Chapter I: Foreword

“Atolls of the Sun” is a book of experiences, impressions, and dreams in the strange and lonely islands of the South Seas. It does not aim to be literal, or sequential, though everything in it is the result of my wanderings in the far and mysterious recesses of the Pacific Ocean.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

Leaving Tahiti—The sunset over 3
Moorea—Bound for the Paumotu
Atolls—The Schooner _Marara, Flying
Fish_—Captain Jean Moet and others
aboard—Sighting and Landing on Niau

CHAPTER II

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

CHAPTER III

Perilous navigation—Curious green 40
sky—Arrival at Anaa—Religion and the
movies—Character of Paumotuans

CHAPTER IV

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

CHAPTER V

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

CHAPTER VI

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

CHAPTER VII

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

CHAPTER VIII

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

CHAPTER IX

The fish in the lagoon and sea—Giant 157
clams and fish that poison—Hunting the
devilfish—Catching bonito—Snarling
turtles—Trepang and sea cucumbers—The
mammoth manta

CHAPTER X

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

CHAPTER XI

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

CHAPTER XII

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

CHAPTER XIII

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

CHAPTER XIV

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

CHAPTER XV

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

CHAPTER XVI

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

CHAPTER XVII

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

CHAPTER XVIII

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

CHAPTER XIX

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

CHAPTER XX

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

CHAPTER XXI

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

CHAPTER XXII

Monsieur l’Inspecteur des Etablissements 460
Français de l’Océanie—How the school
house was inspected—I receive my
congé—The runaway pigs—Mademoiselle
Narbonne goes with Lutz to Papeete to
be married—Père Siméon, about whom
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote