cur-
tains to my bed and the z — z — zp ! of a mosquito
brought me to life whenever I thought of drop-
ping off. Towards one in the morning some-
thing stumbled into the room, barking their shins
against my trunk and swearing hoarsely.

" I say, P , are you awake, old man ?

There's trouble up yonder. You haven't got such
a thing as a hypodermic syringe in your kit ?
No, of course not. Why should you? Mine's
broke. Hi ! Johnny — hold on a bit."

The Kanaka dropped on the grass in a heap.
The doctor threw himself into the solitary easy-
chair, and wiped his face. There was a thrill of
tragedy in the wind. "Is the girl dying?" I
said.

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

" By inches," was the reply. " I had intended
to let her go easy with morphine, but the point of
my syringe is nipped off, and she'll have to do
without. What she wants now is a decent
burial."

Still with that grimness of tragedy gnawing at
my vitals, I dressed and lit a cigar. My hand
shook a bit, and as I handed a light to the doctor

he noticed it. "You'd better not come, P ,"

he said, "if you're not proof."

What element of conceit makes a man believe
himself of use in all cases and under all circum-
stances? We plunged off into the night, the
gaunt shadow of the mountain above us and the
scattered mist of star-jewellery seeming to dwarf
everything in grandeur and purity. It was as
dark as a wolfs mouth, but the flicker of light on
the Kanaka's bundle as he stepped across the
bands of moonlight guided us. There were lights
in Tapeka's hut and rows of pareos squatting
under the trees. On a long bed of matting lay
something — and over it bent an old woman,
weeping. As she saw the doctor she threw up
her hands and over her face crept a glory of hope.
A short squat man, his angular features bathed in
the smoky glare of the lamp, knelt at the foot of
the couch. It was Father Bonnefin. Tapeka's
sister and two other children crouched in a corner,

164

Pahe raa tai

and in their midst something small stirred under
a heap of blankets.

"Pack all that crowd out of here," said the
man of medicine unceremoniously, and in a second
the hut was cleared. The old woman ceased
weeping. No sound broke the silence but the
muttered words of the priest and the buzzing
of flies under the roof-thatch. The doctor had
intended to administer morphine, but to judge
from the quiet helplessness of the sufferer there
was no longer any need for that, However, he
did what he could. He cut the thin arms with a
lancet and poured morphine into the cuts. The
mother clasped her hands in adoration. How
could she know the act meant kindly annihilation?

The poison had a contrary effect to what might
have been expected. Tapeka's eyes opened.
The light from one of the torches without struck
through an interstice in the bamboo, and as it did
so a tiny wail rose from the bundle in the corner.
Tapeka's head turned and an eager look came
into her eyes. The baby was brought and held
out to her. One of the weak hands caught the
trailing fringe of the blanket, and the ghost of a
smile broke over the girl's face as she tried to
draw the child towards her.

I saw the doctor's arm slide out warningly.
There were reasons — and reasons, why Tapeka

The Log of an Island Wanderer

could not be allowed to kiss her baby. The
cruelty was humanity in its widest and purest
sense. The expression in the eyes changed from
longing to a wild terrified vindictiveness. The
lips moved, but the priest closed them with the
crucifix and the sleep of eternity brought relief to
the tortured heart.

Tapeka died.

The first rays of dawn were fringing the hill
above us as we passed home through the wood.
Far out to sea the peaks of distant islands flashed
to life one by one as the light kissed their
summits. Groups of natives were loitering
before the Chinaman's or talking in knots on the
lawn in front of the schoolhouse. The doctor
turned to me abruptly and —

" Do you think these people have a soul?" he
said.

From the little whitewashed building buried in
its clump of odorous frangipani the strokes of a
bell came to our ears. It was Sunday morning.
In a short hour the people would be crowding
like little children to sing the praises of Him who,
pure as the waters of this fairy sea, has mercy in
His heart for every creature that breathes.

166

CHAPTER XVI

AN INTERLUDE

" And yet they came unsought, and with me grew
And made me all that they can make — a name."

THE Croix du Sud reached Papeete, December 2.
A new vessel was in port, the American war-ship
Albatross, chartered by Professor Agassiz for the
purpose of investigating the mysteries of South
Sea Island coral formations.

The authorities were in a state of dance. The
Albatross had, with a confidence bred from purity
of motive, dropped anchor opposite the post-
office, on a spot unluckily sacred to the presence
of a certain French cruiser, then on circuit in the
Marquesas.

The round of moustache-tugging began. This
pretended investigation of coral reefs looked
singularly dark and murderous. Before the
Albatross had well finished tightening her
hawsers no one in the army of red-tape had any
doubts but that her sole purpose in visiting the
island was to spy out the weakness of the land

167

The Log of an Island Wanderer

and prepare for a future sweeping of inky-fingered
officials into the Pacific dust-bin.

Explanations were demanded. The com-
mander went on shore to interview the governor,
and the latter — somewhat nervously — returned
the compliment by allowing Mr. Agassiz's neat
Herreshoff launch to spirit him on board the
Albatross. They showed him the guns and he
shuddered, a shudder that not even the fact that
there were no cartridges on board to load them
had hostilities been intended could properly
dispel. He was shown the museum, the tank of
fishes, the sounding apparatus. Americans are
people of dreadful ways. The governor went on
shore in a hurry, a fact that annoyed the com-
mander, who had gone to the trouble of getting
special cocktails mixed for the interview.

Things were further complicated by several of
the Albatross s officers going ashore on the follow-
ing day to take declination measurements. There
was a silver-flashing policeman waiting for them
under the sycamores. The dipping-needle, in its
case of polished mahogany with brass binding,
looked singularly dangerous. There was a polite
interview, punctuated with bows and scrapes.
The officers, rather rumpled, fizzed their way
back on board. Surveying was declared off for
the time being.

168

An Interlude

Meanwhile the English colony of Papeete had
got their enthusiasm up to concert-pitch. The
Yankee savants were feted like heroes. A splendid
picnic was organised in Mr. Atwater's residence
at the entrance to the Fantaua Valley. A tent
fifty yards long, flashing in all the colours of the
rainbow, was hung between the stems of the
mango trees. The American officers found out
what it is like to sit cross-legged on a mat before
a table a foot high, while discreet servant-girls
in flowing blue robes crowned their republican
brows with wreaths of tiare or jasmine. They
learned to appreciate sea-scorpions boiled in coco-
nut milk, and fish served raw with the addition of
a little vinegar. The French officials ceased to
scowl. Clearly there was not much harm in these
men. Papeete decided to take Agassiz to its
bosom.

From the higher tiers of Society hospitality
settled groundwards. The long - shore men
chummed in with the Albatrosss foc'sle hands.
One of these chummings terminated serio-comic-
ally. "Dodger" Raynes, a man of many shifts,
invited four engine-room hands to dine with him
at Yet Lee's — the long-suffering Chow whose
dyspepsia - breeding establishment fronts the
market.

Raynes, among other things, was not in the
169

The Log of an Island Wanderer

habit of paying for the food he ate, and being a
regular man, had no intention of doing so now.
In the midst of wine, victuals, and anecdotes the
formality of the bill became overlooked. Raynes
put his hat on his head and, a look of blank inno-
cence on his face, sidled thoughtfully into the
street. Three of the guests immediately fol-
lowed. There are limits even to a Chinaman's
patience. Grabbing hold of the last remaining
sailor, Yet Lee demanded, in an excited voice and
manner, who was going to pay the piper. The
flashing eyes and weird cigarette-box gestures of
the Celestial were too much for the Yankee. His
fist struck the bridge of Yet Lee's nose and the
Chow went over like a shot rabbit. Yet Lee's
assistant " Kitty " went for an axe, and the fun
began in real earnest. The street was choked
with an army of struggling, rioting humanity.
Kitty's axe did wonders, and within a very few
minutes several of the Albatross's sailors were
bleeding like stuck pigs. Next morning on
reaching the American vessel I found Rodman,
the chief officer, shaving in his cabin and very
perplexed. There was a neat pile of papers lying
on the table, which told me the authorities had
not been idle.

" What am I to do ? " said the chief comically
as the steward brought in the inevitable tray of

170

-1'

An Interlude

cocktails. " Each one of these fellows tells a
different story." Then, with a sudden burst of
inspiration — " I tell you how we'll manage it.
You've got a blue coat on your back. We'll
have 'em in one by one and I'll play you off for
a French official. All you've got to do is to mind
your cue and — look important."

And so, for the first and last time in my life, I
obtained, by proxy, a situation under the wing of
that great and free Republic.

171

CHAPTER XVII

THE ISLES OF THIRST— A RUN IN A NATIVE
SCHOONER

" Her flag ? I had no glass, but fore and aft,
Egad ! She looked a wicked-looking craft."

THE Pacific ! It is a sublime word to describe a
sublime sea, and yet it doesn't seem to fit, some-
how. It was during one of the Ovalaus fly-away
visits to Papeete that Captain Macduff took me
to his cabin and showed me the chart.

It looked horribly complicated. Every inch of
the paper was crammed with figures and arrows
and crosses till you began to wonder whatever
could induce any reasoning being to try navigation
in such a devil of a sea.

" Pooh ! That's nothing ! " laughed the captain.
" Wait till you see the Paumotus."

The Paumotus ! I had seen them in my mind's
eye already, scores of times. The name had
branded itself on my imagination in a hundred
tales of wreck and loneliness. Then, as rumour
shaped itself to fact, I learned that the Paumotus
are a crescent-shaped group of islands some two

hundred miles to the east of Tahiti, an embryo

172

The Isles of Thirst

French protectorate, dangerous enough to wreck
the fleets of the earth and lonely enough to drive
isolated settlers to suicide.

The group is all the more striking owing to
the contrast its scenery presents with that of the
lovely Society Islands. Here there are no lofty
mountains to frame a sylvan paradise of fruit
and flowers. Here you find no shady, flirtation-
provoking alleys, no streams, no milky cascades
or cold pools — not even a pond or a solitary
puddle. Everything is dry, waterless, forbid-
ding, and lonely. The land is so low as to be
quite invisible, even at a few miles' distance.
The slender line of green formed by the serrated
tops of the coco-palms is the first to appear, then
the long line of white sand and the reef with its
rolling breakers.

One of the most exasperating facts connected
with the group is the nomenclature. Each
island has a bushel of names, and few charts
agree as to which is the right one. The very
designation of the archipelago is open to argu-
ment. It is variously called the Low Archipelago,
rArchipel Dangereux, the Paumotu, and the
Tuamotu Islands. The latter two titles are the
most used, and even here there is an antiquarian
squabble for preferment. It is connected with a
native conceit, of course. When, in the year

The Log of an Island Wanderer

one, these islands were first conquered by the
Tahitian pioneers, their humiliation was branded
on posterity under the title Po-motu (conquered
islands). The adjective displeased the natives.
Though clad in a breezy pareo, and dowered
with the activity of his cousin the turtle, the
Pomotuan possesses the pride of a Spanish
grandee. A delegation was got up, and now,
after a century of wrangling, they have been
graciously permitted to change it to Tuamotu
(far-off islands).

The group numbers some twenty respectable
atolls varying from ten to forty miles in diameter,
and a hundred smaller sand-dabs. Surveying
operations have been very incomplete in parts,
and not all the fortitude of a score of French
Government schooners has been able to chivy
the majority of the islands into their correct
position on paper. This makes navigation in-
teresting. Steam connection between the various
inhabited parts of the group is beautifully rare.
The Union steamer Rotoava plies regularly
between a few of the more important atolls,
including Anaa (Chain Island), Makemo, Faka-
rava, and Hikueru, the latter being the nucleus
of the pearl-shell industry. The smaller islands,
Vahitahi, Nukutavaki, Ahunui, &c., are only
visited by occasional native schooners in search

The Isles of Thirst

of copra, and as the navigational science of a
native skipper is several degrees more sketchy
than his attire, I doubt whether a voyage in one
of their barques would commend itself to the
many. Only an idiot would trust himself to the
mercies of a Kanaka skipper. Of late years
the annals of Tahiti only record the case of one
solitary idiot who had the hardihood to do this.
That idiot was myself.

I don't know what persuaded me to try my
luck that way — perhaps a dare-devil spirit of
recklessness, perhaps a genuine love of inquiry,
perhaps merely a spell of impatience attendant
on waiting for the Union boat to start.

It was in Lambert's saloon on the edge of the
Papeete market that I first met the skipper of
the Vaitipe. He was a fine specimen of Kanaka
manhood, tall and bronzed as a South Sea Apollo,
with a pair of gleaming black eyes and a row of
cannibal teeth that sparkled in the lamplight in
a way that left no doubt of his earnestness. He
had come in his frail barque all the way from
Flint Island, a matter of a thousand miles or so,
and was bound for Hikueru on a pearl-trading
contract. We were bosom friends inside of ten
minutes, and went for a tour round the market,
where he "stuck" me for a ten-cent, phonograph
ditty and three slices of pink water-melon — the

The Log of an Island Wanderer

latter being a gift to his adoring harem. There
were half-a-score of obliging damsels hanging
suggestively around, one or two of whom the
skipper's gift of blarney had talked from their
home in the distant Marquesas. He ignored
them superbly, and yarned about shark-fishing
in a way that went to my heart. I retired to
bed with my eyes full of early-navigator fire.
To sail in a real copra-schooner, to fish for sea-
monsters, to land on nameless islands and carry
off ladies in Viking fashion — it seemed romantic
enough to knock spots out of Ballantyne. I
would go, if it cost me my life.

Next day there was a sickly white two-masted
tub straining at her moorings opposite D. & E.'s
store, with three pink ladies squatting on the
grass, and a native boy doing a hymn to the
rising sun on a comb over the counter. Pedro
Makete (he must have been of Chilian descent)
met me on deck, and gripped my hand like a
brother. The Vaitipe was a cutter-rigged vessel
of some fifty tons burden. She was loaded
heavily with lumber and fruit — to both of which
the Paumotus are strangers — and her after-deck
was smothered under an immense striped awning,
to protect the heaps of pine-apples with their
nucleus of buzzing wasps from the glare. He
showed me my cabin. It was a stuffy kennel,

176

The Isles of Thirst

measuring some six feet by eight, its walls frescoed
with coloured female portraits torn from soap
advertisements. There were four white painted
bunks and a rude table stained with the marks of
last night's beer-glasses. In one of the bunks a
broken sextant was sandwiched cheerfully between
two biscuit tins and a suit of dirty overalls. The
indicator scale was encrusted with green marks,
and some wire contrivance on the vernier told
me it had been subjected to a process of amateur
tinkering. The overpowering odour of bananas
filled everything, and there was a suggestion of
pigs in the foc'sle that made me feel bilious.
Pedro waved his hand proudly in the direction of
a locker filled with preserved beef-tins. " Plenty
food there," he said with a grin. I didn't feel
quite easy in my mind, but the adventure was
entertaining, and had to be gone through with.

As I reappeared on deck I found an audience
to receive me. Three more Kanakas and their
ladies had come to criticise and offer suggestions.
A few clerks from the store lounged up and made
frivolous remarks. Besides the skipper of the
Vaitipe there was a Kanaka in football rig, a
black cook with Chinese eyes, and a small stout
Moorean with fef£-like suggestions about his
legs. The latter gentleman was dibbling for
sprats over the side, but rose and said " iorana "

177 M

The Log of an Island Wanderer

in a tone that left no alternative but to instantly
shake hands with him. It struck me that in my
neat ducks and white umbrella I must look rather
quaint. Three men from the club on their way
to lunch at the hotel stopped to admire me. One
of them — De Smidt — an inveterate partner in my
crimes, laughed cynically. "Good G — , man,
you're not going to sail in that tub ? "

I explained, and said I thought it romantic.

" Oh, you'll get all the romance you need before
you're through," was the reply. "Come along to
lunch now. It'll be the last Christian meal you'll
have for a month."

I allowed myself to be convinced, and joined
them. I packed my trunk, locked my house, and
hired a Kanaka to convey my belongings down
to the wharf. A French officer put in an appear-
ance, and made me open my valise to see whether
I had any dynamite concealed there. After that
I had to undo a roll of blankets to prove that I
wasn't trying to smuggle farinaceous substances
duty free. I made the official smell my note-
book and count my collars. Then I felt safe.

The thermometer might have been at 100° in
the shade. Along the decks of the Vaitipe the
pitch was running cheerfully in parallel lines.
Some one had brought an accordion to the rescue,
and the panting refrain of the market hoola

178

The Isles of Thirst

mingled comically with Pedro's gigantic jerks as
he tried to hoist the dirty sails. As the hawsers
were cast off the vessel gave one or two hysterical
rolls, and I sat down violently on the pitch-
streaked deck. I rose, striped like a zebra. The
romance was beginning, sure enough. When I
recovered myself, it was to see the rows of trees
sliding away, and the vessel's prow heading for
the reef-opening.

Pedro took her out neatly enough, though he
didn't bother getting the signals in line. The
sea was rolling in solid blue combers, the wind
was from the west, and as the Paumotus lie
nearly due east from Tahiti, was theoretically
bound to help us. Besides our cargo of pigs and
fruit we carried about half-a-ton of corrugated
iron for roofing. The vessel rolled fearfully, and
as the palms of Point Venus hove in sight I
began to feel very sea-sick. Pedro sat in the
companion, his boots sticky with pitch, and
smoked a peculiarly venomous pipe. In the
opening of the hatchway appeared a female face
with wet masses of hair clinging to her forehead.
I recognised one of the damsels of last night. In
the light of day she appeared very homely, and
as the wind shifted in gusts something told me
that the layer of oil in her hair wanted renewing.

I pulled out my notebook and tried to jot
179

The Log of an Island Wanderer

down details of the scenery. We were crossing
the mouth of one of the deeper valleys, and high
in the clouds the blue Diadem appeared like a
pale shadow. The sun was low, and the cloud-
shadows saddled the sloping ribs in irregular
splotches. The damsel in pink — her name was
Taaroa — came and stretched herself with friendly
intent at full length on the planking beside me.
Presently she rose and made a dive for the
bulwarks. Peace flowed in on me. When one
is suffering from sea-sickness oneself, the sight of
some one else in like agony acts as a consoler.

The sun went down before we lost sight of
Tahiti. Something that smelt sickening was
frying in a pan in the galley. There was a flare
of light in the .doorway as a Kanaka in blue
trousers stepped out with a smoking tin in his
arms. The pigs on the deck yelled protest.
The Vaitipe lurched heavily ; the Kanaka nearly
lost the tin, but caught it again as its contents
were alighting on the back of a hog. Pedro's
face appeared at the hatchway. " Dinner ready,
sah," he said.

I didn't feel like dinner, but thought it would
look land-lubberly not to make an effort, and
climbed downstairs into that dreadful cabin with
its bobbing lamps and ghostly newspaper-cuttings.
It was a queer meal. There were no chairs, but

1 80

The Isles of Thirst

the skipper pushed an empty packing-case
towards me. He himself sat in the lower bunk
and ate from the plate with his fingers. The
contents of one of the beef-tins had been emptied
into a tin slop-pail with the addition of a dozen
chopped-up carrots. The very appearance of the
slop-pail put me off. I had seen Taaroa washing
her face in a vessel of very much the same size
that afternoon, and the suggested idea was not
encouraging. I also discovered now what the
mess was our worthy cook had nearly given to
the pigs. It was a dish of fried onions. In the
midst of the feast, a gust of wind down the sky-
light blew the lamp out, and we had to hunt for
the matches in darkness while the dishes jangled
prettily and the contents of the slop-pail dis-
tributed themselves over the mate's corduroy
trousers. For drink there was rum and water.
I have since heard of the trick played on sea-sick
midshipmen by canny superiors. When a man
is in doubt offer him rum and water. I took a
glass of Pedro's mixture. It was good enough
for rum, especially Tahitian rum, but the result
was surprising — terrifying. It seemed to me I
must have parted with some of my interior
arrangements. After an hour's agony on deck
I crept into my bunk drenched with spray, wet,
and miserable. Taaroa vahine came down

181

The Log of an Island Wanderer

towards midnight, and her snuffling as she pro-
ceeded to disrobe made me feel like a criminal.
On the following morning I awoke feeling a
trifle better, though the wind had shifted appa-
rently and the vessel was anything but steady.
The Kanaka cook brought in a pailful of coffee
and immersed the cups in it one by one. Taaroa
vahine crept from her bunk and sat down on the
floor with a bread-and-butter sandwich. The
skipper was still snoring composedly. I tumbled
out and went on deck. It was a lovely morning,
but the sea was still rolling mountain high and the
Vaitipes rail was buried in foam. The hogs were
grunting cheerfully in six inches of sea- water. I
clawed hold of the cabin skylight to prevent
myself falling and went astern. The first sight
that met my gaze was the man at the wheel. He
was asleep. The wheel was unguarded, and as
each successive sea struck the rudder the fellies
revolved prettily like the sails of a toy windmill.
Apparently we had been drifting all night.

I flew downstairs and awoke the skipper. He
was not in the least disconcerted. He shuffled
on deck, grabbed the steersman by the collar and
shook him. Then he blinked at the sun, pulled
the wheel round a couple of turns and gave the
course.

"Dam lazy fellow Kanaka-man, eh?" he said
182

The Isles of Thirst

with a grin, "Kanaka-man no good" (with that
air of hauteur common to the half-caste) "too
much dam sleepy, eh ? "

He sat down on the combing of the hatchway,
rested his bare feet meditatively against the bul-
warks, reached for a banana, peeled it, and com-
menced to eat it.

" Great Scott, man ! " I gasped, as a hissing
cloud of spray drenched me, "we've been drifting
about all night ! Do you mean to tell me you're
not even going to take an observation ? "

But Pedro didn't intend taking an observation,
and for a good reason. His sextant was smashed,
his book of logarithms gone the way of all such
dull reading, while —

" That trembling vassal of the pole
The feeling compass " —

was represented by a sixpenny brass toy about
an inch in diameter, suitable for watch-chain use,
and probably won in a raffle by one of Pedro's re-
latives in years past. We scudded along all day
under jib and staysail. Taaroa appeared at eight
bells with some coco-nuts, which she proceeded
to chop open, flinging the white to the pigs and
drinking the milk herself. I took Pedro to task
about the course. It was a thankless job.
Technical matters wearied him and he said so.

183

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Presently, on the cook announcing dinner, he
brightened up.

" I guess it'll be all right," he said philo-
sophically.

This time I endured the beef and carrots with-
out being ill, but thought it hardly advisable to
tackle the rum. I came on deck towards eight.

The night was pitch dark and windy. The waves,
however, were no longer so violent, and I thought
I might venture to stand in the prow. There
was no trace of a moon. The sea was like a
dark carpet, the broad patches of foam showing
up palely in the light of the few stars. At times
the Vaitipe would slide smoothly across an inky
space of sea for a distance of twenty yards or so,
then — whack ! — down she went full force into the
trough and the rebellious spray shot out from
beneath her prow like wings.

I don't know at precisely what moment of my
summing-up I arrived at the conclusion that we
were sailing along without lamps. When I did
it gave me a shock.

I found the skipper — sitting on the cabin table
with a concertina, one of Taaroa's flower-wreaths
framing his angular features. He was not dis-
composed in the least. He furbished up an old
box of matches from the bread-locker, handed

them to me and told me to light the lamps myself.

184

The Isles of Thirst

I accepted the humour of the situation and
obeyed meekly. The greens and reds had of
course been wrongly placed, but I soon remedied
that. On applying the match I found there was
no oil in either of them. I sung out to Taaroa
and she handed me up a tin of kerosene through
the skylight. The lamps flared genially for one
mortal hour, at the end of which period both went
out, and I found on examining matters that the
wicks needed renewing. There were no more
wicks on board, however. Pedro set the lamp
down on the cabin table and tried to prise the
remnants of the wick out with a pin. Presently
a roll of the boat sent the whole concern flying
off the table and smashed the chimney to powder.
We had only the green light to sail by now. I
felt inclined to weep. Pedro guessed it was all
right. I guessed it was not all right, and turned
into my bunk in a bad humour.

Next morning as I crawled on deck in pyjamas
for a spray bath I saw the blue triangle of an
island notched on the starboard sea- rim. It was
Mehetia, ninety odd miles from Papeete, the
most easterly island of the Society group. My
sluggish blood bounded again. Land at last !
A release from bunk, beef, carrots, and Taaroa's
monoi-scented top-hamper. Hurrah ! Now, how
about landing ? What says the wily Pedro ?

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Well — Pedro says on the whole he'd rather not
land at Mehetia. There is only one settler on
the island, it appears. He and Pedro quarrelled
over a lady some months ago and they threatened
to shoot each other on sight. Pedro doesn't fear
white men, of course — don't care a damn for them
in fact — still, he has reasons for believing the
settler in question to be a man of his word.
Besides, Pedro has an aged mother. No, he had
rather give Mehetia a wide berth.

I got no glimpse of fresh coco-nuts that day.
To make matters yet more pleasing the sea came
in and pickled our supply of carrots. A jerky,
puffy wind sprang up about 6 P.M. and brought
the staysail rattling down about our ears. It
threatened to be a dark night, and as the
materials for repairing the damage were stowed
away at the bottom of the hold among sacks of
pine-apple, the skipper decided to lie on and off
till morning. He was practising " My Coal-black
Lady" on his concertina and the repose was
necessary to his nerves. The vessel once more
sluddered down amicably into the trough of the
sea, and from my bunk I heard Taaroa wheezing
over the bulwarks.

Eight bells on the following morning found us
speeding along at a dare-devil seven knots in a

direction indicated by the skipper's pocket com-

186

The Isles of Thirst

pass. I calculated that if a man might point a
gun into the air at random and hit a bird, we
might possibly hit Hikueru. The Pacific is a big
place, and the prospect of unlimited roving in
that wretched hen-coop, and perhaps the possi-
bility of a lingering death from thirst was not
congenial. But Pedro was quite content. He
guessed it was all right and settled down to his
mouth-organ with the air of a man who is master
of his destiny.

Finally, on the seventh day out, a thin line of
gray appeared in the east, which as the sun
climbed up to noon gradually resolved itself into
a double line of yellow and green, long, regular,
and monotonous as a fiddle-string.

Land undoubtedly — but what land? There
was no map on board that we could trust, and
with that devil-may-care style of navigation the
best of maps would be a Chinese puzzle. The
wind dropped as we slid up alongside of the
beach, which in its level regularity might have
passed at a distance for a whitewashed fence
shutting in a long garden. We had undoubtedly
struck one of the Paumotu group, but which
one? The beach was deserted as a grave.
Pedro wasn't disconcerted. He dropped the
rusty anchor overboard, tilted his hat over his
eyes, meditated, cut a plug of tobacco, thrust it

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

in his mouth, hitched up his suspenders, and
retired downstairs for a siesta.

I felt unhappy. The uncertainty of latitude
was eating into my soul, and in default of some-
thing better to do I determined to go ashore
and reconnoitre. The Vaitipe was not exactly
anchored. She was moored in some six feet of
water at the brink of a coral-slope that fell away
to infinity a yard behind our stern. The water
was wonderfully calm, which was just as well, for
had there been a breeze we should have gone to
pieces like a castle of cards. I decided to make
an effort. The water in the prow looked about
two feet deep, also sea-water doesn't affect duck
trousers. I clambered boldly down the bow-
chains and found myself with an ignominious
splash in four feet of lukewarm water, with my
heels on a level with my head and my papier-
mdchd helmet bobbing cheerfully seawards. I
captured it and struck out for the shore. I was
conscious of looking a miserable object. My
trousers clung to my shin-bones, my helmet was
half melted, the coral sand was sticking to my
wet boots — I felt as though I wanted to kill
somebody.

Then, in the height of my misery, a voice
accosted me from the shadow of the underbrush.

There was a glimmer of blue, a flash of silver —

188

The Isles of Thirst

it was a French official ! At any other time the
contrast he offered to the poetry of his surround-
ings might have jarred me, but in my then strait
I felt more inclined to fall on his shoulder and
weep.

" What is this island ? " I managed to articulate,
after I had slobbered mutely for some moments.

" Anaa, monsieur."

Anaa, and we are bound for Hikueru ! Merely
a hundred and fifty miles out. Let me be thank-
ful for small mercies and get ashore anyhow.
We can do the reckoning-up part later.

189

CHAPTER XVIII

ANAA— LIFE ON A CORAL ATOLL

" By the sands where sorrow has trodden
The salt pools bitter and sterile —
By the thundering reef and the low sea-wall
And the channel of years."

SEVEN days to do a hundred and sixty miles !
And I suppose this is what a native skipper
would call a splendid run. Done by guesswork
too — without compass or chronometer. Had I
allowed it, Pedro would doubtless have taken me
over the entire Pacific the same way. Small
wonder that parties of natives are occasionally
picked up on the shores of nameless islands in a
dying condition, drifted three or four thousand
miles out of their course. They tell me families
of Kanakas have been known to leave Tahiti
to go to Bora-Bora, and eventually fetch up in
Fiji or Hawaii. Words are words, and to an
ungeographical reader this may not mean much.
But what would you think of a man who started
to go from London to Dover and landed by
mistake in South America ? Yet such is Kanaka

seamanship.

190

Anaa

Once on shore at Anaa my imperial spirit
blazed. I determined I had had enough of
romance. I would wait for the Union steamer
and get wafted to Hikueru in civilised fashion.
The skipper pleaded pathetically. My desertion
cut him to the heart. " You friend-o'-mine," he
said generously; "you no white man — you Kanaka-
boy." The compliment hit me in a tender spot,
but I was adamant. I would wait for the Union
steamer. In the meantime there was a week to
be whiled away, and there are many livelier places
to while away a week in than the breezy sun-
scorched Paumotus.

Anaa, taking it by and large, is by no means
an uncreditable exponent of the group's char-
acteristics. It is the nucleus of Paumotu island
culture, and, together with Fakarava, the starting-
point of all politico-religious learning. For the
benefit of those who are fortunate enough to be
unfamiliar with the practical construction of a
coral atoll I will try and describe its leading
features.

Imagine a ring of flat sand-patches thrown on
the face of the sea, a ring whose component parts,
some of them decent-sized islands, are separated
by warm channels of sea- water — channels varying
from twenty to two hundred yards in width, mostly
impassable for large vessels, some of them even

191

The Log of an Island Wanderer

for boats. Imagine this girdle of sand, which
may measure from ten to forty miles in diameter,
filled with a vast lake of still, warm, oily water, so
blue and limpid that it shames the sky itself.
Imagine the edges of this lagoon fringed with
palms, dust-discoloured cactus, bread-fruit, and
straggling pandanus bushes. Imagine the long
windy fields marked into occasional plantations
by walls of crumbling coral and set off by the
chalky gleam of a few settlers' houses. Not a
hill, not a hollow — only the endless even layer of
burning coral sand frescoed with the shadows of
its nodding palms. For music the roar of the
reef and the occasional z-z-z-zrp ! of a bread-fruit
ripping through dry leaves — such is Anaa. The
reef runs right up to the base of the palms, a sort
of shelving submarine beach damnable to tender
feet and warranted to wreck the stoutest pair
of sea-boots in less than no time. From the
pyramidal beacon of stone topped by the flutter-
ing tricolor clear out to where the rollers are
crashing, a passage has been hewn in the coral.
The landing, even in a civilised long-boat with
European sailors, is exciting. There is no talk
of rowing into the passage. You must shoot it. •
The boat dawdles about some twenty yards from
the opening while the mate, gripping the steer-
oar, watches his opportunity. Now then! Ready!

192

Life on a Coral Atoll

The great comber gives the boat a heave that
sends your heart to your mouth, and away you go
in a mist of spray, scudding down on those deadly
rocks at the speed of an express train. It is a
ticklish moment. The passage is barely ten feet
wide. Either you hit it off neatly and get landed
in safety, or else the boat strikes the coral and
goes miserably to pieces. But native pilots are
clever at this sort of thing, and the ease with
which they perform the difficult manoeuvre is
really wonderful.

The first glimpse of a Paumotu village is inter-
esting enough. It soon palls, however. When
you have seen one you have seen the lot. There
are no roads, properly speaking. Roads would
be a useless luxury. The ground is so level that
were it not for the inlets a cart could move unin-
terruptedly round the whole ring. The main
street is generally a neat broad avenue of pow-
dered coral flanked by green lily plants or a
double row of white boulders. There is a large
whitewashed Protestant church, a portentous-
looking graveyard shut in by walls of neatly sawn
coral, a farehau or police station, and a school-
house. The houses are the usual one - storey
planter dwelling with a diminutive garden in
front, painted wooden railings, a verandah, and
a latticed outhouse. There are even fewer char-

193 N

The Log of an Island Wanderer

acteristic architectural traits than in Tahiti, the
majority of settlers having adopted corrugated
iron in preference to bamboo or pandanus. They
tell me a goodly number of these hideous shanties
are not paid for. I am glad of it. May they
continue unpaid, and may the agonies of the
vendor compensate for those of the tourist. To
enjoy certain things one must be thoroughly
heartless.

In spite of new-fangled suggestions, the reign-
ing impression of desolation grows stronger each
minute. You feel you are at the getting-off place
of the world. There are pathetic reminders at
every turn. In a glary acre of sand dotted with
unsightly palm-stumps some one had tried to dig
a well. The side-wall of brick had fallen in, the
iron windlass was a heap of rust, a thrown pebble
discovered a scuttering of crabs in the green slime
of the bottom. In another place a settler (he
turned out afterwards to be a German) had at-
tempted a garden. He had marked the walks
and planted the flowers, but the terrible sun had
withered everything, and only bare rings of shells
showed where the beds ought to have been.
How far was the loved abode in the Fatherland
whose memory this lonely man had tried to
invoke ?

For more than half the day not a soul is stir-
194

Life on a Coral Atoll

ring. Nothing indicates that the houses are not
deserted. In a marshy hollow you may possibly
see an old woman, her face shrivelled like a dried
apple, washing clothes in the coffee-coloured mud.
Or you pass the schoolhouse where the boys are
reading their lessons in monotonous chant, B — a
— bay, B — u — boo, with side looks of shiftless
curiosity which, after the livelier youth of Papeete,
strike you unpleasantly. Then the vision passes
and you are once more lost in the glare of the wood.

Oh, the ghastly solitude of those Paumotu
forests ! Not the solitude of the jungle or savan-
nah, where each rotting log carries its freight of
living creatures, nor yet that of the Mexican
plateaux, whose sombre fir-copses are haunted by
the shades of a million ancient kings — but the
solitude of Nature clad in her forbidding armour
of coral ; offering nothing, promising nothing,
fulfilling nothing — exulting in her poverty, flaunt-
ing her rag-panoply of palms at the brazen sky ;
a palace of dreadful day where loneliness reigns
smiling and supreme.

And yet these nightmares of islands have their
uses. The soil is valuable for copra-growing, and
these apparently barren acres are jealously guarded
by the Tahitian authorities.

Life in Anaa is Tahiti-and-water, or rather
Tahiti without water. If there is any bathing

195

The Log of an Island Wanderer

to be done you must do it in the sea or in the
lagoon. The latter is obviously the most prac-
tical. You soon grow to hate your bath. The
water is lukewarm and does not refresh. The
lagoon is naturally tideless, and the shores are
lined with decaying sea-vermin. Sharks simply
swarm. The latter inconvenience is usually got
over by taking a dog with you. Sharks have a
peculiar liking for dog-flesh, and should there
chance to be one around the probabilities are
poor Fido will be immolated first. A simple
remedy, though a trifle rough on Fido.

Food in the Paumotus is uniformly abomin-
able. People nervous on the score of ptomaine-
poisoning would do well to give the archipelago
a wide berth, as canned goods are the only kind
of nourishment to be regularly depended on. A
bunch of sickly bananas, a bag of oranges, a sack
of potatoes are welcomed as a godsend. I re-
member my first day in Anaa, meeting a settler
in the glare of noon and being dragged off to his
house to taste of a newly imported delicacy.
After much impressive burrowing and unwrap-
ping the miracle was revealed. It was a green
water-melon. It had come all the way from
Mehetia. I had strength of mind to refuse a
second slice. To me it was a little thing — to him

a treasure passing the value of rubies.

196

Life on a Coral Atoll

After your morning bath you can generally
get some sort of a substitute for coffee. It is
useless to try and cook it yourself. Better go
to the store. Over the long deal counter, with
its piles of tins and rows of pareos flapping on
overhead strings, you can imbibe the mixture and
give it any name you please. There will be a
few honest fellows in corduroy breeches and top-
boots, or stained ducks and Chinese pattens, to
talk Paumotu politics and make it palatable.

When you fall back on the pure native cooking,
you stand a better chance. Raw fish (i.e. fish
cut into strips and pickled in oil or vinegar)
has nothing revolting about it except the name ;
bread-fruit might pass for soapy potato with eyes
shut, and pig — done in true island fashion in
the warm ashes of a wood fire — is a thing to
dream of. As for fish, green sea-crabs are none
too bad, though a bit indigestible ; turtle, on
most of the islands, can be had periodically ;
young shark, to those who have not clomb to the
fin-soup ideal, is a substitute for turbot, while the
crowning native delicacy, sea-scorpion, is, though
sometimes found in these waters, more properly
a native of the Society and Cook groups. Lastly,
I must not omit the dreaded scarlet sting-fish — a
broad, wide-mouthed monster, with nasty slimy-
looking tentacles about his gills, and a row of

197

The Log of an Island Wanderer

venomous spikes fringing his back. He is gener-
ally found basking in the sand, his poison ap-
paratus conveniently protruding. Grilled over
a slow fire he is excellent eating. Step on him,
and three months in hospital will show you the
uglier side of his qualities.

No — romantic incidents on these forgotten
coral atolls are few and far between. The still-
ness, dulness, and general inanition of life is
beyond the imaginings. Had Alexander Selkirk
been wrecked on one of the Paumotus instead of
Juan Fernandez he would simply have gone
mad — and Robinson Crusoe would have been
lost to the world. It would be difficult for any
one to be thus wrecked nowadays.

Really uninhabited islands are rare, though
indeed the population of the Paumotus varies
enormously — from Anaa with its three hundred
inhabitants to tiny museum-fragments like Taiaro
orTikei, with barely a settler to tread their burn-
ing sands. Romances connected with castaways
are not unknown though. Some of them are, of
course, lies pure and simple. Others, of a soberer
tinge, have an ugly ring of truth in their compo-
sition. The heroes of the last of these were two
young New Zealanders whom the Union Com-
pany contracted to set ashore at some dreadful
and comparatively unknown island or other.

198

Life on a Coral Atoll

They were to be landed and left for a fortnight,
at the end of which time the steamer was to re-
appear and relieve them from their exile. The
company carried out the first part of the contract,
but the steamer forgot to return to the island,
and for one awful year the two pioneers were left
to their own devices. Stripped of the romantic
facilities with which a novelist loves to surround
his shipwrecked hero, their existence must have
been a terrible one. For food the refuse of the
sea, for drink the lukewarm coco-water. Great
was the row when they were finally rescued.
They returned to the mother country and
promptly sued the company for damages, which
were granted. The detailed history of their
sufferings would make an interesting volume—
but would it pay to write it ? The lamp of truth
glows feebly beside the arc-light of fiction, and
the goddess herself looks, as Paumotu women
do, best in her veil.

With all its monotony, a stay in Anaa leaves
its own impression of poetry. The endless
tramps through the sunny wood where the dried
palm-branches crackle to the ripples on the blue
tideless lagoon, the sleepy salutation of natives,
the politics of panama-hatted long-shoremen, the
moonlit rambles among the white stems, the

night's rest on the pure hard sand when you

199

The Log of an Island Wanderer

wake with a start to see an army of crabs scurry-
ing away from your supposed dead body — these
are things not to be forgotten, and leave a mark
on the senses not to be accounted for by any
process of reasoning.

Anaa is not a good place to commit matri-
mony— respectable European matrimony — in. It
would be a rash thing to condemn a white woman
to live the life of a Paumotuan. There was a
man once. But the story is worthy of detailed
narration, and as it is persistently dinned into the
ears of every one who sets foot in Anaa, may be
treated as history, and so consigned to a fresh
chapter.

CH APTE R XIX

CHALLONER'S ANGEL

THE ship must have been driven ashore during
the night. Across the narrow band of coral the
waves were pouring with a noise like thunder,
and clearly visible in the white turmoil was a
speck of black with the remnants of two masts
sticking up like charred matches. Nearer by,
something, the fragment of a torn sail, flapped on
the water. The wreck was complete. On the
sand lay two bodies, the wind playing idly with
their dark clothes ; one was a Kanaka, the other
a European of sorts, with a grizzled beard and a
sallow southern complexion. They were both
dead, but Challoner was not the man to waste
time sentimentalising. He returned to the
village, and, within the hour, the beach was lined
with jabbering, gesticulating natives.

It was early next morning before they suc-
ceeded in putting out to the ship. As the canoe
rounded her stern they read — "The Aglaia,
Valparaiso " in letters of white. An oily swell of
water brought the canoe flush with the ship's

2OI

The Log of an Island Wanderer

gunwale and Challoner, Challoner poparua (long
white man) as the people called him, sprang on
board. Two bundles of rags were lashed to the
mast. One stirred not, but the other, a small
pale-faced creature, struggled and whimpered as
the strange man bent over it.

There were various reasons why Nina Val-
verde's relations did not wish the child home
again. Valverde had amassed a considerable
fortune in the wool trade. He owned a house
on the Monte Allegre, and drove a fine pair of
horses. His subsequent marriage, at an advanced
age, with a girl of lowly origin had been a thorn
in their side. They were proud, as only Spaniards
can be. Also they were poor and wanted money.
Therefore they let the great deep swallow the
child.

And in the long island of Anaa the natives
gave up wondering. The girl was pretty and
harmless, and Challoner poparua not a man to
try conclusions with. Challoner did not com-
plain of the burden. He had married a native
wife and was making a decent income at copra
and pearl-shell. His San Francisco agent asked
no questions, and the Tahiti traders were in-
different. Nina was in her fifth year, growing
up pretty and very wilful. She was rapidly be-

202

Challoner's Angel

coming islandised, had adopted native dress, and
spoke the vernacular with the greatest ease — as
only a child can whose tongue is hardly moulded
to the jingle of an alien language. The night of
agony on board the Aglaia had half-paralysed
Nina's memory, and of her earlier life in Val-
paraiso only shadowy recollections remained.
The bamboo stockades of the neighbouring
planters shaped themselves into bars of light
streaming through window-tatties, a square patch
of sun in the clearing brought suggestions of the
flower-worked nursery carpet ; over Nina's bed,
between the thin white curtains and the bands of
moonlight there bent a tall pale woman not in the
least like Vaerua — much handsomer and more
pleasant-looking. Nina did not know what it
meant, and in her then entourage there was no
one to enlighten her.

Then came the day when Challoner's great
idea struck him. On the back verandah Chal-
loner's sickly wife was teaching Nina how to
make miti (coco-nut sauce), and the sight of the
girl's white fingers as they handled the weird
shelly creatures of the sea made him think.

Was the girl fit for this life ? She promised
to be beautiful. Whither was her beauty likely
to lead her in Anaa ? Challoner's conscience
pricked him. Under the rough skin of the

203

The Log of an Island Wanderer

trader lay the pure idealism of a thoroughly
unselfish man. Nina must be sent away, if not
to Valparaiso at least to some place where she
could receive a decent education. Challoner
sat down and, pipe in mouth, indited a letter
to a friend in San Francisco, explaining things
and asking advice.

The reply came in due course, and Nina who
would much rather have stayed to play skittles
on the beach with her Kanaka friends, was
shipped off to the Frisco convent of San
Geronimo to be educated into something vaguely
resembling a European miss in distant Beretania.
The novelty of her surroundings at first jarred
on the child. She was seven years old and full
of fun. She missed her juvenile companions and
the tumbling waves of Anaa. The Sunday's
dead-march in the Gardens was no substitute for
the barefooted scampers over the white sands
with the music of the combers in her ears, and
the salt breath of the ocean in her nostrils. The
Sisters were dull and constrained. Indeed Nina
was a puzzle to them at first. The girl was
evidently a savage — yet underneath all were the
instincts and manners of a lady.

Time wore on, and Nina's two years in Anaa
died a natural death. As they did so, her still
earlier recollections came back. The effect of

204

Challoner's Angel

light between green blinds and the tall motherly
woman with the pale face and crucifix grew
plainer each day. Echoing words caught her
ear, and the sisters wonderingly interpreted their
meaning. Nina began to look on this new life in
the convent as a revival of the old dimly remem-
bered period of childhood in Valparaiso, and as
the two periods joined hands, the faint inter-
mediate episode on the sands of Anaa got crushed
out and destroyed.

But on that low flat ring of coral, under the
fire of that remorseless iron roof with the dry
odour of copra and the clink of the sorted shell
echoing in his ears, Challoner was waiting.

He too saw possibilities in the dim-lit future.
Once a month a letter used to come bearing the
Frisco postmark and telling him of Nina's
progress, of the exercises she was practising on
the piano, of the sisters' difficulties in making
her keep her hair combed, of her proficiency
in Spanish and German. Then Challoner's big
heart would swell to bursting and he would bless
that awful day of the wreck with the fervour of a
man who sees Paradise before him. The cheque
came regularly as clockwork. Challoner's busi-
ness was increasing. He had taken a contract
for pearl-shell from a Tahitian firm and was

205

master of a thirty-ton schooner. He was the
most popular man in the island. The plain four-
roomed shanty had become a neat villa with
hedges of well-groomed coffee bushes and a tall
flagstaff topping the lawn between flower-beds.
Challoner had a piano brought from Auckland.
It arrived, at last, in a native schooner. The sea
had done its work on the strings, and by the time
it came to be housed in Challoner's parlour be-
tween the gaudily framed prints and crossed
paddles from Makatea, it was hopelessly out of
tune. But Challoner's ear was not delicate, and
he was delighted. Had he been able he would
have gone to Frisco himself to visit Nina, but he
was a busy man and he knew that in Anaa there
were men only too ready to supplant him should
he permit himself to play truant.

Yaerua, ailing for some time past, suddenly
sickened and died. Domestic interests removed,
Challoner might have gone the way of nine out
of ten of his associates and degenerated to the
level of an ordinary drunken beach-comber — but
the thought of his angel waiting across four
thousand miles of sea restrained him and he kept
himself holy for her sake.

Nina, indeed, was by this time a prize well
worth the winning. The Sisters had by no means
originally intended to launch the- girl in Frisco

206

Challoner's Angel

society, but Nina had made friends among her
classmates, and invitations came as a matter of
course. Her piano-playing was the talk of the
quarter, and in learning of all sorts she was the
model held up to the admiration of the rest of the
pupils. Already the Sisters were displeased at
the prospect of losing her, and as the days wore
on their displeasure quickened to a poignant
anxiety.

But Challoner was only going to wait a year
longer. The period sped quickly, the fatal letter
came. Nina, sobbing bitterly, was escorted
down to the crowded wharf and ensconced in the
stuffy cabin of a sailing-ship bound for Papeete.
"Remember," said the eldest Sister, a tall
matronly - looking woman, strikingly like the
dream- woman of Nina's earliest infancy, " if your
new home disappoints you, Nina mia, you always
have a home with us." The words sank deeply
into the girl's heart, and during that long awful
journey she treasured them as one treasures gold.

Challoner was counting the days with feverish
interest. He had arranged everything. Nina
was to be lodged at the house of a lady friend,
a half-caste missionary's wife. They were to
take the first ship to Papeete, get married, and
spend their honeymoon in the Society Islands.
Then they were to return to Anaa and reign like

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

king and queen. He was in the shed among
the pearl-shell when the schooner was sighted,
and hurried off home to change his things, his
heart going like a steam-hammer.

The vessel swept round majestically, clearly vis-
ible through the stems of the coco-trees. There
was a flash of white in the gangway, and Nina, as
the boat put her ashore, saw in the blinding light a
cluster of dirty natives threading their way through
the piles of packing-cases to receive her. Fore-
most of all was a big man in corduroys who cried
and crushed her fingers in his huge palm. The
glare was terrific, and her delicate lace sunshade
in no way protected her. She allowed herself to
be escorted to Challoner's house, and there in
that glowing atmosphere, under the fishing-
trophies and cheap gaudy prints, her stoicism
forsook her and she burst into shameful tears !

The skipper of the Aurora was on Challoner's
verandah as Nina was ushered in. He knew
what the trouble was and sized it up epigram-
matically, with language that need not be pub-
lished. " I'd make a blame good scoot for it if
I were in her shoes, blame me if I wouldn't," was
his reiterated conclusion, and the foc'sle hands
grinned assent.

The Aurora was to sail in three days' time.
Challoner was glowing. His plans about his

208

wedding had changed. There was no need to
go to Papeete. The fine church had just been
completed at Anaa. They could be married
there and spend their honeymoon in Challoner's
own schooner. His life was tied up with the
natives of the Paumotus and he dreamed no evil.
But — on the fateful evening before the sailing
of the Aurora, as the skipper was drinking with
the boys in the saloon, the Kanaka steward
called him aside and conducted him to where, in
a secluded corner of the deck, a tall pale girl fell
on her knees and sobbed out a petition.

Challoner found the note next day. It was
half obliterated with tear-splotches and smudged
in a weak, girlish hand ; but it made the strong
man stagger as though he were shot. What was
he to do? As the house reeled round him a
strange murderous idea occurred to him. He
thought of his schooner lying there in the lagoon.
What if he were to chase after the Aurora, board
her, and — and — bring Nina to reckoning?

Something told him it would be vain mad-
ness. He paced terribly up and down the beach
till sunset. Once a native accosted him, but
Challoner broke the man's jaw and he fled howl-
ing. Then a new idea seemed to strike him.
He returned to the village and knocked at the

209 o

The Log of an Island Wanderer

door of the solitary storekeeper. Failing an
answer he kicked open the door with his foot.
" Bring out the liquor and the glasses," he said
to the terrified half-caste — " I'm going to' raise
Hell!"
He did.

But Challoner did not go to the bad. After a
month's madness he settled down once more to
the life of a planter, and once again became loved
of the natives. Eventually he left Anaa and
settled in Papeete, where he has an interest in
several vanilla farms and is one of the most
honoured members of parliament Tahiti boasts.
But he doesn't believe in prohibition. " It don't
seem to act in the United States," he says ;
" why should you want it to fail in the islands ? "

210

CHAPTER XX

MAKEMO— SURF-RIDING— SHARKS

THE ubiquitous Croix du Sud arrived in due
course. I was glad to see her. I said a pathetic
farewell to my gendarme friend, went on board,
and climbed into my bunk. I needed a rest, a
genuine Christian one, after that week on mats
and sand, and when the screw commenced to
jog my pillow an hour later, I sternly refused
to come on deck and bid Anaa a last farewell.

Variety, says some barbarian wise man, is the
spice of life — and in the Paumotus there is no
variety. It is life without spice, a glary routine
of sand and coral, flat to the taste as a backwoods
pancake. Thus topples to earth another romance
of mine, the romance of a "coral island" exis-
tence. What complex fits of thrill I have wasted
over that heartless fraud! How imperfect is a
school education and how truly awful the ideas
it instils. The principal sinner in my case was
Ballantyne. He taught me to look on coral
islands as paradises. I shall never forgive him.
To make matters still more offensive, we are urged

to admire and applaud the silly polyp who erects

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

these nightmares, and to emulate him if possible !
It is incredible how many tons of sentiment the
civilised world has wasted over the coral polyp and
his work. If human suffering, boredom, and mad-
ness count for anything in the scale of crime, the
coral polyp is the meanest, the most hypocritical,
the most injudiciously lionised criminal extant.

Next morning I got a practical illustration of the
dangers of the archipelago. Captain Pond called
me on the bridge, and, pointing ahead over the
bows — " Do you see anything there ? " he said.

I strained my eyes in vain. Yet we were
within four miles of land. Ten minutes later
two tiny dots of palm dipped up from the blue.
They were the forerunners of the island of
Makemo — one of the few islands hereabouts
that possesses a passage deep enough to admit
large steamers. The current in the pass was
very violent, and it seemed to me that with all
the efforts of the machinery we were making
little or no progress. We got ashore towards
eight, however, inside the lagoon, where a goodly
flotilla of skiffs and outrigger canoes were drawn
up to receive us.

I had a letter to one of the residents, a man
named Elson, whose house lay some two miles
from the inlet, and as I walked I had time to
take stock of things in superficial tourist fashion.

Makemo — as a centre of culture — is a big step
212

Makemo

behind Anaa. The population is very variable,
and just then (February) the majority, I was
told, were absent in Hikueru for the pearl-
fisheries. There was the usual church with its
home-made coloured windows and mildewed
green bell, the level avenue flanked by lilies, the
cemetery, and the scurrying army of hogs. A
curious custom prevails here in connection with
the dead. Among the white slabs marking the
graves I repeatedly noticed stray piles of bedding,
blankets, and rugs. They were the sleeping-
places of natives, who by spending a night
among the tombs hope to obtain the privilege
of communing with the dear departed. A
gruesome custom and one which the missionaries
are labouring to discourage.

There was goodly array of Makemo youth
frolicking in the water, some surf-swimming on
boards, others merely dabbling. By rights these
ingenuous youngsters ought to have been at
school, but I suppose it was a holiday, or perhaps
school hours are arbitrary in the Paumotus.
Surf-swimming is an exhilarating pastime and
amusing to watch. The urchins swam out to
where the combers were tossing their manes,
bestrided their boards and got carried home
shrieking at a speed which Perseus in the sandals
of Hermes might have envied. I don't know
whether the sport is accompanied by much

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

danger. It looked horribly dangerous to me.
On a flat beach cushioned with fine sand cela
va bien. A tumble in the mud is the worst to
be anticipated. But on the iron-bound coast
of Makemo it is another affair altogether. Let
one of those youngsters slip or miscalculate his
distance by a few yards and his skull would be
smashed like an egg. I suppose the dear things
knew what they were at, however, for the sport
went on hour after hour in a way that might
have struck despair to the heart of a Makemo
life-insurance company, if there was one.

Just then, five minutes or so after I had
finished admiring the picture of brown limbs
flashing in creamy surf, came one of those little
rencontres which illustrate the fatalistic island
character so thoroughly. On a level stretch of
sand and coral innocent of waves a party of men
were busy with baskets and string. On my
asking what they were doing, I was told "fish-
ing for sharks ! " This turned out to be actually
the case, for the sharks in Makemo are a great
deal harder up for food than those in Tahiti and
bite readily at anything.

" Even at schoolboys," I suggested.

" Sometimes," was the tranquil reply.

I crossed the belt of palms to the lagoon.
Here more fishing was going on, though of a
more inoffensive description. Two men came

214

Makemo

staggering in under the weight of a load of some-
thing resembling salmon, though of course it
wasn't salmon and more resembled the ulua of
the Sandwich Islanders.

In the wood alongside were more curiosities.
Truants picking coco-nuts — stealing them I pre-
sume— for one could hardly admit to oneself that
these brown monkeys with straw satchels on their
backs were the owners of plantations. Shades
of Surrey orchards ! I wonder whether these
mother's joys will get as soundly birched as we
did when

But never mind. I am glad I met those boys.
It is these little touches of home-made poetry
that move one's heart in a foreign land.

Elson's house was a remarkably handsome type
of villa — for Makemo. It was built of coral, with
inside partitions of varnished wood, walls oblite-
rated under a load of pictures and bric-a-brac, and
real muslin mosquito-curtains protecting the bed.
He entertained me royally — turtle's fins and
baked beans — and spun yarn after yarn. The
plates were removed and coffee and cigars took
their place. The conversation here turned on
navigation, and I called Elson's attention to the
difficulty the Croix du Sud had experienced
getting into the pass. He expressed no surprise.

" It's a devil of a place," he said simply ;

" runs like a mill-race at the ebb, and whirls like

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

ten thousand devils at the flood. There's not
another like it in the group."

I said I should hope not, or words to that
effect. My companion puffed solemnly. " How
would you like to try and swim it ? " he said lazily.

I stared. The bare idea seemed preposterous.
Elson rose and took off a bracket the photo of a
girl, still young, framed in a curious kind of rough
leather frame studded with copper nails. In the
Paumotus as elsewhere, most Jacks have their Jill.

"Your wife?" I said.

He nodded. " Help yourself to the rum.
I'll tell you a yarn of a rather awful kind if you'll
promise not to laugh. It concerns the girl too.
Ariitea her name is. Do you know what that
frame's made of?"

"It looks like shark-skin," I said tentatively.

" It is shark-skin," was the reply. " Do you
know what a patui is ? "

I nodded. The rambling chatter of Papeete
fishermen had made me acquainted, fortunately
only theoretically, with those terrible fish.

"We have 'em here at times. Great brutes
that'd swallow you or me as easily as a bear
swallows a penny bun. You're smoking nothing."

" I don't care about smoking — it distracts me,"
I said eagerly ; "tell us the yarn."

Elson filled his pipe, lit it, arranged himself in

his chair and spoke as follows.

216

2W8

A Makemo Schoolboys Holiday.

[p. 216.

CHAPTER XXI

THE WHITE DEVIL OF MAKEMO

IT was about a month after my landing here that
I met Ariitea. She was the daughter of one of
the chiefs in Tetuaranga (that's the village yonder)
—a sort of quarter-white blackguard, Portugee
on his father's side and African Portugee at that.
He's dead now, and a good job too. A fearful
old drunkard he was, and very nasty to cross in
liquor.

I don't quite know myself how it happened. I
didn't give a snap for these coloured women. as a
general thing, but Ariitea was by long odds the
best-looking one I had come across till then, and
I fell in love then and there.

It was my first and only love affair, and it clean
bowled me over. I met her old skinflint of a
father in the matter of price, but before I could
scrape the money together there landed at Te-
tuaranga (that's the village yonder) one of the
d — dest, lankiest, blackest-eyed half-castes you
ever saw. Lakin his name was. He had been
purser to some big trading vessel, but had got

217

The Log of an Island Wanderer

himself cashiered for dishonesty, and had hit on
the idea of settling in the Paumotus and playing
at trader.

I'd never known what jealousy was before, but
I got to know it then. Lakin had the advantage
of me, for he knew the lingo, and these girls won't
look at a white man when there's a chance of a
fellow who's got a dash of the tar-brush. The
first time he saw Ariitea he ogled her in a way
that made me want to kick him — but it was
best to stand well with the natives, and I had
to restrain myself. I met the fellow next day
though, and gave him a piece of my mind.

"It's me you have to reckon with, my boy," I
said, "not with that old blackguard yonder. The
girl's mine, and, by G — , if I find you or any
other son of a gun monkeying round I'll wring
your neck ! "

He took it gamely. Grinned and showed his
teeth — fine teeth they were — and apologised.
But my blood was up, and I saw he'd twigged
all right.

Next day as I was bossing some chaps cleaning

shell a messenger came from the old man Mahinui.

A patui had carried off one of his men in the pass

—carried him clean off while he was stringing his

nets — and he wanted my help in killing the brute.

Perhaps you know the nature of these devils.

218

The White Devil of Makemo

They're the man-eating tigers of the ocean.
When a patui kills a man he'll hang around the
spot and carry off another and another, regular as
clockwork, till he gets killed himself.

I wasn't best pleased at the job, for I'd other
things on hand just then, but Ariitea's dad had to
be humoured, and I went. The natives had been
baiting their silly hooks, and towing dead pigs
about all the afternoon. I didn't care about net-
stringing, so by way of making a show I got a
Sharp's rifle (I believe it was the only one in the
island), and set off with a boy in the biggest and
solidest canoe I could find. It was just possible
the brute might come to the surface, and I might
get a shot at him. It wasn't scientific fishing, but
it was white-man cleverness, and enough to amuse
Mahinui.

I didn't expect the shark would turn up, but
things panned out differently. The sun was
terrific, and I was dozing contentedly in the stern
of the canoe. The boy was on the look-out. It
must have been about half-past four in the after-
noon. Presently the youngster grabbed his paddle
and gave a gasp — I saw about a yard under the
surface the biggest monster I've ever seen in my
life. He must have measured full twenty feet
from nose to tail, and as he cut through the water

to seize the bait he threw out a phosphorescent

219

The Log of an Island Wanderer

light like a ghost. I cocked my rifle and fired.
I don't think I hit him, though I saw the flaps of
his great tail, and felt the effect by the rocks of
the canoe. Anyway I couldn't be sure. He
vanished like a streak of lightning. " Row out
into the middle," says I to the boy; "maybe
we'll get another shot."

The youngster was in the bluest of funks, and
I don't blame him much either, for that fish could
have taken boat and all like a pill. Presently, as
we were settling down to a new spell of waiting,
comes a yelling from the village opposite.

" White devil ? " said I lazily.

<: Canoes," said the youngster — "canoes from
Tetuaranga."

"Has the whole beach gone off its onion ? "
said I, for the natives on shore were yelling
like demons; "row in, sonny, and see what's
the matter."

It was time to think of getting ashore anyhow.
The wind was getting up, and the sea was coming
in in neat little lines of white, as the sea always
does when she means business. Some one was
waiting on the beach. It was the half-caste, and
I could see by his eyes that he was in a great
state of excitement.

"Is that you, Elson?" he says, with the
natural imbecility of the Kanaka, "for God's

220

The White Devil of Makemo

sake listen, man ! There's trouble over yonder.'
Old Mahinui, your girl's father, has knifed a man
—knifed him dead ! "

" Well, what's that to you ? " said I airily, for
I was still smarting over the cool way he'd taken
my challenge of the day before.

"Not much, but a good deal to you," he says
quietly ; "the dead man's a chiefs son and — why,
man, she II be murdered this very night ! "

He might have said less. I understood in a
flash. " She'll have to be got out of this," said
I, speaking half to myself; "and there isn't a
ship nearer than Fakarava."

"There's my schooner," says he quickly;
" you can have that, if she's any use to you."

" Bless you," said I, wringing his hand, "you're
white all over."

Just then a gust of wind carried his hat away.
I saw the palms of the spit bend double, and
there was an angry roar from the sea as the
squall struck. It was a nasty blow, and I knew
we should have it dark as pitch in a few moments.

We got in the canoe and tried to pole her off.
Just as we thought her fairly started a comber
struck us broadside on ; she heeled, and her out-
rigger snapped like a match. We stood up to
our waist in hissing water, looking at each other

like a pair of fools.

221

The Log of an Island Wanderer

" The boat's broke," said Lakin stupidly, " what
in hell are we going to do now ? "

" Swim for it," said I savagely, kicking my
boots on the sand. Lakin gave one look, to see
if I was in earnest, then ran one hand up to the
top button of his coat. "I'll go with you," said
he defiantly.

The madness of jealousy was between us. I
looked at the pass, where the combers were
running like fury, and an idea struck me that
made me go cold all over. But I gave it no
time.

"Come on!" I shouted, gripping his shoulder
and wringing it ; " it's between you and me, my
lad. The man who reaches her first takes her
and keeps her. One of us'll be bound to get
across unless the patui gets us both ! "

I don't think till that moment he had realised
what was before him ; anyway, in the murky
light, I saw his face turn ashy. In a second we
were both in the water swimming like madmen
to where the lights of the village showed above
the line of foam.

The sea buffeted us like an army of demons.
I lost sight of Lakin after the first fifty yards or
so, and as I turned to look back a wave hit me
in the face and blinded me. Then there came
the idea of the other danger, and the horror of

222

The White Devil of Makemo

it gave me desperate courage. I threw myself
forward, and swam blindly for the landing.

I might have been about half-way across
when, as I topped one of the combers, right in
front of me, through the slant of a wave, I saw
a phosphorescent streak of green — it was the
patui !

I think for one moment breath left my lungs.
Then common sense came back, and I did the
only thing possible at such a crisis. I drew in a
big supply of air, opened my eyes, and dived
head foremost under the surface. The place was
full of lights — crabs crouching in their holes and
sparkles of fire from passing fish. But the streak
of green had vanished, and presently I rose to
the surface again. The wind seemed more violent
than before, and there was a shrieking of gulls in
the blackness overhead. It struck me they were
screaming our requiem.

Then an awful thing happened. From the
dark rim of the palms, between two flying clouds,
stabbed a blood-red spear of sunlight, and right in
the heart of the glare, in a whirl of angry water,
a pair of white arms rose to the light. It was the
half-caste, and on his face was written terror
beyond the power of imagining. One second he
hung there between the trough of the wave and

the flying scuds, then a yell came from his lips —

223

The Log of an Island Wanderer

a yell that froze the blood in my veins — and he
sank gurgling in a circle of foam.

I don't remember what happened next quite.
The lights ahead of me were dancing a drunken
reel. I might have been swimming back to
the point I started from for all I knew. Then,
as I gave myself up for lost, my knee struck
something hard — I was on the rocks, and safe.

He paused, filled himself out a stiff nobbier of
rum and drank it at a gulp.

" And Ariitea?" I suggested.

" Well — I guess that's about the whole of the
yarn," he replied, with affected indifference. "No,
it isn't though, quite. I got her away in the
boat — his boat — and steered for Fakarava. The
blackguards had rifled the house and tried to fire
it, but the rain came down and it wouldn't burn.
We had a job getting her off. The wind was
blowing right square into the lagoon, and as we
yawed in the pass something came floating by on
the water — something that made me turn sick.
Ariitea had her elbows on the gun'le and was
looking at the sea. I took her in my arms, just
in time, and lifted her down into the cabin.
There wasn't much to be got by shocking the
girl, and — there wasn't enough of the thing to
require burial. That's the whole story. Now you

224

The White Devil of Makemo

know why that picture there's framed in shark-
skin."

There was a step outside. The door opened
and a girl with a heavy basket of pine-apples on
her arm staggered into the room. It was Ariitea.
With the raindrops coursing down her cheeks
and the wet strands of hair clinging to her fore-
head, she hardly looked a being for whose sake
a man would risk his life. When she saw me
fingering her portrait she smiled. Then, over-
come with bashfulness, she retired to an inner
room and closed the door.

" That's the way with 'em," said Elson philo-
sophically ; " she saw you fingering the frame
and twigged what we had been talking about.
I believe she really was a bit sweet on the chap.
If you're game now we might go down to the
ship and polish off those bags of shell. It's my
only chance for a month of real Christian work,
and I wouldn't miss it for worlds."

225

CHAPTER XXII

HIKUERU AND THE PEARL-FISHERY

" Haere rii au i Hikueru 6
E foito rii au i te reni e."

— Kanaka Love-song.

ON reaching the Croix du Sud we found a brand-
new and interesting collection of natives in pos-
session of the decks. A band of straw-hatted,
flower-girdled wisdom was going to Hikueru—
to speculate. About two-thirds of the number
belonged to the softer sex, and among the latter
were several whom I wickedly suspected of having
figured in some Papeete hoola a month back.

The way in which one recognises the same
faces over and over again in the Pacific is mar-
vellous. How do the darlings get about ? It is
surely only in Tahiti that you find a young miss
of fifteen who ought to be at school doing sums,
galivanting about on the briny a few thousand
miles from her home, with a plank between her
preciousness and eternity, and the tender mercies
of a Union Company bo'sn for emotional main-
stay. Morality, your name is latitude.

Elson said pathetic farewell to me in the gray
226

Hikueru and the Pearl-Fishery

dawn, and the Croix du Sud steamed meekly out
through that terrible pass fifteen minutes later.
My dreams that night were a medley of clashing
shark-jaws, hissing acres of foam, spectral fringes
of palm, and brown limbs frothing in voluptuous
dance — the latter image being probably conjured
from the Silent by the vocal efforts of the stranger
vahines in the foc'sle. Then — sudden as the
splash of a whale's flukes — some one shouted my
name, and I awoke to learn that Hikueru was
in sight. Like the rest of the Paumotus, the
approach offers nothing striking — a long hot line
of palms and pandanus against which the white
shanties of the settlers loom up like pearls in a
necklace of emerald. This is poetry — but the
dusty reality obliterates it from the first second
of your landing. Hikueru, as we have already
hinted, plays a role of considerable importance
among the islands of the Eastern Pacific, its
dusty, shadeless acres being the assembling-
ground and nucleus of no inconsiderable fraction
of South Sea wealth. The actual output of the
island in shell for this last season is stated at
some $200,000 American money ; and should the
more modern mechanical improvements (foolishly
abandoned some time ago) be re-introduced into
the diving operations, it is probable that even a
larger figure may be reached.

227

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Landing on the island is a nasty ordeal in
all weathers. As usual, there is no species of
anchorage. Even boats of light draught generally
find it impossible to approach within fifty yards
of dry land. Of late years efforts have been
made to blast a passage up the reef to enable
burdens to be deposited ashore without further
parley, but the scheme is still in abeyance, and
something more than the staggering efforts of
the French Government will be needed to push it
to a successful issue. As it is, the boat comes
to a standstill in some two feet of water, and if
you object to wading across the intervening
knife-edges of coral — quite a reasonable objection
by the way — you can ride ashore pickaback on
the shoulders of a Kanaka. Here, if you are
still suffering from the more picturesque variety
of island- fever, you will get a bit of a shock.
Hikueru presents an astonishingly, almost dis-
agreeably "new" appearance. The place is
choked with corrugated iron sheds, packing-cases,
advertisements — all the signs of a busy, romance-
murdering civilisation. The whole landscape
looks impertinently young. The very coco-trees
are young, and offer no sort of shelter from the
sun. The population too is a wonderful jumble.
Here a brawny half-caste looks out pipe in mouth
from among the piled-up soap bars of his store.

228

Hikueru and the Pearl-Fishery

A Tahitian vahine — pale mauve empire gown
and perfume of tuberose all complete — passes
you smiling. A couple of coal-black Fijians
are arguing under the waving paper scrolls of a
Chinaman's. A group of tattooed Marquesans
are squatting in the sun playing dice with the
proceeds of yesterday's diving. Farther on a
tall Easter-islander, with eyes of sloe and pale-
coppery complexion, leans pensively against a
palm bole. All the racial panorama of the
Pacific, from Rarotonga to Rapa-nui, is being
trotted out for your inspection.

A walk of ten minutes or so brings us to the
lagoon. It is a vast sheet of emerald water
deluged in a glare which the fleet of white-
painted yachts and fishing smacks don't help to
mitigate by any means. Woe to the man who is
unprovided with smoked glasses ! The living
fire will eat into his brain and drive him dis-
tracted. To gaze on Hikueru lagoon with the
naked eye is the most real, the most horrible of
tortures.

And now we are in the very centre of opera-
tions, and the one absorbing topic is beginning
to din itself into our ears. Shell — shell — shell.
Through the warm shallows men are wading
ashore with bags and baskets of the precious
merchandise. From under the glowing roof of

229

The Log of an Island Wanderer

a warehouse behind comes the chink of hammers.
A party of Kanakas are cleaning shell, and
packing it in cases for export. Incidentally you
learn that the price of shell is ^50 a ton.

When you are tired of the never-ending music
of long-shore gossip you can go and watch the
diving operations for yourself. Out on the smooth
expanse a score of tiny dots are languidly cruising.
We will board the cutter Turia and follow one of
them up. Hikueru diving is performed without
the very faintest excuse in the shape of dress or
helmet. Naked as a marble Faun the Hikueran
descends to rob the lagoon of its treasures and —
a mere professional detail — brave the sharks.

At a mile or so from land a tiny pink dot, a
half-submerged island of coral, appears in the
green like an oasis. The sides and crevices of
this singular excrescence are choked with pearl-
shell. There are several canoes bobbing about.
In the nearest one two men are sitting stark
naked. The sun is nearly vertical, and to a
European understanding it seems a miracle how
they avoid shrivelling up like spiders on a hot
shovel. Our mentor, the skipper of the Turia,
pours forth a volley of fluent Polynesian. Will
they dive for the gentleman with the camera ?
They will. Had we been among the Maoris of
New Zealand or the culture-mildewed Sandwich

230

Hikueru and the Pearl-Fishery

islanders they might have suggested being paid
first, but here all is lovely. The elder of the two
men sits for a few seconds gasping in the bows
while he takes breath. Then he rises to his feet
and — plump ! — over he goes in a graceful curve.
The lagoon at this point is about sixty feet deep.
" Count," says our mentor, and we pull out our
stop-watches. Sixty seconds (a good dive that),
seventy, eighty — the man must have the wind of
a grampus — ninety, a hundred, a hundred and ten.
He's drowned. No he isn't either, for here he
comes puffing and sneezing, andin his hand is some-
thing black with a trailing fringe of seaweed. He
throws it in the boat and the game continues.

A hundred and ten seconds. A very fair dive,
but not the record by any means. Men have
been known in Hikueru to remain under water
for three minutes and a half I A painful profes-
sion ? Well, it is a well-paid one too. Shell of
the best quality and size is worth, in Hikueru,
some two and a half Chile dollars (about five
shillings) per kilo. An enterprising diver can
make his three to four pounds a day while the
season lasts. Luck has, of course, a certain
amount to do with it, for if he should happen
to strike a barren region the shell-diver may have
his long spell of suffocation for nothing. For this

reason no pains are spared to ascertain the nature

231

The Log of an Island Wanderer

of the bottom of the lagoon before diving is re-
sorted to. Various means have been tried, but
the simplest and most interesting of all is the
water-glass. In form it is merely an elongated
tube of wood with a pane of glass let into one
end. The protecting walls check the ripples, and
you look down on the sea-bottom as though you
were gazing vertically into an immense aquarium.
The first sight of a coral grove with alternating
layers of sand and pearl-shell is an event not to
be forgotten. In these latitudes the waters are
so clear that a bed of sand can be distinguished
without difficulty at twenty fathoms. The coral
bottom affects all manner of strange forms. In
some places the rocks are gnarled like the buried
stumps of venerable trees, in others the white
structure imitates the marble lace work of a cathe-
dral— the whole set off by swarms of tiny blue fish
and the rosy hanging drapery of sea-weed. The
waters of the lagoon are warm all over, and in
places actually hot — so if you dream of a refresh-
ing bath you are apt to be disappointed. In the
interim you can get back on shore, and while a
trader entertains you with rum and tobacco on his
verandah you can consign to your notebook some
of the more sober facts connected with this won-
derful shell industry.

Hikueru produces the finest quality of black -
232

b 1 <•'?/

Hikueru and the Pearl-Fishery

edged shells known to the Pacific. The pro-
ductive powers of its lagoon have been more than
doubled within the last fifteen years, thanks to the
use of diving-dresses and improved machinery
from 1885-92. This method of obtaining shell
(which has since been unwisely checked by the
Government) was in reality a great boon to the
oyster-beds. The fully dressed diver brought up
shells from depths which the naked diver never
could hope to reach, with the result that the ova
of those shells on being scooped out in the boat and
thrown back into the water was carried by the
action of the wind and waves all over the lagoon,
thus forming new beds of shell in the shallower
parts instead of remaining inert in the deeper
portions and forming unhealthy conglomerates of
shell which harboured the borer.

Inasmuch as the ova of shells, on being emitted
from the parent oyster, never rises but always
sinks, it is clear that no bed of shell in deep water
can possibly hope to fructify shallower portions of
the lagoon — hence the benefits accruing from the
use of the diving-dress.

The superior productive power of Hikueru, as
compared with the rest of the islands concerned
in the industry, probably also lies in the fact that
there being absolutely no passage through the
reef to the outer ocean there is a total absence of

233

The Log of an Island Wanderer

the different species of fish which prey on the
ova of the young oyster. Also it seems probable
that there is something in the character of the
Hikueru lagoon bottom which renders it especially
suited to the growth of the pearl-oyster, for no-
where in the world does such a small area of sea
produce such a weight of shell.

It must not be forgotten that a good deal of
credit is due to the French Government for the
efforts they have made to increase and conserve
shell production by "closing" each island in
rotation, thus allowing the diving grounds a rest
of from two to three years between operations ;
though they have undoubtedly been ill advised in
stopping the use of diving-dresses, and will cer-
tainly have to allow them again or see the shell
grounds depleted for want of seed, so to speak.

The other islands of the Tuamotu group pro-
ducing in less quantity shells as good as Hikueru
are Raroia, Marokau, Takume, Takapoto, Marutea.
The Gambier Islands also produce an inferior
quality of shell, less bright in colour, more or less
covered with lime on the back, thicker and often
misshapen.

With these parting pagesof information, for which
I duly apologise to the reader, we take leave of
Hikueru — the only really working island of the
Pacific — and hie us to the idle but lovely Marquesas.

234

CHAPTER XXIII

HIVAOA— MISSIONARIES— THE CRUCIFIXION
OF CRADOCK

" Girdled and sandalled and plumed with flowers
At sunset over the love-lit lands."

THE Marquesas are not coral islands, thank
Heaven. They are a big collection of volcanic
peaks that fall into the ocean some twelve degrees
from the equator, groaning under an Atlas-burden
of tropical verdure — lofty enough and arrogant
enough to check even the rush of those terrible
Pacific combers and fling them back with shame
and triumphant mockery.

But the sea doesn't suffer in silence by any
means. Across four thousand miles of sea those
combers have been rolling in steady procession,
and now the rocks bid them halt. What happens ?
Simply a display of watery fireworks that defies
description. The whole easterly coast of the
islands may be said to be walled in by an army
of spray fountains. Every variety of explosion
is represented — from the thundering globe of
smoke to the shrieking spurt that looks as though
it came from the nozzle of a high-pressure fire-

235

The Log of an Island Wanderer

engine. Even from the sedate deck of the Croix
the spectacle is impressive. View it from the
shore — craning yourself perilously among the
clinging lantana right over that howling wilder-
ness of mist crossed by flying rainbows — well,
ask some one else to describe it. I am unequal
to the task.

Then, even while one shivers in awe the roar
diminishes — the tall capes slide away like views
in a diorama — and Hivaoa, frowning and tremen-
dous, appears behind the cliffs of outlying islands,
dwarfing them as Ossa might Pelion. One soli-
tary mountain (Mount Temeti, 4000 feet) juts
forward into the sea. Beyond come range after
range of battlemented ar$tes, the low morning sun
pricking out their serried ribs like the spears of
an advancing army. We are in Atuana Bay.
So deep is the flood of verdure that although a
populous village lies hidden in the shadow of the
mountains, no sign of human habitation is visible.
A few isolated landmarks are pointed out. A
tiny villa crowning a slope of pandanus is, or
rather was, the dwelling-place of Captain Hart,
whose solitary exploit (that of shooting a native)
becomes almost terrible by repetition. On a low
promontory looms a diminutive crucifix where
some absent-minded sailor fell and broke his neck
on the cliff below. There is a solitary wooden

236

Hivaoa

shed chartered by the ever-present " D & E,"
and a suggestion of cantering horsemen on the
winding red road beyond. These are really the
Marquesas.

A funny history, too, these islands have had — a
history punctuated with the morbid dilettantics of
Spanish officialdom and wreathed with haloes of
savage mystery — deeds of barbarism that have
shuddered their way to the hearts of Europe in
chapters of delirious sailor-jargon.

But the missionaries have changed all that.
Between the quondam cannibal with his poisoned
arrows and the amiable, mild, modern version
with his bowl of miti and his steel-tipped fish-
spear lies a wide gulf, and to the missionaries
belongs the credit of having bridged it. You
will have ample opportunity to philosophise over
the advantages the new regime has to offer. It
is passing pleasant to meet in the gloom of those
fragrant woods a native armed to the teeth and
tattooed from head to heel with cabalistic scroll-
work— it is pleasant to note that instead of
getting ready to scalp you, you see his honest
face broaden in a grin as he blurts out " Ka-oha"
(the substitute for iorana] with a geniality testi-
fying to his regard and pacific intentions alike.
It is nice to loll at your ease on the bank of some
sunny river and know that the almond-coloured

237

The Log of an Island Wanderer

ladies who come paddling up through the clumps
of tiare are looking on your person — well, not as
an intended bon-bduche — but in gentler, if less
platonic fashion. Yes, indeed ; once you have
ozonised in graceful Hivaoa you will be obliged
to confess to many good points about the work-
ings of missionarydom.

The Marquesans, crossed as they are with the
blood of early Spanish buccaneers, are a goodly
step handsomer than the Tahitians. The cos-
tumes worn are the same as all over the East
Pacific, the variations in head-dress and occa-
sional amulets of beads or pearl-shell being the
only noticeable additions. The missionaries, of
course, have laboured long and earnestly to dis-
courage coquetry in open daylight, and like her
Tahitian counterpart, the Marquesan pa/we (girl)
is a night-blooming cereus— that is, she blooms
at night even if she's not serious. I suppose they
are civilised. To all intents and purposes they
conduct themselves like perfect ladies. But
situations will arise at times, and not all the
fortitude in creation can save a bashful man from
accidents of an embarrassing order.

The rivers of Hivaoa, be it said in paren-
thesis, are, unlike those of the Society group,
shallow and sandy, and save in one or two

favoured localities, it is impossible to get any-

238

Missionaries

thing resembling a decent swim in any of
them.

Among the passengers of the Croix was a neat,
pink, dapper little man named Cradock, whose
business lay in representing some part of the Union
people's interests in Atuana. He had been born
innocent, as many of us are — and had managed by
some weird mischance to retain the morals of his
early school days clear away into middle life. A
bad state of things, especially in the islands.

Cradock and I had been skirmishing around
in the sun for some hours in quest of photo-
graphs, and both of us were longing for a bath.
We knew little of the island's geography — for
Cradock spent most of his time in Papeete —
and still less of the language. We pestered
every native we came across, Cradock per-
sistently talking Tahitian as though conversing
over the fence of his own flower-garden at home,
for "a river — a river— -pape (water), you block-
head— pape. Try your luck with him, old man.
I can't make the fellow understand."

I puffed out my cheeks, spat out an imaginary
mouthful of water, and worked my arms in
imitation of Lucy Beckwith doing the mile for
the championship. The native stared, and be-
lieving me a case for the asylum, backed away.
We were desperate.

239

The Log of an Island Wanderer

In the cool shade of a banana-patch one of
the Atuana trader-boys was enjoying a noonday
siesta, his coffee-coloured native wife bending
over him with a palm-leaf fan. Cradock re-
newed his entreaties, and this time he was
understood. Putting aside her fan, the young
lady stepped neatly out and offered to show us
the way.

This nearly knocked Cradock senseless. To
be shown the way to his bath by a young lady !
What would his wife say ? Besides, the sun
was hot and politeness forbade. The charmer's
offer was declined with thanks. We left her
hubby snoring in the hammock and hurried on,
Cradock glancing furtively behind him every
now and then to see if the fair one was
following.

We found the river sure enough. The water
certainly looked shallow, but appearances are
often deceptive, and we devoutly prayed it
might prove deep enough to get a square wash.
We undressed. Tourists in out - of - the - way
corners of the globe cannot be expected to
carry bathing suits. Cradock piled his linen
reverently on the bank and advanced — treading
delicately like a cat on hot coals — for he was a
nice man and his feet were tender. Alas for
our hopes! The puddle was a miserable fraud.

240

Girls in Canoe.

[p. 240.

The Crucifixion of Cradock

There was not enough water in it to rise above
one's knees. There were swarms of darting fish
and pretty dainty islands of lotus-bloom — but we
had come for a swim, not for water-colour sketch-
ing, and we found nothing to admire. The sun
was grillingly hot, too, and even sitting down,
there was hardly water enough to prevent one's
back from being skinned.

Then — shades of Ilyssus ! — we heard a silvery
laugh behind us, and three young ladies in pale
mauve frocks and pendant necklaces of pine-
apple beads, thoughtful and unabashed as the
handmaidens of Nausicaa, stood chuckling on
the bank.

I edged discreetly behind a bush. The
youngest of the girls, picking up her skirt in
her right hand the way a London belle does
when she wants to cross a muddy pavement,
advanced smiling into the stream to where
Cradock sat paralysed with terror, the sunlight
gleaming prettily over his white limbs and
delicate ivory forehead. The unprotected beauty
of the blushing Beretane doubtless struck a sym-
pathetic chord in her artistic sense. She stooped
and patted Cradock on the back.

The man's position was awful ! He dared not
rise and run for the shore, and those paltry ten
inches of water were no protection. It was a

241 Q

The Log of an Island Wanderer

pity he didn't at least think of stirring up the
mud. As it was he simply hugged his knees
and, pink as a strawberry ice, glowered at the
fair one in an agony of shame and rage.

O Cradock ! Had that scene only been
"snapped" by my photographic camera, what a
hell of picturesque terrors could I have raised at
your virtuous fireside — a hell that not all the
picked, saintly eloquence of your oily rhetoric
could hope to quell or crush.

" Menehenhe roa ta oe ruru " (beautiful hair
you have) said Nausicaa, running her lithe
fingers contemplatively through Cradock's curls.
The latter was nearly weeping.

"Hart!" (go) he blurted, giving the young
lady a dig with his fist that spoke volumes in
favour of modesty and outraged principles. The
nymph understood. Maybe she felt snubbed.
Anyway she giggled spasmodically and consented
to rejoin her companions under the bushes, where
the lot of them studied us in silence for some
minutes before withdrawing.

Cradock's nerves have been recovering ever
since.

242

CHAPTER XXIV

MISSIONARIES— VISIT TO A LEPER VILLAGE

" God that makes time and ruins it
And alters not — abiding God
Changed with disease her body sweet,
The body of love wherein she abode."

— The Leper.

THERE was a fine classic gathering of natives in
the alleyways leading seawards from the main
lane of Atuana. M. Vernier, the most popular
missionary of the group, had just returned from
a prolonged visit to his father in Papeete, and
his parish were assembled in full force to do him
honour.

An interesting collection — seeing that only a
few years ago the Hivaoans were rank cannibals.
Few men. In Atuana as in Ilfracombe woman
knits for the laity. Girls of all ages, many of
whom could say with Amestris —

" Strange flesh was given my lips for bread
With poisonous hours my days were fed ; "

likewise a sprinkling of children, some of them
chewing gingerbread, a most undisciplined pro-
ceeding ; Madame Vernier, rather shaken from

243

The Log of an Island Wanderer

the prolonged sea-journey, presiding over the
whole like a goddess who recognised her work
and found it good.

Hivaoa — like most antipodean localities — has
its full compendium of divines. The natives
are, as elsewhere in the Pacific, an open-minded
collection of cynics whose religious beliefs go
hand in hand with their interests, or their sense
of risibility, or both. Protestant and Catholic
ministers have alike established themselves, and
a sort of guerilla warfare, with Bible for round
shot and holy water for grape, is carried on
unintermittingly between the two sects. Each
advocator of salvation mistrusts the next man,
and the list of conversions is watched over as
jealously as the invitation schedules of the Cowes
Squadron Club. It is a ridiculous rivalry busi-
ness at best, and gives rise to a variety of funny
complications.

Here is a specimen :

An unsophisticated Marquesan — a child of the
wilderness — glorious in picturesque nudity, fres-
coed with tattooing like an Italian mosaic, steps
to his door to welcome a happy, well-fed priest,
a zealot in the cause and a venerated emissary of
the Church of Rome. The Christian faith is
discussed at length and conversion proposed.
The Marquesan hesitates. To chime in with
the dictates of the new faith he must forswear

244

Missionaries

long pig, wear trousers, and go back on the tradi-
tions of his family.

Will the priest make it worth his while ? The
priest hems and haws. His superiors have urged
him to spare no expense for the heathen's ultimate
salvation. He throws open a neat brass-bound
chest and displays a collection of shawls, knives,
watches, &c., convincing enough to lure a bigger
island than Hivaoa into the straight and narrow
way. Kao-ha ! Good. Bargain closed then and
there. The unsophisticated one kneels down and
is baptised a Catholic.

The months roll by. Enter a Protestant
missionary. He is neater in appearance than the
priest, sports brass buttons and a gold watch-
chain. The converted native interviews him and
learns to his surprise that the road to heaven he
has elected is the wrong one. No! — Catholics
never go to heaven — never at all. The priest's
red blanket, too — the price of conversion — is
worn to a shred, and a duplicate is not forth-
coming. The unsophisticated one decides to
become a Protestant without delay, and does so.

" Tell me truly, O Hake Lao," said an inquisitive
New Zealand skipper to a converted Marquesan
cannibal, "how often have you been baptised?"

A drink of rum had loosened the chiefs
tongue, and he replied with glee, " Four times

Catholic and five times Protestant."

245

The Log of an Island Wanderer

"You ought to be safe for heaven, anyhow,"
grunted the skipper.

For all this, both classes of missionaries do
good work in the Marquesas — going miles across
these sun-baked hills to minister consolation, and
not hesitating to visit even the leper-haunted
settlements of the interior valleys if the duty of
the Most High calls.

And here we come to the serpent that lies
beneath the rose. Leprosy ! We called on the
principal Catholic missionary of the place, and
the tale he had to tell was a sad one. The
disease is carrying off the population at a terrible
rate — thirty-seven deaths to seventeen births is
the result shown by last year's census. At this
rate, our children's children will know of the
Marquesans as we know of the moa and the
dinornis, through the agency of museums and
legends. There is no really effective method of
combating the evil. A centralised system of
hospitals might have a beneficial effect, but the
island trade is hardly worth the expenditure, and
as yet no kindly minded philanthropist is at hand
to step between Azrael and his victims. The
malady is a pestilence that walks by day. I
verily believe, from what I saw, that a full third
of the island's population is more or less infected.
So slight and unobtrusive are the early symptoms
of the disease, however, that unless your attention

246

Visit to a Leper Village

were called to their existence you might pass by
without noticing anything. The stroll back
through Atuana village was several degrees less
enchanting than our first ramble. Now that we
were fairly on the look-out the malady seemed to
crop up at every turn. A girl offered a bunch of
flowers. Looking down, I noticed with a rising
of the hair that her toes were disfigured with
unsightly white patches. She was a leper.
After that I began to look on every one with
suspicion — in my ignorance, no doubt, mistaking
many for afflicted when they were physically
sound. No attempt seems to have been made as
yet to segregate, as a precautionary measure, the
healthy and unhealthy. In Tahiti, it is true,
one of the most blooming valleys beyond Paea —
fifteen miles from Papeete — used to serve as a
leper-settlement. Marua-Po the natives called it.
Of late supervision has everywhere relaxed, and
the people herd together both in Tahiti and the
Marquesas indiscriminately. A pitiful sense of
their own corruption and perhaps the pressure
of public opinion has driven some of the more
hopeless cases to seek refuge in the jungles of
the interior, where they wait for the end with a
composure and fortitude rarely found among
their civilised masters.

I had an opportunity some weeks later of
visiting one of these settlements. It was not a

247

The Log of an Island Wanderer

far journey as the crow flies, only four miles ; but
owing to the nature of the country most of the
miles were vertical ones and the most infantile of
reasoning obviously suggested something original
in the way of locomotion.

The originality came, and for the first time in
my life I became acquainted with that strangest,
weirdest, nimblest of all animal constructions—
the Marquesan horse.

Physically, he is not much to look at. He is
small, stunted, unpicturesque, with angular sug-
gestions about his hocks and withers that proclaim
the want of a square feed. Gymnastically speaking
he is the direct cross between the mule and the
chamois. No declivity is too steep, no precipice
too inaccessible for him. The mountain paths of
Hivaoa are as easy to tread as a verandah
railing and as irregularly graded as the spiked
top of Milan Cathedral. But the Marquesan
horse likes them. They suit his angular structure
and harmonise with his weird, famished, energetic
nature. We had started early, in the moist,
slippery dawn, to avoid the heat, and even while
we pawed our way through the comparatively
facile guava scrub and the ocean of rotting tree-
stumps lining the base of the hills, I knew I had
struck something throwing the vaunted Mexican
plug into the shade. But it was when we left
the underbrush and began to climb the precipice

248

Visit to a Leper Village

that the height and breadth of my steed's genius
began to show itself. There were moments when
I believed he must have claws in his fore-feet.
Several times when we came to a slope of friable
clay, slippery enough and treacherous enough to
launch an army into the Hereafter, I held my
breath wondering what my horse would do. I
didn't wonder long. A snort, a struggle, and he
was on top. Avalanches of loose stones, beds of
vicious cactus-needles, had no terrors for him.
When after an hour's hard climbing we came to
a place where a landslip had wiped the path out
of existence — leaving an ugly smear ending in
a thousand-foot drop — he actually laughed and
tried to stand on his head for sheer joy !

On we clomb — up that dizzy slope, while the
plain of palms dwindled to a furry expanse of
yellow and green and the overhanging peak of
Temeti receded farther and farther into its
diadem of cloud. By ten we had gained the
summit of the ridge, and the long winding shore
of Hivaoa appeared spread out like a map. The
descent recommenced, this time on the opposite
side of the ridge. Once again the shadows of
the jungle swallowed us. The place was gloomy
— only through gaps in the tree-crowns came
gleams of yellow light from the lit hills above.
Nature seemed unusually blooming in that forest
of death. Strings of healthy-looking rosy man-

249

The Log of an Island Wanderer

goes dangled within reach of one's arm. The
shadows smelt of ferns and dripping undergrowth,
and the ground was thick in bulbous juicy stuff
through which the horse's hoofs squashed with a
noise like mixing salad.

The grey drift of smoke came through the
trunks. We reached a clearing. Some one hailed
us in answer to my companion's halloo, and an old
man, stick in hand, hobbled forward. I gave one
look at his face and turned sick. He had lost —
no, never mind. Of what use are such details ?
Across the green tops of a patch of sugar-cane —
the baby effort of some stricken wretch — appeared
a row of tiny pandanus-roofed burrows. The
old man took my horse by the bridle and it
seemed to me that the healthy beast even started
at the touch of that pathetic horror. In one of
the huts I could see a woman kneading something
in a bowl. The old man held out his hand to me.

"Do so," said my companion, sotto voce, "it's
not catching."

I obeyed with some slight misgiving, for the
absolute non-catchiness of leprosy in its advanced
stages has hardly been proved as yet. Then
come the children — a sickly looking crowd for
the most part, with old, frightened faces, nervous
shifting eyes, and a sullen, demure manner that
strikes pitiful contrast with their tender years.
Have these mites ever known the kiss of the

250

Visit to a Leper Village

pure sea, the dances, the music, the breath of
healthy life in that busy world from which the
touch of the Fiend has cut them off for ever?
Yonder tall girl with the delicate brown limbs
and pensive eyes, who stands looking at us from
among the flowers like some shy creature of the
forest, has she ever known the romps of the vil-
lage school, the frothing of brown limbs in the
tumbling water-rows, the frolics in the moonlight,
and the whirling music of the dance in the nymph-
haunted palm-clearings ? No — for the mark of
the destroyer is on her. Even as you look she
hides something for shame in her dress. There
is no hand there — only a withered stump, shock-
ing to see. They say, too, that leprosy is heredi-
tary, and bred of wickedness. If so, the sins of
the fathers hang heavily in that orchid-scented
air. Three more children approach, two of them
half-naked. Of what use are the decencies when
death is so near? They sink coughing on the
grass, not in the sun, but in the deepest shadow,
where the clean blessed light of heaven may not
shrink from meeting their piteousness. Who
may you be, and what manner of errand brings
you ? Perhaps you are a praying-man, come to
tell them of hell and its furies — of the judgment
that awaits bad people who are discontented with
their lot — or worse still, to tell them of the world
and its myriad promises, of the fair radiant God

251

The Log of an Island Wanderer

to whom the prayers of little children are as in-
cense— here in this valley of the shadow where
His fair image has been outraged and foully de-
faced ! The very light in your eyes is an insult.
Life blooms for you. For them it has been a
pale mockery seen through the tear-mist of suf-
fering. All the pathos, the vanity, the despair
of human existence find expression in the shade
of those mangoes.

A thin anaemic-looking man slinks from one of
the huts, and takes his seat on the grass ; then a
woman of middle age, her forehead furrowed
with the ploughings of a thousand awful hours.

Listen to their story. These two were lovers.
By all human laws they were destined to be man
and wife. But the evil smote the man on the
threshold of his happiness. He woke up — it was
only a month to the wedding — to find himself
a leper.

What was he to do? Marry the girl of his
choice and drag her down to a loathsome death ?
In his despair he found his bride's relations, and
told his awful secret. They counselled instant
separation. The girl herself would not hear of
such a thing. She loved him, and would marry
him in spite of everything. The relations argued,
threatened, cajoled — in vain. Then, as a last
resource, they tried their eloquence on the man.
Here they were more successful. The lover

252

Visit to a Leper Village

would never suffer such a doom to overtake the
woman he loved. He fled by night — a voluntary
exile — from his native island of Tahuata, and
buried himself in the deepest recesses of a valley.
But love was too strong. Forgetting everything,
liberty, friends, life even, the girl left her home
and fled after him.

You, poor wretch, preferred a lonely life of
exile to the possibility of marking the woman
of your heart with the curse that had laid you
low. And you, devoted and affectionate wife,
preferred a lingering death in his company to the
vanities of an existence that had no charm for
you without his love.

Well, well — it makes one feel very small to
think of what the unselfishness of your sex can
accomplish. And I am not sure the valley is so
dark either. It may be a ray of light has struck
a clump of flowers yonder, or it may be some-
thing else — the glow of a love that can lighten
even this pit of misery into something resembling
the heaven promised you by the Giver of all
love. What folly to deny the beauty of human
nature! Under the bear-skins of the Norseman,
under the coarse garb of the Breton peasant,
under the magnificent mail of the Wagnerian
hero, or the soiled tatters of a South Pacific
savage — we find it again and again.

253

CHAPTER XXV

NUKAHIVA— A CANNIBAL QUEEN— PICNICS-
CONVICTS

" Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,
And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods
Whisper in odorous heights of even."

— TENNYSON.

HIVAOA, though in some ways the most beautiful
of the Marquesas, is by no means the most im-
portant. The capital town of the islands —
Taiohae — is situated on Nukahiva, a sea-girt
oval measuring thirty miles in length by fifteen
in width. Like the first island, the origin of
Nukahiva is volcanic. There are the same
twisted beds of lava, the same breakneck gullies,
the same pillared formations of basalt and ter-
races of scoria hidden under carpets of guava and
trailing convolvulus.

The picturesque fishing-village of Taiohae,
called by courtesy a town, nestles prettily in
the loop of a deep bay shadowed by vertical
cliff-walls. As there is no trace of a reef the
waves roll in on the black sand in all their fury.

254

Nukahiva

Beyond the rows of scattered villas compos-
ing the town the ground extends up in wavy
rolling hills till, as in Hivaoa, a steep amphi-
theatre of rock checks the flood of onrushing
verdure.

There used to be an old saw, promulgated by
some observant island-skipper, to the effect that
it is easier to smell the Marquesas than see them.
This — particularly if one sails in on a misty morn-
ing— certainly applies without much violence to
Nukahiva. At ten miles from land one already
notices a change. The sea breezes are bearing a
new burden on their wings, an odour quite distinct
from the true smell of the islands, one that has no
affinity with anything one has hitherto experi-
enced. It comes from the cassi-plant (at least
that is the name they give it), a sort of shrub or
low bush, recalling in general outline the ever-
present ti-scrub of Australia, but covered, in lieu
of white flowers, with a myriad of tiny, fluffy,
yellow balls which, if one is hardy enough to
venture a walk through them, cover one from
head to foot with their golden powder. The hills
of Nukahiva, in fact, contain the fortunes of quite
an army of perfumers. I suppose something ought
to be done. Certain it is that a prolonged so-
journ in these lands fills one as much with a grim
pity at the opportunities wasted as with admira-

255

The Log of an Island Wanderer

tion for the theoretical or picturesque value of
things.

Taiohae is Papeete in miniature. There is the
Broom-road, the white church spire, the sleepy
flotilla of trader-schooners, and bobbing jumble of
outrigger canoes all complete. Nay, as one slides
up in the light of morning, one is even surprised
to find what one never found in Tahiti — a pier.
A ramshackle, stickified edifice of wood, with
protruding rusty bolts to trip one up, and holes
to break one's leg in, but still a pier. There is
also a lighthouse — a decayed bird-cage with a
paraffin wick dangling at the top of a ten-foot
pole. Behind the lighthouse on a grassy knoll
rises the mansion of the governor, a comfortable,
airy, suburban villa, with a garden full of roses
and a white, happy, chalky bust of the Republique
to greet one over the doorway. This is civilisa-
tion.

The population of Taiohae is contemplative
rather than energetic. The same fruitfulness of
soil is at the bottom of their idleness as in all the
other islands of this favoured hemisphere. The
place is a kitchen-garden and conservatory com-
bined. Oranges, citrons, guavas, custard-apples,
avanas, avocas, coco-nuts, and two-thirds of the
vegetables proper to temperate climes grow in a
profusion which has something impertinent about

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Nukahiva

it. There is an embryo steam cotton-mill, a
natural dry dock (in Anaho Bay), and a water
supply several grades less intermittent than the
Papeete one. Tobacco and indigo grow wild, as
also do aniseed and kava - root. The native
women are supposed to be past mistresses in the
art of making " tappa " (birch-bark cloth), though
like their sisters in Papeete they generally keep
the stuff for the edification of the tourist, pre-
ferring the more easily acquired European or
Chinese prints for their own use. The sewing-
machine is as common as the cuckoo-clock in
Switzerland, and every second house can boast
one. Taiohae has for some years past also been
the penal station of the Eastern Sea. The con-
victs in question are mostly criminals of the petty
class — illicit tobacco-merchants, kava-drunkards,
filchers of chickens, and dabblers in all kinds of
variegated naughtiness. The inflicted labour is
road-making. If the roads of Nukahiva are in-
tended to speak for the system, justice must be
humane, very humane indeed. There is no jail.
Such an institution would be useless — as it would
be difficult to leave the island without detection,
and equally difficult to annoy its inhabitants by
staying. It is an ideal brigand's paradise.

The queen of Nukahiva, Vaekehu, is a charm-
ing old lady. If they should tell you the yarn

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

about her having helped to eat her first husband,
you had best treat it as pure fable. She inhabits
a pretty creeper-covered cottage in full view of
the harbour, and is amazingly popular with the
authorities.

On the beach road I cannoned into Jimmy
Gibson, purser of the Croix, who had been amus-
ing himself speculating in shell at Hikueru. Jimmy
was in the best of spirits. His native wife was a
resident of Taiohae, and the lady's rumoured
preference for a Chinaman had lately caused poor
Jimmy several sleepless nights. Instead of the
anticipated note pinned to the pillow-case, how-
ever, Jimmy had landed that morning to find his
partner faithful, affectionate, and all his own !
Never had such a thing been heard of! Jimmy
begged me to photograph the lady at once. Out
she came, blushing, rosy, perfumed like a Madonna,
a very Venus stirred from slumber. But what use
is it to enthuse ? Pretty girls are no rarity here,
and in Nukahiva — as in Bath — comparisons are
odorous.

By way of additionally commemorating the
incident, a picnic was proposed — with camera
and girls. The latter refused point-blank. The
day was grilling, and they didn't see the fun of
being driven about in the sun merely for the sake
of a roasted hog and a moiety of flirtation. They

258

Nukahiva

could have both at home. Jimmy prayed, but the
damsels were adamant. Our own company had
to suffice us that day.

A pair of horses and a roofed dray — I am loth
to call it a waggon — were secured. We hired the
services of a Kanaka driver and rattled hungrily
about Taiohae canvassing for food. Jimmy had
promised us a regular native feed. First the boys
hunted up a couple of bottles of wine at one of the
stores. Then we intercepted a native carrying a
magnificent ten-pound fish at the end of a long
pole. There were plenty of bananas and fates,
but we wanted something more solid, and none of
us knew how to set about getting it.

Then — joy ! — a small pig with echinus-like
bristles lining his back ran squawking across the
road and disappeared between some whitewashed
fence rails. Jimmy, being the linguist, descended
and bargained with the proprietor. A moment
later we heard a shrill squeal, and out came some-
thing tenderly wrapped in aromatic banana-leaves
and tied with twisted coco-fibre. It was the pig.
" Now," said Jimmy, " we shall not be many
moments."

But the vegetable trimmings had yet to be
secured. By a lovely little villa a mile towards
the mountains some graceful fronds of bread-fruit
were bending over the fence. It is only in the

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

Marquesas that you would dream of coolly step-
ping into a man's garden to rifle his fruit-trees.
The task of picking the big green bulbs was more
difficult than it looked. Bread-fruit generally
hangs just out of reach. It is a mistake to jump
at it. The rough skin cuts your fingers to pieces
and leaves you sore and rumpled for the rest of
the day. Wild sweeps with a pole are no use
whatever. They maul the fruit and make it un-
eatable. Presently two girls came out with tall
chairs and a knife, and the fruit was detached
without difficulty. I don't believe Jimmy paid
for the fruit, but I know he put his arm round
one girl and told her she was the life of his soul
and that he had come to Nukahiva for the express
purpose of completing her education — " Na oe ha
pee tie " (for I saw him do it).

En avant ! The shades of the forest grew
deeper, and through the twining maze of branches
the great crest above shot back the sun as from a
reflector. Presently we reached a likely spot.
Jimmy and the Kanaka driver proceeded to col-
lect brushwood to roast the porker, while I,
curious on the score of South Sea island cookery,
superintended the chopping-up and pickling of
the fish.

The genesis of raw fish is simple enough. It

is hardly likely that any true Kanaka would take

260

Jimmy Gibson.

\_p.26o.

Nukahiva

the trouble to cook anything when he could, by
stretching his tastes a trifle, get a meal without
that labour. One of the boys armed himself
with a knife. The long, silver creature was split
in half along the backbone, cut into strips, laid on
a leaf and dosed with oil, vinegar, and chili-pepper.
To all intents and purposes it was pickled. Yet
it is funny to see what a horrible grimace the
average European will make at the mention of
this dish. Try it, ye grumblers — try it. All the
reasoning in the world won't do away with the
fact that it is quite as civilised as salt pork and
a good deal more humane than oysters. Travel-
ling is currently admitted to enlarge the mind ;
may we not honestly admit that it enlarges the
palate as well ?

The bread-fruit came next on the list. You can
cook bread-fruit in fifty different ways. You can
boil it like a potato, fry it, devil it, broil it, stew
it, bake it, pickle it. The easiest and pleasantest
way of all is to roast it under a bonfire. It goes
into the ashes green and comes out a black charred
mass which you presently split away with the knife
to disclose the snow-white interior, bolt upright on
its calcined stalk like a monstrous egg of flour.

And the taste? Oh, well — mix soap, flour,
indiarubber, sand, suet, and cheese together in a

jumble. That ought to fetch the taste of bread-

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

fruit all right. If it don't — like Mark Twain's
pistol — it will fetch something else, and that
something else will be a Marquesas-island vege-
table, for they all taste alike.

The poetry of that savage collation abides with
me yet Sitting cross-legged on the moss, our
necks wreathed with verbena, our brows with
tuberose, we were indeed a noble quartet to
carry the greeting of Europe to the people of the
sea. The scene yet remains impressed like a
photograph. The sombre canopy of trees, the
dusty spears of sunshine, the roasted pig on his
back on the platter of leaves, the smoking bread-
fruit, and the sour, biting French claret at fifty
centimes the quart. Such things embalm the
memory. Of such may the gods grow jealous !

At the dessert I got a startler. Our Kanaka
had shown himself a noble waiter, but after im-
bibing half a bottle of that wondrous claret, he
got fairly wound up to concert-pitch and offered
to show us the original Marquesan hoola, as
danced in prehistoric times. He did. It was
nimble, but not pretty. For compliment, I sug-
gested he ought to try it at night on the beach
and pass round the hat. He cottoned to the idea,
but had to admit it was impossible ; for, as he
said : " Me convict, sah — me live in jail, sah."

This was fact, not fiction. Our worthy Kanaka
262

Convicts

had got himself condemned to a year's solitary
confinement for some misdemeanour, and was
really supposed to be boarding at Queen
Vaekehu's — or the Government's — expense. In-
asmuch, however, as this mode of punishment
was apt to spoil his chances of making a living,
the kind Government allowed him to roam freely,
only stipulating that he was to appear every
evening and announce himself to the authorities
before going to bed.

In fact, the Taiohae jail was at one time quite
a popular institution. It was discovered that the
tiled roof leaked less in the rains than the primi-
tive leaf-thatches, and for a season, criminals in
Nukahiva went genially on the increase. With
advancing years, however, the jail soon relapsed
into the reigning condition of artistic "jom-
methry." The windows got smashed in due
course and, ever since Government has decided
not to replace them, crime has been at a discount
in breezy Taiohae.

Taiara i Tikei (name of the Kanaka) was en
outre a descendant of royalty and magnificently
tattooed — a notable fact, for the genuine art of
tattooing is fast becoming a lost one, and a really
fine human mosaic is nearly as great a curio in
Nukahiva as an old soldier in Virginia or a

Balaclava pensioner in Holborn.

263

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Tattooing is a distinctly painful operation at all
times, and I have been told hurts nearly as much
as being skinned. Few men get beyond the
anchor and life-belt ordeal. In Tahiti, among
the sentimental Kanaka youth, it is the fashion to
have the name of your inamorata tattooed on
your arm — an obviously silly idea, for the mark
always outlives the passion, and should the lady's
successor be cast in a jealous mould, must be a
source of bickering.

And this brings us to a melancholy figure — the
original tattooed white man of Nukahiva, John
W. Hillyard, Esq.

His story is pathetic. It needs telling to slow
music. Also it contains a moral, which, it is
hoped, the succeeding narrative will make plain
without further comment.

264

CHAPTER XXVI

THE STORY OF JOHN HILLYARD

" Love's ways are sharp for palms of piteous feet
To travel — but the end of such is sweet :
Now do with me as seemeth you the best."

HE came from God knows where, and was bound
for the same dread locality. A raw, inexperi-
enced, baggy-kneed youth of eighteen who had
probably run away from some San Francisco
school and been signed in on board the Nancy
Dawson just because crews were scarce, and the
Marquesas (this was in the sixties) had an ugly
man-eating reputation among seamen.

On reaching Nukahiva the Nancy Dawson
was beached in Anaho Bay for repairs, and
supervision was temporarily relaxed. Hillyard
had been at school a romantic, absent-minded,
fiction-reading lad, whom all the bullying in the
world hardly could rouse from apathy. Now,
under the novel colouring of his surroundings,
some of his boyish enthusiasm returned. He
saw himself in the paradise of his dreams, and

the pure delight of it stabbed to his heart like

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

the premonitory symptoms of the passion that
was to be his ruin. He deserted — spent a night in
the bush, and eventually reached Taiohae, where,
as white labour was scarce, he obtained employ-
ment in a French trading firm, the first and
oldest one in the islands.

Competition was anything but keen, and in a
very short while Hillyard rose from errand-boy
and bottle-washer to the command of the Tikehau
— a diminutive thirty-ton schooner, mainly used
to advertise the firm's doings and drum up trade
for future commercial enterprise.

Those were golden days. Hillyard found
himself a genuine South Sea trader. Standing
erect on the poop, he drank in ideas of liberty
with the smell of copra from the hatches, and
the shock of the combers as they struck the
Tikehaus sides were the cymbal clashes of
nature rejoicing with him. The first trips
were short ones. The buttresses of Nukahiva
had barely time to die in the warm rain before
the long line of Huapu shook itself free from
its girdle of mist and revealed itself to the seer
in the glory of palm -gullies and flying cloud-
tatters. Then came the sleepy noon, with the
droning chatter of women under the awnings,
and last of all the silver magic of the night with

the drift of voices on the rain-scoured air and

266

The Story of John Hillyard

the twinkle of torches in the water. Hillyard
was one of nature's poets, and no kindly warning
came to tell him of the disaster impending.

Once in the midst of a noonday siesta — the
Tikehau was lying off Huapu at the time — some
one hailed him from the shore. Two graceful
figures in scarlet stood on the grass. One was
Mariamma, the Christianised daughter of a can-
nibal chief, whose bamboo stockade was just
visible through the wall of greenery ; the other
was her married cousin, Mau (pronounce Ma-oo),
the most inveterate matchmaker and scandal-
monger of the district.

Hillyard descended to the cabin an hour later
walking on air. Mariamma's eyes had done
what the owner had intended. The girl had
driven a monstrous bargain, but Hillyard was
satisfied. He determined that if the parties at
Taiohae objected, he would waive financial con-
siderations and pay the difference from his salary.
That night there was a hoola on shore. As
Hillyard sat cross-legged on a mat, and tried to
smoke his pipe in time to the dancers' wrigglings,
some one crept from out the cloud of whirling
drapery and threw a flower in his face. It was
Mariamma. The token was only a tiny thing of
little import, but it brought a crimson flood to
the man's cheek, and left his heart throbbing

267

The Log of an Island Wanderer

with a wild feeling of emptiness. Hillyard
sculled his way back on board and tried to
sleep. Next morning, as the Tikehau felt her
way out through the oily water, the shore wind
brought something besides the breath of awaken-
ing flowers to Hillyard's nostrils. There was a
spiral of smoke between distant palm-branches,
and the skipper's gaze turned to where a long,
grey roof-thatch, Jter home, nestled into its copse
of bread-fruit. The girl's image had grafted itself
on Hillyard's heart, and not the poetry of a thou-
sand dawns could blot it out.

It was nearing the close of the year when he
saw her again. Hillyard had worked hard at the
island lingo, and this time he was able to do
more than offer sweetmeats. He got scant en-
couragement, however. Mariamma did not like
pale faces. But Hillyard amused her and kept her
in chocolates. Therefore she feigned sympathy.

Her cousin Mau was more explicit. "You
leave Mariamma be — she no got use for you,
you silly dam white man you." Mariamma, on
the mat, having eaten her fill of chocolates, put
in her say. She said " Hart! " (go) in a tone that
spoke volumes, and sent Hillyard flying from the
house in an agony of despair. He passed the night
among the palm-stems in a black hell of misery,
and only returned on board his ship when the

268

The Story of John Hillyard

shouts of the men warned him it was time to
start.

In Taiohae the company's doings were broaden-
ing. Another vessel was to be started in the
trade, and the Tikehau, together with her skipper,
was relegated to coasting round Nukahiva. This
meant to Hillyard separation from his goddess.
He did not hesitate. He determined to quit the
company for good, return and settle in Huapu.

Mariamma was not glad to see him, for he
came poor and positionless, and the cabinful of
print was a thing of the past. Mariamma's
heart, like that of many proper young ladies,
went hand in hand with her interests. At
Hillyard's offer of marriage she laughed boister-
ously. With true island candour she called him
a pig of a foreigner and told him his white
face made her sick. In the early days of his
courtship Hillyard would have keenly felt the
sting of her words, but now love had cast out
pride, and the more she abused him the more
angelic did she appear.

Temaki, Mariamma's young brother, a copper-
coloured Apollo of fifteen, tattooed all over like
a willow pattern, tried mediation. Hillyard had
bribed him freely with sticks of tobacco, and
he felt kindly disposed to the love-sick Beretane.
He expostulated with his sister. White men

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

were not all blackguards. As for Hillyard's
face, he, Temaki, would soon remedy that. He
produced a bundle of pointed bones and a cala-
bash of sticky black gum. Temaki was the artist
of the village and burning for a chance to show off.

Hillyard was nearly out of his mind. This
was why, when Temaki came to him that evening
with an absurd proposition, instead of genially
kicking the youth into the street with his bless-
ing, Hillyard gave Temaki his last ounce of
tobacco and began to seriously ponder over the
matter as a university professor might over a
new and weighty problem in philosophy.

He would let Temaki tattoo him in approved
island fashion, he would discard his European
trousers and wear a pareo instead — he would give
all up and become a native. His Beretane origin
once effaced, Mariamma's heart would soften.

The idea was that of a madman — but Hillyard
was in no condition to reason clearly. Temaki
got his pointed bones and set to work. He
commenced by scoring Hillyard's face with
broad green bands which, descending from the
forehead, lost themselves in a whirlpool of con-
centric circles in either cheek and fell away
down the neck in tassels. Hillyard's breast he
marked with a chess-board — not proportioned
according to the rules of Staunton — and a

270

The Story of John Hillyard

spreading mango-tree with two plethoric hogs
guzzling the fallen fruit was elected to adorn
his back. Two venerable Kanaka hags assisted
at the operation, and sang tunes to drown Hill-
yard's groans. At the end ofrthe week Mari-
amma's would - be lover was in a high fever.
They put him to bed, wrapped him in a patch-
work quilt and tied bandages on his forehead.
When at last he was able to walk, Hillyard
was a fearful object. The clumsy fish-bone
needles had left swellings round the scored
lines of his forehead. His face was deathly
pale and the green circles stood out like mould
on leather. Temaki himself was inclined to be
frightened at his work.

It was some time before Hillyard dared show
himself to Mariamma. When he did so the
punishment of his foolishness came in a flood-tide
of agony. Mariamma had been indifferent before,
now she became horrified. She began by a fit of
hysterics which terrified Mau, and wound up by
spitting contemptuously at Hillyard and calling
for her brother to take the " devil " out of the
house.

Hillyard was like a man broken on the wheel.
For months he led the life of an outcast, sleeping
in rainy hollows and feeding on all kinds of
vegetable offal. Why his mind did not give way

271

The Log of an Island Wanderer

is a mystery. He finally drifted back to Taiohae,
where he obtained work on one of the newly
formed plantations, and where his appearance won
him a goodly meed of success among the lady
population, many of whom were not blind to the
charms of a novelty.

At present he is a man nearing the sixties, and
one of the most singular ornaments of Taiohae
harbour ; but not all the gold in creation can tempt
him to tell the story of his love-affair, nor can he
be persuaded to allow his photograph to be taken.
The skeleton is closely locked in his mental cup-
board, and the rambling on dits of merchant-
skippers over Taiohae bar-tables, together with
this (ahem !) interesting and printed tribute from
the pen of a globe-trotter, are all that remain to
keep alive the memory of the tattooed man and
his heartless Mariamma.

272

CHAPTER XXVII

A NUKAHIVA GOAT-DRIVE

" Katline Mapue, the gray dawn is breaking,
The conch of the hunter is heard on the hill."

— Marquesan himent.

To many men life, even island-life, is incomplete
without sport of some kind.

Marquesan game is of a very small order.
Curlews, plover, snipe, and a peculiarly bony
variety of wild duck frequent the marshes, and
can be tackled in the regulation way. There is
plenty of pig, but they must be followed with the
rifle, as the unevenness of the ground and the
sparkling abundance of precipices make orthodox
"sticking" an impossibility. In some of the
larger islands of the Society group wild cattle
are said to range the guava scrub in such numbers
as to make exploration without a sufficient escort
a dangerous pastime, but these hardly come under
the head of game. Certain headlands along the
coast of Nukahiva, too, afford a resting-place to
millions of sea-birds — so tame that a boy of
average intelligence can knock enough of them

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

on the head in a single morning to make their
feathers a drug in the market for weeks. This
likewise is not sport.

But a sight of the real thing was not long in
appearing. The first act of the drama was as
follows. I had been lunching with the governor
of Nukahiva, and with that exquisite civility
characteristic of the French official in his deal-
ings with the English tourist in island ports, the
governor had instantly offered to despoil his
garden of flowers to make me a bouquet. He
wouldn't take a refusal. Two large-sized washing-
baskets were to be filled. The supply seemed to
me to be adequate, but the governor, who had
calculated smothering my cabin in roses, com-
plained bitterly. A promising half-acre of flower-
bushes had been gnawed into unrecognisable
"jommethry." The radishes in the kitchen-
garden had been eaten to the last fibre. The
wattle fence surrounding a portion of the domain
had been chewed into unsightly gaps, and the
beds of Michaelmas daisies had been converted
into unedifying jam by a myriad tiny hoof-marks.
It was a Liliputian outrage al fresco. The
governor waxed wroth. He knew who the
thieves were. The tiny, mischievous, skipping,
musk-smelling wild goats of the mountains who
fear neither God nor man. A drove of the

274

A Nukahiva Goat-Drive

creatures had broken in by night and treated
themselves to a rose-dinner.

"This will never do," explained the governor
to his weeping gardener; "we must organise a
hunt and teach these creatures manners. You
can enlist the whole gang of ces messieurs Turi.
We start at daybreak." Then, turning to me—
" Cela vous va, kein ? "

It suited me to perfection. Taiohae, as I
have already noticed, harbours, in addition to
the usual compendium of island loafers, some
dozens of interesting amateur convicts. They
were the gang alluded to. When next morning
some one stirred me up off my mat at the China-
man's the lot of them were drawn up on the
Beach-road at the turn leading to the governor's
house. A fine collection of men — thirty or so
all told — with just enough fire in their eyes,
enough jauntiness in their blue trousers and leaf-
woven hats to tell of dormant vagabondism.
Half the number were armed with long pruning-
knives (machetes they call them in Spanish), the
remainder carried the long murderous Marquesan
spear, embossed in a double row of baby white
shark-teeth. For my part, not knowing pre-
cisely the part I was destined to play, I carried a
miniature saloon-rifle, and the governor, who pre-
sently appeared, bore a similar weapon of the

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

"repeating" kind, of a form sacred to the French
colonial army alone. As we wended our way up
the slope under the flamboyants the scheme of
the morning's work was explained to me. This
was no artistic hunt, but a systematic massacre
of offending vermin. A mile or so ahead the
dark cliff-edge cut its monstrous silhouette
against the morning sky. A cordon was to be
formed at the base of the hill, and the animals
driven steadily forward to the edge of the abyss.
"And then," concluded the governor, "you will
see something funny — quelquechose de bizarre"

The dawn was racing along the top of the
highest ar£te as we struck the first belt of scrub.
A thin mist was rising from the taro-ponds, and
the spaces between the villas of Taiohae were
dotted with flakes of filmy cotton. Then the
fight began — cassi-brambles versus machete and
hatchet combined, a merciless warfare, and one
to fill your tailor's heart with joy. Cassi-scrub is
heathen stuff to traverse. When the opposing
army of thorns have done lacerating your
trousers the flying cloud of yellow pollen gets
down your throat, and you feel as though you
had swallowed the contents of a drug-store.
The scenery, where we had time to look at it,
was very fine. A mile out to sea the orange
tips of the " sentinels " were hanging in sunshine.

276

A Nukahiva Goat-Drive

The remainder of the bay was deepest night,
save where the struggling foam-patches caught
a vague shimmer from the lit cliffs above.
Several small schooners were hoisting sails in
the harbour, and in the crescent of black sand we
could see a knot of boys pushing with shrill cries
a long flat-bottomed boat from its shelter under
the buraos.

Then — hist ! — a whisper ran along our line.
A few hundred yards from where we stood, our
trousers yellowed with cassi-pollen, several objects
which I can only describe as misshapen black
fleas, were skipping against the creeping band of
light. A faint squeak, the protest of an insulted
rag-doll, came down-wind. A Marquesan goat
is a most insignificant atom. It seems impossible
so much angular ungodliness can be condensed
into so small a compass. The governor's arm
went up like a semaphore. The men stopped
swinging their machetes and cowered obediently
into the scrub. Now for a shot. There is not
the slightest real necessity for using the firearm,
inasmuch as the quarry can't escape us, and the
terrible cliff-drop is not far off. But the marks-
man instinct is irresistible. The foremost goat
stands on a knoll, snuffing the air, with cabalistic
suggestions of horn and hoof which the animal's

reputed instinct don't weaken in the least.

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The Log of an Island Wanderer

Clearly he is alive to the situation. He can't
have winded us, for the breeze is in our faces,
but the whack of the machetes has gone before,
and the red line of pareos is visible a long way,
even in that mist-wreathed twilight.

Bang! He is up with a bound and the whole
posse go skurrying away uphill with an eager-
ness that will take them to San Francisco in a
week if the ocean doesn't spoil their game.

Now then, mes enfants. As we rise and dive
impetuously into the ocean of yellow fluff the sun
tops the ridge behind and burns the backs of our
necks. Below in the gloom the pandanus roofs
of Taiohae are only dull splotches. The ground
is heaped up with huge lava-blocks, a mass of
ghastly pitfalls. Lucky if any one escapes with a
broken leg. And what is the good of all this
rush, messieurs ? Festina lente. The inevitable
reaction sets in, and after a quarter of an hour's
mad scrambling we have to call a halt. A
stampede of elephants could hardly give us more
trouble.

Hurrah ! We have succeeded in fairly scaring
them at least. A knot of the game is standing
uncertain as the foremost body of men rush up —
uncertain as to whether it will be best to dare the
final slope of the hill, the one leading to the scene
of execution, the cliff overhanging the sea. We

278

A Nukahiva Goat-Drive

have been drawing nearer the base of this slope,
which leads upwards at an angle of forty or so,
for the last quarter of an hour. Some instinct
tells the creatures that even though they succeed
in topping the slope, no salvation awaits them
there. Even in the heat of the chase a pang of
pity goes through me on behalf of this huddled
group of dumb creatures who, skip they never so
bravely, must at last play their losing game and
die.

No such thoughts animate the men, however.
We are remorselessly closing in on the goats.
There seems to be a sort of political leadership
in the group. One body of animals remains
pawing the base of the slope, the other, a small
isolated regiment of ten, draw away to the left.
There may be fifty in toto all told. Are they
going to try and break the line ? The men
advance, their machetes rising and falling like
flails. Yes ! it is a forlorn hope, but one party
is going to attempt it. Those strange beings
who advance striking the brushwood aside in
flashes of light may not be so dreadful after all.
Once through that line of blue serge and liberty
is theirs. The papa-goat throws up his nose,
bleats angrily, and — whish ! — away go the lot,
scuttering across the rocks like an avalanche.
Two of the men level their guns, but — bless you !

279 "

The Log of an Island Wanderer

— you might as well try and nail the wind.
There is only the smell of smokeless powder, the
sound of ripping foliages and the floating dust of
nipped cassi-puffs. The goats have won their
liberty.

Terror now strikes the other half. There is
no way save the way of the slope, and up they go
in a slanting line — beautiful marks for rifle bullets.
We are close upon their heels, but seeing them
straggle out thus over the face of the cliff one's
murderous instincts almost make one regret one
didn't stay behind. It would have been glorious
shooting, but it is too late now and we must keep
the game busy or they will double and break the
line again.

Oh, the agony of that last slope! In my boy-
hood I had read of Grimm's enchanted road where
for every step forward one fell back two. Now I
met the thing in reality. There was no trace of
a path. It was claw and climb and hang on as
nails and eyebrows permitted.

At last — we are on the summit. A level
stretch of grass with tiny blue flowers leads away
to the wall of rock. The growl of the breakers
comes to us faintly. Half-way across the lawn
our poor frightened hunted quarry stands hesitat-
ing. Perhaps they feel they are gazing their last
on the green world they love, perhaps it is merely

280

A Nukahiva Goat-Drive

startled animal curiosity. The governor appears
panting and mopping his face with his handker-
chief. As the men are about to throw themselves
forward he stops them. The moment has not
yet arrived. The flotilla had not yet rounded
the heads. Should the goats elect to jump into
the water they will be easily hauled on board and
disposed of in Taiohae.

The governor leads the way to where a pro-
jecting claw of rock commands a view of sea
and cliff-face. We may be from 500 to 600 feet
above the water-level. There is a howling gale
blowing, and I have to desperately clutch my
helmet to prevent its taking wings and flying
back to Taiohae. There are all manner of weird
fissures in the scrub. Up one awful hole, poorly
concealed by a deceitful canopy of lantana-
blossoms, the menace of the water comes to us
as through a speaking-tube. Fifty terrified mites
of animals are bleating at the end of a red, knife-
edged crag. Surely they will never have the
courage to jump that. The flotilla of boats is
still far off. If the goats go over the cliff now
they will drown like rats. The men, despite
their leader's caution, are jabbering as only
Kanakas can jabber, and rattling their muskets.
One or two of them have squatted down in the
scrub and are lighting cigarettes.

281

The Log of an Island Wanderer

Then, while the boats are stupidly labouring
round the heads, half a mile away at least, the
end comes.

There is the sharp crack of a rifle. Some
idiot has fired it by mistake. The foremost goat
advances, squeaks ; there is a sound of tearing
foliage, and down he goes ! — turning over and
over along the red face of the cliff, and striking
the water with a splash.

" Oh, the imbeciles ! " says the governor. But
the mischief is done, and nothing remains but to
stay and watch the end of the drama. A second
goat has approached the edge : over he goes.
Then another and another. Panic has struck the
band ; they are hurling themselves methodically
to destruction. Leaning over, craning my neck
through that perilous lantana table-fringe, I can
just see the foremost goat in the water, swimming
bravely. A broad rocky plateau, nearly awash,
rises beyond the ring of surf, fifty yards out.
Fear lends strength, and the tiny dot is strug-
gling to reach it. Safety, for all it knows, may
lie there.

No — for even as we watch, comes another
danger, dark and cruel as the grave — this time
from the water. A pale shadow appears under
the blue surface. An agonised squeal comes to
our ears. The poor goat is gone. A shark has

282

A Nukahiva Goat-Drive

got him. The governor is dancing with rage,
and swearing in excited falsetto. What a waste
of material ! Little indeed is left for the boats
to pick up. From every quarter of the sea come
the hurrying forms of those white terrors, eager
for their banquet of blood — and while the foolish
sails flap helplessly to windward, death closes in
on our frightened quarry. It is a massacre grim
and] great. The sharks are darting about like
a shoal of herrings, fierce, insatiable as furies.
It seems that even at that distance one can hear
the rip of their protruding fins and the ponder-
ous snap of the iron jaws. It is horrible — too
horrible ! We came for sport, and instead we
have witnessed an orgy of blood that would dis-
countenance an Indian rajah. The very waves
are blushing apparently, for the shock of the
combers leaves unsightly patches of crimson
froth sticking to the rocks. The governor rises,
flicks the dust from his trousers, and smiles philo-
sophically.

" We have taught them a lesson anyhow," he
says, " and the next time you honour me with a
visit, monsieur, you shall not want for roses ! "

283

CHAPTER XXVIII

TAHITI AGAIN— PAPEETE IN GALA

" A thousand proas darted o'er the bay
With sounding shells, and heralded their way.
A thousand fires, far-flickering from the height
Blazed o'er the general revel of the night."

— The Island.

IT was our last morning in Nukahiva. There
was quite an array of ladies drawn up on the
beach to wish us God-speed. The emotions of
several simply boiled over.

" Whither are you going, Beretane ? " queried
one, hanging prettily on the engineer's arm and
ogling the second mate across her fan with the
most lovable impartiality.

" Back to Tahiti, darling."

"Take me with you — do." The eyes look
sincere enough, but travellers must learn to
mistrust optical phenomena.

" Oh — she'll go right enough, if you care to
pay her passage," says one of the traders
brutally; "so will any of the others. It's the
French national fete in Papeete and the darlings
are dying for a chance to show off."

There is in fact method in Miss Ariitea's
284

Tahiti Again

madness. The months have slipped away only
too pleasantly in breezy Nukahiva, and the four-
teenth of July — the anniversary of the taking of
the Bastille — is looming only a week ahead. No
pains are to be spared to make the festival as
brilliant as possible. A special excursion steamer
has been run from Sydney. From the sands of
the Paumotus schooners have contracted to bring
parties of girls for the foments. The Marquesas
have despatched a contingent of their own, as also
have the Leeward and Cook Islands. It is going
to be what Americans call a magnificent blow-out.
Shortly before noon on the thirteenth the long
gray slope of Tahiti appeared in the west — the
peninsula of Taiarapu and the mountains behind
Tautira. Signs of activity were already visible
as we entered the harbour. A fleet of brand-new
ships were bobbing at the anchorages. The
Bougainville Club was a blaze of light, and the
grassy border between the Customs and the Post-
Office was a mass of tiny booths. A long black
shadow — the ribbon of smoke from her funnel
showing clear above the star-dust of Orofena —
pointed to where the Sydney steamer (the
Waikarf) was moored, and there were fluttering
suggestions of flags and ribbons among the
darkened trees of the Broom-road. My house
was deserted, of course. The wooden steps were
hidden under fallen leaves, and weeds had com-

285

The Log of an Island Wanderer

pletely obliterated the garden walk. Considering
I had paid two amiable Kanaka ladies to look
after the place in my absence, the living facts
gave me a shock. There was only one refuge
left — the hotel.

Considering the season, the night was hot and
uncomfortable. Most Tahitian houses are built
on an airy plan, but my room, with the sullen
buzz of wasps in the ceiling and the odours ^f
flowers and dew -laden banana -trees from tne
garden, was purgatory idealised.

Morning was ushered in by salvoes of crackers
from the Chinaman's. Not the timid schoolboy
squib of Guy Fawkes celebrity, but monstrous
bundles of explosive festoons vicious and deafen-
ing enough to rouse the toupapahus of a hundred
shadowy ancestors. The noise among those
reverberating iron roofs was something awful.

As the sun peeped through the brushwood of
Orofena a flood of conveyances began pouring
along the Beach-road. An awful mixture of
styles and vehicles. Every kind of contrivance
was represented — from the smart C-spring buggy
sacred to white ducks and laces, to the lowly
packing-case on two wheels with its burden of
six yelling Kanaka children and perhaps a pig
or two. The Papara mail-coach, its wheels and
horses neatly garlanded with flowers, presently
put in an appearance, bringing sundry amiable

286

Tahiti Again

old chiefesses with decorated hats and tins of
food. There was a goodly sprinkling of bicycles,
very popular among the half-caste element ; one
doughty Kanaka youth sported a home-made
"bone-shaker" of a peculiar kind. Its wheels
were simply disused barrel-ends, its framework
a carpenter's saw-bench metamorphosed. The
pedal-work had clearly puzzled the artist, so he
had not attempted its construction — merely
contenting himself with sitting astride of the
bench and dabbing the ground with his feet.
" Necessity," &c.

The company is as mixed as the vehicles.
Military men in helmets and flashing buttons are
helping down from their landaus delicate-look-
ing French ladies with lace-fringed parasols and
smelling-bottles — landing them rather incongru-
ously among the genial, if easy-going sea-froth of
vahines and longshore-men. The grass is fairly
hidden under the groups of recumbent Kanaka
musicians, who are torturing their accordions
and jabbering love-songs as only Kanakas can.
Monsieur Gallet, the governor, drives up magnifi-
cently in his high barouche, and surveys the scene
nervously. The mixture of nationalities is un-
settling, and the question of whom to invite to
dinner becomes more poignant the more you
think about it. A quarter of a mile from shore

the Aube — that venerable relic of dead dockyards

287

The Log of an Island Wanderer

— has donned her largest and most triangular
smile of flags, as also have the Eva (Moorea's
private courier) and a score of smaller yachts.
The Chilians have a device of their own — a seedy,
bilious-looking one — suggestive of quarantine
regulations. There is a tolerable sprinkling of
Stars and Stripes, also of Union Jacks. One
doughty Irish skipper, not to be behindhand, has
hoisted the green and the harp. Good humour
is catching and universal.

The short street leading past the Fare Moni
from the quay to Pomare's palace gate is a sight
for the gods. It is literally choked with booths
of all kinds. Jugglers, gambling tables, ice-cream
vendors, liquor sellers, and dealers in flowers have
taken up positions at the sides of the road and are
all talking at once. Some astonishing swindles
are being perpetrated. Innocent lady passengers
from the Waikark are purchasing slices of water-
melon at twenty-five cents apiece. Considering
melons are only worth five cents apiece in Tahiti,
the vendor makes a fair profit. The most atro-
cious liquors are offered for sale at the drinking-
booths, the labels of some being enough to give
one the cholera without tasting the mixture in-
side. At a table, raised slightly above the others,
a splendid gentleman in checks, with a sugges-
tion of artificial jewellery in his shirt sleeves and
a decided dash of the tar-brush in his complexion,

288

Tahiti Again

is spinning a wheel with gaudy-looking numbers
gleaming round the circumference, and, to judge
from the ceaseless jingle of money on the baize
counter beneath him, doing a rousing business.
Next door to him, behind a barrow laden with
indigestible biscuits, a Kanaka of a musical turn
of mind is courting the muse and custom by
playing the flute. The street, with its seething
exotic crowd, its list of weird articles offered for
sale, is a Nijni-Novgorod fair in miniature. A
mock perfumery store sports a pile of bottles
filled with compounds which only Papeete slums
could witness the boiling of. A pot of railway
grease, flavoured with essence of cloves, is labelled

" Rimmel's Anodyne for the Hair." Another
bottle, which, from the smell, I should judge to
be filled with alcohol and lavender water, is styled
Eau de Cologne — Jean Maria Farina. Tahiti
trade is apparently as indifferent to libel as a
New York opera pirate.

In Pomare's garden the merry-go-round is in
full swing. The thing itself is a poor contrivance
enough, with steam gearing and mottled wooden
horses, whose unnaturalness set the pre-Raphaelite
masters at zero. Watch the people though. The
trading schooners have swept them together from
the funniest out-of-the-way islands. Just imagine
the pride of a mother in some lost coral dab, who
after a year's "screwing" takes her family of

289 T

The Log of an Island Wanderer

daughters to be "finished" in this giddiest of
baby capitals. Queer notions of civilisation the
poor things must get ! Here on the grass you
can see a bevy of timid brown things stand and
gaze pensively at the merry-go-round. If you
want to have some fun, buy a few tickets and dis-
tribute them among the innocents. The wooden
horse is very tame. He won't either bite or
kick. Like as not, if the girls come from some
very small island, they will have never seen a
horse or any beast larger than a pig. Never
mind, start them on the machine. Off they go
— to a jingling tune from " Madame Angot," with
shrilling whistle and panting steam-pipe. Horrors!
one of the beauties has been ill-advised enough
to jump off, and goes rolling over on the grass
a mass of flashing brown limbs and flying hair.
Two more hang on with faces deathly pale. A
fourth, the youngest of the bunch, has started
sobbing and calling for mamma. The machine
is stopped and they are let down, pleased but
shaken. The amusements of the white faranis
are as awful as their wickednesses.

Down by the water's edge a canoe race is in
progress. The available strength of boats, ten or
so, are drawn up some fifty yards from the un-
sightly coal-store of Fareute, each of them repre-
senting some village or province. The majority
of the rowers are naked or nearly so, though some

290

Tahiti Again

few have got themselves up to conquer in striped
jerseys and floral crowns. Better leave those
trickeries aside, gentlemen. This is a strife of
muscle, not beauty. You can air your aesthetics "
to-night round the band-stand.

Cheers ! They are off. A good start — but too
hurried to ensure salvation for all. Those out-
rigger skiffs are not so innocent as they look.
Pat the water the tiniest bit too hard and over
you go like a Jack-in-the-box. There ! One of
them has gone over — the one headed by Charley
Teriinui, a noted dandy and lady-killer. Dandies
are at a discount here though. A yell of laughter
heralds Charley's overthrow. He swims ashore,
rumpled but still beautiful, to receive the consola-
tion prize — the chattered sympathy of vahine-dom,
which here, as elsewhere, carries balm to the
afflicted heart.

And now, by common consent, the glances turn
to where bobs on the water the tiny flagboat
round which the canoes must pass. A shout and
a waving of handkerchiefs. They have passed
and are on the homeward track, Papeete leading,
the Papara boat close at her heels. The finish
is an exciting one. Ordinarily the way is clear
enough, but to that holiday crew, most of whom
have probably had recourse to the stimulus of the
gin-bottle, more like to prove a path of destruction.
The shouts of the crowd increase to a roar and

291

The Log of an Island Wanderer

the line of boats becomes a sea of coloured hand-
kerchiefs and pareos. A close finish indeed.
There is little to choose between the style of one
boat and that of the other — but the currents round
those snags of submerged coral are deceiving, and
it would take a smart coxswain (if there were one)
to decide the victory. No such niceties here
though. Every one is tired and the paddles are
splashing merrily. The leading boat is done up
— a logical result of having played for the gallery
too early in the game. The long prow of her
adversary creeps up inch by inch, and before
Papeete can realise it she is beaten. Papara has
won the race.

Boating finished, we resume our exercise of
patrolling the streets. The road leading from the
cathedral to Mangaiatown is a veritable bower of
flags. There is to be some amateur steeple-chas-
ing at Herr Koppenrath's this afternoon. Also a
match of island-cricket. I say island-cricket be-
cause the English and the Tahitian notions of the
orame differ. Refreshments are laid out on the

grass and the players go for drinks between the
runs. The fielding is done on a grotesque scale,
mostly by Chinamen who, until the ball strikes
one of them in the abdomen, discreetly refuse to
acknowledge its presence. Mangaiatown itself

has got its own particular aches. Neat huts of

292

Papeete in Gala

plaited grass, their eaves and gables decked with
rustling plumes of paper or reva-reva, have been
erected among the flowering trees. They tell of
prizes offered by the administration for native
architecture, and undreamed-of talent — the mush-
room growth of a few nights — has blossomed in
the strangest quarters.

Here we come suddenly on a spectacle remind-
ing us of our own Maypole ceremonies at home.
The elected queen of the May (funny to talk of
May in this land of perpetual summer) — chosen
for her beauty, or her willowiness, or both — sits
at the door of her hut, clad in all the glory of her
innocent frippery, between her two handmaidens.
In case the latter prove insufficient, two doughty
Kanaka warriors, their hair puffed out into fierce-
looking mops, armed with business-like spears ten
feet long, stand by to keep watch over the fair
one. Una, slumbering by her lion, could hardly
have been more effectively guarded.

The trailing fringe of a rain-squall drags across
the town presently and the crowd is forced to
take refuge in the Chinaman's. What a babel !
Tahitians, Rarotongans, Atiu Islanders, Man-
gaians — all talking at once. Every variety of
morals too — from the sleepy market odalisque,
her hat blazoned with the ensign of a French
man-of-war, to the tiny brown school-miss from
the Paumotus, for whom Yet Lee's whitewashed

293

The Log of an Island Wanderer

barn with its wondrous copper kettles and glitter-
ing pyramids of bottles is Palace of Fortunatus,
Eldorado, and New Jerusalem rolled into one.

The wooded avenues in the western portion of
the town are humming with preparations for
to-night's musical entertainment. The broad
flowery square opposite the Palace of Justice,
with its hedges of hibiscus and lines of drooping
sycamores, is to be the theatre of action, and for
the present the poetry of the place is almost
swamped under the mazy festoons of Chinese
lanterns and the bunched-up bouquets of tricolor.

It is time for lunch — but there is a difficulty
in getting oneself attended to. The Hotel du
Louvre is crammed with a pushing army of
tourists, and Buillard's saloon, with its faded
billiard-cloths and model schooners, has become
the rendezvous of the Waikart foc'sle hands.
Nothing remains but to go home, starve patiently,
and wait for the evening.

It is not long in coming. Hardly has the
ubiquitous gun of the Aube saluted the vanishing
sun-rim when the monde begins to collect, at first
in groups, then in strings, and at last in a tossing
avalanche of hats and skirts that bids fair to
sweep all before it. Isolated celebrities are
naughtily patrolling before the Cercle Militaire,
where the lynx-eyed officers are watching from
their bower among the trees. One or two fine

294

Papeete in Gala

stately figures among them. Also a good deal of
specially acquired haughtiness and biting repartee.
The girls are on their best manners to-day.
Here comes one — Teipo i Temarama, the maid-
of-the-moon. Try and get her to smile. You'll
wish you hadn't. She has a caustic — lunar1
caustic — wit and the heartlessness of sixteen
Barbara Aliens.

And yet, O Teipo, there was a time when

Gracing and filling the band-stand in the centre
of the square, in faultless evening dress and
swallow-tails, serene and imperturbable as the
council of gods in Olympus, sit the judges,
headed by one of the oldest residents — Mr. Narii
Salmon. Ave Narii, fiorituri te salutant!
(Those about to blossom into song salute you).
The performers are divided into groups, fifty or
so in each, mostly called after the villages or
districts they represent. Papara, Teravao,
Hiteaea, Tautira, &c. The Tahitians proper
monopolise the available space in front. Atius,
Paumotuans, Bora-Borians sit right and left.
Deathly silence. You could hear a pin drop.
The president's hand goes up solemnly. The
singing commences.

A South Sea himent in its highest grade of
development is difficult to do justice to in print.
It begins by the usual treble shriek pitched in

1 Joke by De Smidt.
295

The Log of an Island Wanderer

any key which comes handy. Just as you are
trembling for the girl's vocal organs the shriek
loses its viciousness and modulates off into some-
thing— probably a tune — fitful enough to em-
barrass a phonograph. Apparently it is without
rhyme or rhythm. But the chorus don't think so.
The girl is working her way down step-fashion.
As she sludders down comfortably into mezzo they
chime in amicably one by one — some repeating
the melody in fugue fashion, others improvising
"on their own" ; others, the heavy swells of the
entertainment, merely contenting themselves with
growling a sort of ground-bass accompaniment.

Very few of the rules regulating civilised choral
music find echo here. Nothing forbids the inter-
crossing of the parts, and the bass gentlemen, if
they be so minded, can blossom spontaneously
into high-C tenors without infringing inter-island
law. Certain harmonies, Chinese in colouring — to
wit, the well-known " Grail " harmony exploited
by Wagner in the " Lohengrin " prelude — recur
almost to weariness. Taking it as a whole, the
result is strangely, uncouthly symmetrical. Who
taught these people counterpoint ? Certainly not
the missionaries. They have never bothered
their heads encouraging musical effort. Who
taught them the art of modulation ? Who
showed them the precise point at which a ground-
bass must be altered to avoid cacophony ? Is

296

Papeete in Gala

this wild Tahitian melody an arbitrary assortment
of notes, or is it intended to be a painting in
sound, a musical suggestion of the landscape it
emanates from ? Does not the droning sing-song
of an Arab chant bear some resemblance to the
desert ? Is not the very form of Scotch music as
written on paper a representation, in its jerky,
irregular notchings, of the Scotch hills ? Is it a
mere coincidence that the Ranz des Vaches pre-
dominates in Swiss melodies, or the twang of the
banjo in negro ones ? Does not this ebbing,
swaying himent, with its growling substratum of
male voices, signify the whistle of the trade-wind
in the palms and the roar of the reef? It is a
problem worth investigating. Three Tahitian
dioceses have said their piece, and it is the turn
of the Atiu islanders. They are by far the most
gifted of the company, and as events turn out,
eventually walk off with a prize. A comic inci-
dent marked the commencement of their efforts.
The girl whose business it was to start was
nervous. She did the preliminary wailing all
right, but presently lost her head and made a
wrong modulation. The basses were already in
activity, and the key they chose was unfortunately
the right one — as indicated by the opening shriek.
When it came to the turn of the altos every one
was at variance. For a few minutes the tune
wavered like a lamp in a draught, then it hesi-

297

The Log of an Island Wanderer

tated and broke down amid cheers and hoots. It
was too much for the old chieftainess. Jumping
up from her seat she seized the erring prima-
donna by the hair, and gave her two sounding
boxes on the ear. The girl screamed, and being
as muscular as she was musical, began a spirited
retaliation. The police intervened, and the two
were packed off shrieking defiance from the arms
of their respective constables.

As the evening progresses, the spectators grow
more excited and exhibit a wish to join in the fun.
A few daring spirits have taken to dancing hoolas
in the rings of lamplight, and have to be forcibly
recalled to order. Some of the military men in
the club are getting uproarious, and, tired of
himents, are shouting ironically for musique —
musique ! Then, bowing to the decree of the
masses, the judges gravely vacate their rostrum,
and the final attraction of the evening — the
Papeete military band — takes their place.

This is a portion of the entertainment in which
every one can participate. Well-known airs,
patriotic and otherwise, have been set to native
words — the " Marseillaise," the Toreador's song
from "Carmen," and a third abominable tune
reminiscent of Lecocq —

" Rupe — rupe Tahiti !
Rupe — rupe Farani ! "

(Vive la France ! Vive Tahiti !) The tune is in

298

Papeete in Gala

quadrille-tempo. Two hundred odd girls sur-
round the band-stand, and amuse themselves by
capering round in a circle. The colours ! The
dust! The enthusiasm ! Let us thank Heaven,
or the French, that there is at least one little
corner still remaining in this hideously over-
grown world where a man who is satiated with
civilisation can lay his weary head and be lulled
to sleep in a whirl of tropical imagery. For years
we have dreamed of such spectacles, and at last
we have found one — in Papeete.

I hardly know how I found my way home
that night. I remember passing up the garden
walk (it was my own house, not the hotel), with
its waving blue flowers and white patches of moon-
light. I remember throwing myself on the bed
and relapsing into blissful unconsciousness

Shrieks from the road. A female voice shout-
ing my name. " Beretane — Beretane — ahoo !
Na oe hoia!"

It is a serenade ! A tall pliable vahine, her
long hair floating in the night wind, her eyes
gleaming with — ahem — patriotic enthusiasm,
bangles rattling on her bare brown arms —

" The infant of an infant world, as pure
From Nature — lovely, warm, and premature."

Go away, mademoiselle ! You'll wake the
police ! Go away at once ! Naughty girl !
Shocking !

299

CHAPTER XXIX

TAHITIAN SOCIETY

" Too comic for the solemn things they are,
Too solemn for the comic touches in them."

IT is a queer jumble — a pie in which the few
raisins have so thoroughly absorbed the flavour
of the suet as to be undistinguishable but for
the colour and for that nameless aureole of
respectability that tells you they are raisins
without the cook's certificate.

To a globe-trotter who is travelling to avoid
the crush, or a remittance-man who is doing
the same because the crush avoids him, the
name Society Islands sounds a trifle ominous.
As one understands the word in Europe it
means balls, parties, scandal, door-slamming, and
a variety of concentric plottings of which a
duchess, or an erotic novelist, may be the splash-
foundation. Let him be of good cheer, however.
The splash is there somewhere ; but if he flatters
himself he is going to close up on it in a hurry
he will find himself mistaken. It is easier to
wobble in the rings. You can take all of them
at once, or explore segments in small doses,

300

Tahitian Society

whichever you please. It will amuse you and
it won't hurt anybody. Is not the French motto
that greets you over the door of the Customs,
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity? Then what have
you to fear, brother globe-trotter? Cut into the
coffee-bush — that is, if the coffee-bush doesn't cut
you— and win.

The first forerunning signs of social amenity
are convincing enough. There are two clubs
in Papeete, the Cercle Bougainville and the
Cercle Militaire, and the hospitality of both is
extended to the stranger with an earnestness
that would shame the ancient patriarchs. Kind-
nesses, civil speeches, invitations flow in from
all sides. Within twenty-four hours of your
landing you have been apparently introduced
to half the island. Tahiti begins to take form
in your brain as a Consolidated Trust for the
benefit of foreigners — it is only when you dive
beneath the surface and probe the private
opinions these jolly good fellows have about
each other that you catch the glitter of the
serpent's scales.

And how do I come by these reflections ?
Here I am at the back of the beyond, living a
devil-may-care, double-shuffle, demented existence
in a romantic, mosquito-peopled cot of trellised
vine with vahines in pink serenading me on the

accordion at night and gentlemen in kharki whose

301

The Log of an Island Wanderer

sing-song wail of " how they lost their ship,"
becomes monotonous by repetition, exchanging
ideas on the world, the flesh, and the devil
(particularly the last two) by day. A charming
variety indeed. But let us not digress. I am
supposed to be hunting for the central splash
— the hub round which Tahitian fashion re-
volves. Twenty years back, it used to be Queen
Aimata Pomare (lit., the lady-with-the-cold-in-the
head-who-eats-eyes) — and a very sweet, good-
natured, hospitable hub she made too, as many
of our retired admirals and naval officers can
testify. At present it is — Norman Brander ; that
is, if the title be not disputed by a score of liver-
less French officers, or Yet Lee.

Hold hard. Our object is not to be facetious.
Our object is to find the splash. We shall dis-
cover it in time.

That is — no. I fear not. Properly speaking
there is no central splash. The hub does not
exist. Tahiti is not what it used to be. The
hyper-official jingoes have done their work.
Papeete has progressed backwards. Where once
glittered a harbourful of dashing men-of-war, now
looms a poor handful of whitewashed trading
smacks. Where once the electric lights flared
from their bronze brackets, now glimmer a few
dirty - glassed oil-lamps. Pomare's palace is

deserted. A lawsuit is pending over its pro-

302

Tahitian Society

prietorship, and as long as Papeete lawyers con-
tinue to regard it as a source of income, so long
will the weeds continue to sprout between its
steps. Sic transit gloria Tahitiensis.

In this dreamy, flower-scented air, under the
shadow of these smiling velvet hills, two distinct
"sets" have met in mortal combat — the "mis-
sionary" set and the "trader" set. The fight
is bitter and never-ending — no quarter being
demanded or expected on either side.

What there is in a missionary that refuses
amalgamation with the ordinary rate-payer is still
unknown. Physically there is little or nothing
about the person of a missionary that would serve
to point him out as a man different to other men.
We ourselves have studied the genus all over the
Pacific. We have mostly found them human —
sometimes eminently so. The missionary, as you
meet him in Tahiti, is generally a man of middle
age, portly, rosy-cheeked, and well fed. He is
naturally cheerful — nay, there are even muscular
suggestions about his biceps that make you want
to take him on in a sparring-match. His vices,
where they exist, are very harmless. He has
a fondness for swallow-tail coats, gardenias,
and cigarettes. He likes his daughters to prac-
tise the piano. Still, barring these little foibles,
you would probably put him down as a decent
all-round good fellow.

303

The Log of an Island Wanderer

But — try and reconcile him to the rest of the
crowd. Aha ! the shoe pinches ! The more you
try, the more hopeless your case becomes. The
missionary don't and won't love traders. There
is no earthly reason why he should not love
them. Were it not for the traders and their
energetic administration the missionary would
have been eaten ages ago. But so it is.

Socially, I admit, the missionary claims prece-
dence— if only from the fact that he was there
first. If he wasn't his predecessors were. There
is such a thing as island lineage, and missionaries,
like executioners in Japan, are more often born
than made. Like Pooh-Bah in the " Mikado," the
missionary isn't fond of saying how-d'ye-do to
anything under the rank of a stockbroker.

What wonder Tahiti is clique-ridden ? The
more you endeavour to reconcile the island's
heterogeneous elements the more they fly asunder.
The smallness of the colony, and the character-
istic speed with which scandal of any kind
travels — the fact that each atom knows and
shudders at the private history of the next atom
may also be to blame for this state of affairs.

Leaving the missionary on one side and
descending into the giddier strata of society, we
find the same spirit of disintegration at work.

"If there were only some decent fellows to
talk to," is the querulous complaint of nine out

3°4

Tahitian Society

of ten Papeete club-danglers. " For Heaven's
sake don't ask him" growls some one else over
his glass of vermout, "he's not in our set."

Ah ! sweet Tahiti ! what you need is not
another bushel of colonists, but a patent cement
to weld you together.

On the smooth Rue de Rivoli I meet H.M.
Consul Milsom and tackle him despairingly.
" Can't we go a picnic up Papenoo, and take the
Thing-um-bobs ? " A stare of innocent horror.
" My dear fellow, I don't know these people."
" And why ? " " Why — oh, well — it's a long story.
The fact is Mrs. Thing-um-bob ran away with
What's-his-name, and sold Thing-um-bob's py-
jamas for rum — I assure you it would never do."

Etc., etc. In the Marquesas at least they are
more pungent. " I never leave cards at that
house," explains Eater-of-swollen-feet to Chewer-
of-eyeballs ; " my father ate his grandmother, and
we've not been on speaking terms since ! "

And so the comedy wears on, and the attitude
of one-half of the Society Islands towards the
other half is that of Guelphs and Ghibellines.
Norman — Norman Brander : with your urbane
fluency of language, with your suave manners
and polyglot knowledge of island lingo, cannot
you do something to bring some of these way-
ward people together ? They're none so bad
individually, Norman, and as the last descendant

305 u

The Log of an Island Wanderer

of Tahiti's ancient lineage, you ought to be able
to chivy amiability into the more rebellious ones.

Isolated attempts, indeed, have been occasion-
ally made, generally by outsiders.

The Union picnic was one of these. It was
in the earlier days of the Auckland run, and the
company, by way of humouring the administra-
tion and paving the way for mutual good-fellow-
ship, decided on taking a party for a picnic to
the neighbouring island of Moorea. The thing
was organised nem. con., and the task of issuing
invites entrusted to a Monsieur Tandonnet, one
of the most influential of thereabout merchant
princes. With the first strokes of Tandonnet's
pen trouble began. The leader of that year's
politics chanced to be a man possessed of that
most ambiguous of blessings, a native wife. The
latter was not on speaking terms with Madame
T., and consequently found herself left out of the
invitations. Three other notorieties, likewise
enemies of the merchant princess, shared the
same fate, and retired growling behind their
verandah lattices. Meanwhile the list swelled.
A hundred Government officials were included,
likewise fifty army officers, and a bushel of mis-
sionaries. Both parties were given carte blanche
in the matter of ladies. Both made good use of
the privilege. The missionaries brought their
daughters, the officers their — consolations. Be-

306

Tahitian Society

sides the full compendium of longshore giddiness
there were four consuls, two members of Parlia-
ment, an escapee from Noumea, a Russian prince
in kharki, a dismantled Spanish ambassador,
three Cuban bandits, a Portugee dentist (taote
iriti niho in the vernacular), and a contractor for
stolen beef from the King country — the most
variegated load of muscle and morals ever seen
since the days of Noah.

With the first hauling in of the kedge the sets
began to segregate. The missionaries, in virtue
of superior holiness, possessed themselves of the
upper-deck. The after-deck groaned under the
weight of Government officials, the forward-deck
was tenanted by the officers and their nimbus of
female frailty. The smaller cliques were equally
reserved. The four consuls entrenched them-
selves in the captain's cabin, kindly including the
Russian prince in their graces ; the dismantled
ambassador monopolised the galley ; the Por-
tugee dentist the wheelhouse. The escapee
from Noumea played cards in the cuddy, the
cattle contractor — defeated in his intention of
finding the cloak-room and going through the
company's pockets — crept into a cabin and went
to sleep. It was all in the day's work.

The rain came down before Moorea was
reached, and a few of the vahines were very sick.
Refreshments had been prepared in the saloon.

307

The Log of an Island Wanderer

There had been some intricate argument as to
precedence. It was proposed to divide the cake-
fight into four bells — first bell, missionaries —
second, traders — third, officials — fourth, officers,
nondescripts, bandits, frailties, &c.

Vain hope ! The rain had strung the company's
appetite to breaking-point. At the first stroke
discipline fled to the winds — vahines, Kanakas,
traders, officers, made for the dining-room in a
jumble. The jportliest of the missionaries, who
had taken up his stand in the immediate vicinity
of the companion, found himself hustled down-
stairs on a muslin toboggan-slide and sandwiched
between two frailties and a Kanaka with a mouth-
organ. The British consul had to ask the Nou-
mean escapee to pass the mustard. The ambas-
sador and the Portugee dentist had to share the
same pickle-jar. On deck M. Tandonnet's brass
band, tired of being soaked, ceased banging at
the " Marseillaise" and also took the staircase by
storm. How that meal progressed without de-
veloping into a free fight is only known to the
stewards and Providence. All that is recorded is
that the victuals vanished, like Hans Breitmann's

lager beer —

" afay in de ewigkeit "

before any of the more civilised members had
time to get a sight of the bill of fare. The table

was as though the locust had gone over it.

308

Tahitian Society

The Upolu had dropped anchor in Papetoai
Bay. An excursion of some kind seemed advis-
able, if only to give the stewards a chance to
clean up. Among the scrub two walks led right
and left. The missionaries went to the right.
The next boatful — traders — catching the inky
gleam of swallow-tails in the distance, decided that
their path lay to the left. The third boatful —
officials — finding both ways blocked, looked dis-
consolately out to sea and longed for a flying-
machine. The soldiers and hoola-girls remained
on board, the former from boredom, the latter to
devour the sugar remaining in the bowls and
improvise scandal.

Cigarette-smoke and cognac combined breed
confidence. The officers now hit on a diabolical
plan, viz. ousting the missionaries and getting
possession of the upper-deck. This was why,
when the boatload of swallow-tails returned, they
found a regiment of epaul^tted Frenchmen smok-
ing in the long cane chairs and blowing rings
over the taffrail. The eldest missionary made an
attempt to regain the lost field — but the most
coquettish of the vahines, mistaking the nature
of his quest, offered him a slice of pine-apple and
he fled. There only remained the after-deck, one-
half of which was already tenanted by traders.

The home-coming of that gay Upolu was a
sorry business. The rain brought out personal

The Log of an Island Wanderer

enmities. The swallow-tails drooped ominously.
Two knights of commerce — a vanilla-curer from
Papara and the agent for a New Zealand trading
concern — came to blows. The cattle-contractor
offered to take on the three Cuban bandits and
throw them overboard "as per invoice." The
upper-deck party had started a hoola, and one or
two market beauties, contracting jealousies, took
to pulling each other's hair. The captain of the
Upolu was at his wit's end. He appealed to the
British consul. The latter replied by popping
head first into the wheelhouse and barricading
the door. It was all Milsom could do, and he did
it with a will.

As a last resource the band were rooted out
and told to play "God Save the Queen." Ophi-
cleide covers a multitude of sins, and it covered
the tune to the extent of making it unrecognisable.
There were ironical cheers from the French
officers and clapping of hands from disaffected
parties. The bandmaster wept. If this should
get about, the majesty of England (fortunately
Milsom was in the wheelhouse) would consider
herself insulted and he would lose his position.
The rattle of the anchor-chain cut into the middle
of his apology. The captain gave a gasp of
relief. The picnic was over.

So ended the first and last attempt at welding
310

Tahitian Society

Papeete together. Isolated attempts at jollifica-
tion there are indeed. There is Raoulx and his
Society of Excursionists. There is Kurka and his
Kegel-bahn. There are the French officers and
their wives who practise the score of " Carmen "
upside down. Vermege and his orchestra — a
really inspired institution. Prince Hinoe and his
flower-crowned loves. The pudding thins. We
are at the market "bulls" and the beach-comber
element. And we are no nearer our splash-
centre than before.

Tahiti does not live. It exists under protest —
beautifully, it is true, but under protest neverthe-
less. From Dan to Beersheba — from Mehetia to
Tubuai-Manou — I doubt if there be a man with-
out his schedule of complaints. And what deep,
dark, desperate complaints they are too ! From
those of the Papeete political leader whose advice
on the Chinese question Europe has recklessly
ignored, to those of Milsom whose bicycle tire has
sprung a leak ; from the woes of the governor,
whose laundress won't bring back his gold-but-
toned livery in time for his wife's next at-home,
to the natty dapper little American consul, who
is wearing himself to a shadow thinking about his
— ah — corporation.

Such a load of home-made crosses generally
leads to ruptures. Society Islands forsooth ! I
had almost rather apply to Papeete the definition

311

The Log of an Island Wanderer

applied long since by some cynic to Hammer-
smith— beg pardon, West Kensington — " a lot of
variegated grievances, each unit of which believes
himself a little tin Providence on wheels."

And whither is such disaffectedness going to
lead you, gentlemen ? When the hour calls, and
in obedience to a Fate before which even the
Andes ten-pounder must perforce keep silent,
the busy outer world of sin and sorrow knocks
at your gates, what will you leave as a legacy ?
Who will tell the story of your loves, your
hates, your procrastinations, the dilatory petti-
fogging that led to your fall? Who will draw
the moral ?

A bit of silver braid, a blossom of tiar£, a
worn-out mouth-organ, Tahiti will vanish in
smoke like the mists of Orofena, and humanity
— relentless, workaday humanity — will throne the
middle spaces of the blue Pacific.

On a tomb in the Papeete cemetery we read :
SACRED TO THE MEMORY

SOPHRONIA ELISABETH MARY JANE HIGGINS,
NIECE OF LORD W ,J V.C., H.I.E.C., K.G., &c..

" Be ye kind one to another'

1 Name suppressed to avoid complications.
312

CHAPTER XXX

NATIVE WIFEDOM — A WHITY- BROWN STUDY

" Mated with a squalid savage, what to me were sun or clime,
I the heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time 1 "

MOST people familiar with the literature of the
Pacific must have been struck by the r61e
played therein by that burning and ever-present
blister,' the intermarriage of white men and brown
women.

Stoddard has maundered over the theme; Louis
Becke has sentimentalised it; Loti, being a French-
man and a young one at that, has deified it and
surrounded his " marriage " with a halo of romance
so marvellously unreal as to make it doubtful
whether he actually knew what he was talking
about. Certain it is that, contrary to what many
people suppose, Loti was not the hero of his book.
Rarahu indeed existed. She died some years
since in Bora-Bora, and her death — which was
not pretty— was due neither to love nor consump-
tion. But fiction is fiction. It is with the reality
we have to deal.

The Log of an Island Wanderer

At first sight there is no reason why a white
man and a brown woman should not pull well
together. Out of the odd scattered millions of
white men who are teaching the natives of the
Pacific the value of their speckless aristocracy,
fully two-thirds are wiving with native women in
some fashion or other. There are good reasons
for this. The islands are hardly places to bring
delicately nurtured European women to. The
climate that broadens the phylacteries of the mag-
nolia shrivels the northern bloodroot. Society,
in these fringes of creation, is filigree worn thin
from exposure.

Children — white children — become successively
a problem, a danger, a terror, a warning. House-
keeping, in the highest European sense, is a dead
letter. It is not strange, therefore, that in default
of a helpmate of his own race the new arrival —
be he trader, official, or common seaman — will
look about him for another and easier way of
obeying the divine injunction.

The daughters of the land are beautiful. And
their beauty is one which, with all its exotic
attributes, has yet enough of the civilised woman's
characteristics to make it, for a season at least, a
palatable substitute for the eyes of blue that Jack
has left behind him among the Midland furze or
the violets of Devon. A beauty made up of fairly

Native Wifedom

pale skin, fairly regular features, fairly kissable
mouth — all or nearly all of Eve's conquering
paraphernalia condensed into the supplest, the
naughtiest, the most bewitching piece of coloured
womanhood the earth has to show.

Jack's principles (if he has any) begin to
vacillate. Should he decide on courting a lady,
circumstances and the happy-go-lucky nature of
island relationships make his path an easy one.
Courtship is an idyll in tennis-shoes. Ever since
Christianity, so civilising, has made its appearance
in the islands it is no longer the teuteu arii
(servant of the king) who breaks through the
door and carries off the lady by force. Her con-
sent must nowadays be asked.

In isolated North Pacific islands it used to be
the custom for the girls to propose first ; and even
as late as 1830, when Montgomery visited the
Sandwich Islands, the sight of a melancholy
bachelor Kanaka whose complaint it was that
" no girl had asked him " was more common than
it is now. On the whole, South Sea ladies need
attacking in much the same way as English ones.
Indeed they sometimes give one pointers — but
that is another question.

Let us suppose Jack safely married. His next
move will be to take such steps as may be neces-
sary to ensure harmony in his establishment.

315

The Log of an Island Wanderer

His wife's relations are generally the first to give
trouble. As in Europe, there is such a thing as
waking up to the fact that one has " married the
whole family." The circle has to be squared, and
the squaring involves more mathematics than
Norie knew. Eloquence is of no use. Heroic
measures succeed more often. The way in which
one recent bridegroom — the employe of a noted
Tahiti trading firm — settled the difficulty is suffi-
ciently original to deserve chronicling.

Jim Wakefield was a "boy" of some notoriety
in the islands. He was not known to have any
particular affection for natives, and when his mar-
riage with a chocolate-coloured young lady from
Hiteaea was announced, Papeete received an
electric shock.

The girl was pretty enough. There were in
the family seven brothers and sisters, two grand-
mothers, a posse of well-meaning but dissipated
uncles, aunts to match, fifteen cousins, and a
regiment of Kanaka hangers-on of various shades
of colour and morality. Papeete looked on with
bated breath.

The wedding was a gay one. A sumptuous
feast of baked hogs and miti had been laid out
in the back premises of Jimmy's intended resi-
dence, and, wonder of wonders ! the entire bride's
family, dissipated uncles and all, were bidden to

3-6

Native Wifedom

the feast. While his dear wife's relatives guzzled
and sang Jimmy maintained an ominous silence.
He appeared to be closely studying the faces of
the guests one by one. At the close of the dinner
Jimmy rose and vanished into the house. There
was a pause. What new surprise was dear Ariitea's
lord preparing ?

Jimmy reappeared. In his hand lay a mighty
double-barrelled gun. " Now," he said cheerfully,
clicking the lock to show the piece was in order,
" I know you, every mother's son of you, and
the first son of a gun, man, woman, or child,
who sets foot in this house again, I'll shoot him
dead!"

The Kanakas grinned awkwardly, but they
knew Jimmy to be a good fellow and a man of
his word, and took the hint.

But even these drastic measures are hardly
sufficient to keep a native woman from the com-
pany of her like, for law of race is stronger than
law of man, and class feeling mightier than the
bonds of tried friendship.

Let us suppose, however, that Jack has over-
come all this and is living peaceably with the
partner of his joys. Ariitea makes a good " plain "
housekeeper. The items of furniture required by
her are not extensive. From her father's house
Ariitea brings a chest of drawers, a few photo-

317

The Log of an Island Wanderer

graphs, a bundle of linen tied in a pareo, her
married sister's portrait framed in shells, a few
lace curtains, a patchwork quilt, and a Bible.
She discards going about barefoot, and in the
superior dignity of married woman takes to wear-
ing shoes. She rises with the lark and goes to
market without a murmur. When her husband
has got over wondering at Ariitea's energy he
sees that vanity has as much to say in the matter
as love, 5 P.M. being the fashionable time to show
off your new dress.

All this is very pretty. But a change comes.
The precise tick of Jack's lifetime when he first
begins to find his native wife a bore is difficult to
locate. With some men it comes after the first
year, with others after the first week. As time
wears the tinsel from romance, Jack begins to
realise that with all Ariitea's acquired missionary
lore there are certain absolutely ineradicable
savage traits about the girl's character that
nothing — not even time in big doses — can fully
efface.

His doll has no notion of time, space, or
money. The moral obligation of a promise is
to her emptiness of rhetoric. She will insist
on sitting on the floor. If there be any wash-
ing, mangling, ironing to be done, she prefers
to do it in full view of the street on the front

Native Wifedom

verandah. She finds lolling over the China-
man's counter or smoking cigarettes in her
neighbour's back - garden more amusing than
attending to her husband's dinner. The romance
of the connection is over and it only needs the
final denouement to bring about a collapse.

Jack finds out what it is to be a papa. It
is rather fun at first. But presently new cares
develop. Ariitea as a mother is affectionate
enough, Heaven knows, but she has none of
the snap or stamina of her European counter-
part. The children are allowed to wander at
will among the fishermen of the reef or the
melon-sellers of the market. The purer senti-
ment of paternity — that of seeing himself
mirrored again in the person of these brown
mites — does not come to Jack. The white man
cannot live again in his brown children. And
yet their future torments him. What will be-
come of them. What are the islands making
of them ?

Two courses are here open, a bad and a
worse. The first, the bad one, is to "let things
slide," i.e. keep the children in the islands and
let them grow up as they can. The second,
the worse, is to send them away to be educated
in some big centre of civilisation, say Auckland
or San Francisco. We have seen how . this

319

The Log of an Island Wanderer

turned out in one individual case. Should the
father contemplate leaving the islands and settling
at home, the proprietorship of a Europeanised
brown daughter is hardly a blessing. If — as
is more usual — Jack's true home is in the
islands, it becomes a positive curse. It means
that, her education completed, back comes the
young lady to a lonely, monotonous, joyless
existence — quite devoid of the comforts for
which her parent's mistaken kindness has taught
her to crave — with the brummagem politics of
rival traders for topic of conversation, for amuse-
ment an occasional scratch entertainment at the
hotel, the yearly call on H.M. Consul, or the
funeral of an ex-something-or-other.

No — native wifehood is a troublesome question
at best, and the wisest thing for any man tempted
that way will be to remember, and practically
apply, the advice given in a vaguely similar case
years ago by Mr. Punch — Don't.

THE END

Printed by BALLAJJTTKK, HANSOM &* Co.
Edinburgh &• London

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UNIVERSITY Of CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Los Angeles

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