Chapter X: Part 10

Maruae was squatting on his heels beside me, contemplating in silence these relics of an older time. Finally he turned his head. "Those stones are very old," he remarked; "they have been here always, since the beginning. Men placed them there and men slept on them, but not the men of my people." My thoughts dwelt on the old idle tales I had heard--of the Lizard men, of the dark-skinned aborigines, the Manahune, said to have been in possession of the land when the eyes of Polynesian voyagers first rested on cloudy Orofena. There were other tales, too, of a later day; of a tribe of men dwelling in the valleys, neither tasting fish nor setting foot on the beach except when, at certain intervals, they were permitted to come down to worship by the sea. Even to-day it needs no effort of the imagination to see two distinct types among the island people: men and women of the kind one considers typically Polynesian--tall, clean limbed, and light brown, with clear, dark eyes, straight or waving hair, and heads not differing greatly from the heads of Europeans; and another kind, of a negroid or Melanesian cast--short, squat, and many shades darker in complexion, thick-lipped and apish, with muddy eyes, kinky hair, and flattened, undeveloped heads. And, strangely enough, after more than a century of missions and leveling foreign influence, the dark and awkward people seem still to fill the humbler walks of life--they are the servants and dependents, the feeders of pigs, the carriers of wood and water. Great stature, physical beauty, and light complexion are still the hall marks of aristocratic birth. Writing of the islands a hundred years ago, old Ellis, the often-quoted, closest observer of them all, remarked: "It is a singular fact in the physiology of the inhabitants of this part of the world that the chiefs, and persons of hereditary rank and influence of the islands, are, almost without exception, as much superior to the peasantry or common people in stateliness, dignified deportment, and physical strength as they are in rank and circumstances, although they are not elected to their station on account of their personal endowments, but derive their rank and elevation from their ancestry. This is the case with most of the groups of the Pacific, but peculiarly so in Tahiti and the adjacent isles. The father of the late king was six feet four inches high; Pomare was six feet two. The present king of Raiatea is equally tall.... Their limbs are generally well formed, and the whole figure is proportioned to their height, which renders the difference between the rulers and their subjects so striking that Bougainville and some others have supposed they were a distinct race, the descendants of a superior people, who at a remote period had conquered the aborigines and perpetuated their supremacy." There is a curious inconsistency in the matter of complexion, for in the old days a dark skin was considered the sign of a strong, warlike, and masterly man. Ellis records an extract from an old song: "If dark be the complexion of the mother, the son will sound the conch shell"; and yet, on the same page, he observes that "the majority of the reigning family in Raiatea are not darker than the inhabitants of some parts of southern Europe."

While Maruae and I rested among the ruins of the ancient settlement the dogs had been more usefully engaged. My musings were disturbed by a sudden burst of squeals, punctuated by excited yelpings. Maruae sprang to his feet, long knife in hand. It was only a small pig, a sixty-pounder, but he was bursting fat, stuffed with Vi apples fallen from the great tree under which he had been feeding. The dogs had him by the ears when we arrived; a thrust of the machete put an end to his short and idyllic life. I hung him from a branch and skinned him while Maruae went off in search of _fei_. Presently he returned, carrying on his shoulder a stout pole of hibiscus, from either end of which swung a bunch of the mountain plantains, like huge, thick bananas, the size of quart bottles and bright yellowish red. There was a clump of palms near by, another sign, perhaps, of man's former occupation--the relics of unnumbered vegetable generations; we had coconuts to drink, pork and _fei_ were at hand, and plenty of fresh-water crayfish to be had in the river. In the islands, the obtaining of food is always the signal for a meal. Maruae beckoned to me and led the way to the river, where he readjusted his waistcloth to leave a kind of apron hanging in front and plunged up to his armpits in the still water. With the apron spread as a trap for the darting crayfish, he moved slowly along the grassy and overhanging bank of the stream, stopping every moment or so to hand a struggling victim up to me. This little fresh-water lobster is one of the most delicious shellfish in the world--of the same dimensions as the French ecrivisse, and not unlike it in flavor. In fifteen minutes we had enough, and the work of preparing our meal began.

I gathered wood and started a fire against a face of rock. Maruae cut a section of giant bamboo, half filled it with water, threw in the crayfish, and stood it beside the fire to boil. Our meal was genuinely primitive; I had cigarettes, matches, and a paper of salt stowed in the tuck of my _pareu_--excepting our knives, we had nothing else that the rudest of savages might not have possessed. Turning up the earth with his machete, my companion scraped out a shallow trench--a Maori oven. He set a ring of stones about the edge, lined the inside with pebbles, and filled the whole with coals from our camp-fire. While the coals glowed, heating the earth and stones, he cut off a loin and hindquarter of pork, wrapped the meat carefully in plantain leaves, and selected half a dozen of the riper plantains for our meal. Finally, when the oven was thoroughly hot, he scraped away the coals from the middle, laid in the leaf-wrapped pork, surrounded by a ring of plantains, pushed the hot stones close to the food, and covered the whole with a thick layer of plantain leaves. We ate the crayfish--boiled to a bright scarlet--while the balance of our meal was cooking. I added salt to the boiled-down liquor in the bottom of the bamboo, and dipped in this natural sauce. The first course whetted our appetites for the tender meat and juicy plantains which soon came from the oven.

As we lay smoking after our meal I could see that Maruae had something in his mind and was debating whether or not to speak. Finally he began, cautiously and with an air of skeptical restraint at first, but with more and more assurance as he saw that I listened seriously to his story.

"The old people say," he remarked, pointing to the head of the valley, where the cliffs narrowed to a deep crack through which the river rushed, "that far up in this same valley, beyond the upper gorge you see, a spirit dwells, one of the heathen spirits which are as old as the land. You and I may not believe in these things, but it is good, when the evenings are long, to listen to the stories of the old men. The name of this spirit is Tefatu; some call him _varua ino_, saying that he dogs the footsteps of the living and preys upon the souls of the newly dead, but that is not true, for many times in the memory of my fathers he has been known to aid those in perplexity or distress. The old men believe that if a traveler, lost in these mountains at nightfall, calls on Tefatu for succor, the spirit will appear before him in the likeness of a pale, moving fire, and lead him in safety down to the sea. Once in sight of the sea, the man must cry out in a loud voice, 'You have aided me, Tefatu, and I am content; stop here and I will go on my way.' It is not good to neglect these words of parting. Sometimes he is seen at night, flying from ridge to ridge of the mountain--a great glowing head, trailing a thin body of fire. Long ago, during the childhood of my grandmother, Tefatu left this land for a space of years; men said that he had flown to Hawaii, but now he is returned beyond a doubt. High up among the cliffs I found the cave in which he sleeps by day.... These eyes of mine have seen the Old Lord lying there among the whitened heads of men--I looked and turned away quickly, for my stomach was cold with fear.

"I cannot tell you clearly," Maruae went on, in answer to my obvious question, "for I was greatly afraid. It seemed to me that he was a figure of wood, longer and thinner than a man, black with age, covered with carved patterns, and bound, in places, with close wrappings of _nape_--the fine sennit my people have forgotten how to make. The place was full of bones; scores of men had been slain and their bodies offered there, as was the custom of our old kings. Once, not many years ago, a wise man came here from the islands of Hawaii--an old man, bearded and wearing spectacles. It was his work to write down the names of our ancestors, and he spoke our tongue, though haltingly and with a strange twist. He lived with us for a time and we grew fond of him, for he was a simple man, who made us laugh with his jokes and was kind to the children. One evening I told him how I had found the place of Tefatu. As I spoke his eyes grew bright behind their windows of glass, and when I had done he begged me, in great excitement, to lead him to the cave--offering a hundred of your dollars if I could prove that I had spoken true words. I was younger then, and in need of money, for I was courting a girl. We went together into the mountains, but as we drew near the place something within me made me hesitate and I grew afraid. In the end I deceived that man who was my friend, telling him that I could not find the way. He was indeed a wise man; another would have mocked me for a liar and a teller of idle tales, but he only smiled, looking at me kindly--he knew that my words were true and that I feared to betray the sleeping place of the Old Lord."

Maruae rose to his feet with the sigh of a man who has eaten well and is deprived of his rightful siesta. He shouldered his ponderous load of _fei_--which I could scarcely raise from the ground--and led the way toward the sea, while I followed, bearing the remnants of the pig. It was noon when we reached the flatlands of the coast.

A quarter of a mile above the house of Airima we stopped to watch a large canoe, loaded with a mound of seine, gliding up the river, followed by a fleet of smaller craft. An old woman stood in the bow, directing the proceedings with shrill volubility; she was the proprietor of the net, a village character at once kindly and tyrannical--widow of one chief and mother of another. As her canoe drew abreast of us she gave the command to halt and spread the net. The river at this point is almost without current, very still and clear; Maruae and I sat on the high bank, too tired to do more than play the part of spectators.

They grounded the big canoe just below where we sat, putting one end of the seine ashore and paddling slowly across the river while the net was laid out in a deep, sagging curve downstream. One after another the smaller canoes were beached, and the people, half naked and carrying spears, ran along the bank to take to the water a few hundred yards above. The river was alive with them, splashing and shouting as they drove the fish toward the trap. Next moment the bright shoals began to appear beneath us, the sunlight glinting on burnished sides as they darted this way and that by hundreds, seeking a way of escape. A run of mullet flashed downstream, saw the net, turned, and were headed back toward the sea. A series of cries went up--"_Aue! Aue!_"--as fifty or sixty of the beautiful silvery fish leaped the line of floats and dashed away to safety. The old headwoman, dressed in a Mother Hubbard of respectable black and a rather handsome hat, was swimming easily in three fathoms of water; nothing escaped her watchful eye.

"_E ara!_" she shouted, angrily; "the best fish are getting away! Hurry, you lazy ones--splash the water below the net, or we shall not have a mullet left! Remember that when the haul is over he who has not worked shall have no fish."

As the line of beaters drew near, the men in the big canoe paddled upstream and across behind them, throwing out net as they went, until the frightened fish and a score of swimmers were encircled. The two ends of the seine were now close together on the bank, and half a dozen men began to haul in with a will, their efforts causing the circle to narrow slowly and steadily. Looking down from the high bank, one could see children of ten or twelve, stark naked, and carrying tiny spears in their hands, swimming like frogs a fathom deep in the clear water, pursuing the darting fish. Now and then a youngster came to the surface with a shrill cry of triumph, holding aloft the toy spear on which was transfixed a six-inch fish. The people of the islands, as a rule, are neither fast nor showy swimmers; one can see prettier swimming any summer afternoon on the Long Island shore, but the Polynesian is at home in the water in a way the white man can never match. I watched an old woman, all of seventy and wearing a black blouse girded tightly to her waist with a _pareu_, treading water at the lower end of the net, where the fish were beginning to concentrate. She was as much at her ease as though she had been lying on her veranda exchanging gossip with a neighbor. Each time she thought the headwoman's eyes were turned away she reached over the net, seized a fish, and stuffed it into her blouse, until a flapping bulge hung down over her _pareu_. But old Tinomana's eyes were sharp. "Enough," she cried, half laughing and half in anger, "_aue, tera vahine e!_ Perhaps she thought to get a string of fish, too, for that worthless son-in-law of hers!"

At length the seine lay in two great piles on the beach, and only a bulging pocket, filled with a pulsating mass of silver, remained in the river. Under the direction of Tinomana the fish were divided into little piles, strung on bits of hibiscus bark, and apportioned among the people, according to the size of their families and the amount of help they had given in the haul. For herself she reserved a considerable share, for her household was large, and as the owner of the net she was entitled to a full half--more than she loaded into the big canoe.

It was early afternoon when we laid down our burdens in the cook house and stripped for a swim. The others were awakening from their siesta; a flock of brown children, all vaguely related to the family of Airima, followed us to the river, carrying miniature surf boards. Next moment they were in the water, splashing and shouting as they paddled downstream toward where the surf broke on the bar. Tehinatu, the pretty sister of Maruae, passed us with a rush and leaped feet first from the high bank. She rose to the surface thirty yards away, shouting a challenge to catch her before she could reach the opposite shore. Her brother and I dove together, raced across the river, and had nearly overtaken the girl when she went under like a grebe. I was no match for her at this game; under water she could swim as fast as I, and was a hundred times more at home. I gave up the pursuit and landed for a sunning among the warm rocks of the point.

Out where the seas reared for the landward rush the black heads of children appeared and disappeared; I could hear the joyous screams of others, flattened on their boards and racing toward me, buried in flying spray. The old woman I had seen helping herself to fish was coming down the river, paddling an incredibly small canoe, laden with an enormous bunch of bananas and four kerosene tins of water. She lived a mile down the coast and, like many of her neighbors, braved the surf daily to supply her house with fresh water from the river. The gunwale of her canoe seemed to clear the water by no more than a couple of inches; I watched with some anxiety, thinking of the feelings of an American grandmother in the same situation.

She ceased to paddle at the river mouth and watched her chance, while the frail dugout rose and fell in the wash of half a dozen big seas. Then in a momentary lull she dug her paddle into the water. I sat up to watch; a boy standing in the shallows near by shouted encouragement. At first I thought that she had chosen her moment well. The canoe passed the white water, topped a little wave without swamping, and was seemingly out of danger; but suddenly a treacherous sea sprang up from nowhere, rearing a tossing crest. It was too late to retreat--certain disaster lay ahead. Stoically, without a sign of dismay, the paddler held her craft bow on; the canoe rose wildly against the foaming wall, seemed to hang for an instant almost vertically, and then canoe, cargo, and old woman disappeared in the froth. The boy screamed in ecstasy as he galloped through the shallows to lend a hand. The other children ceased their play and soon the canoe and its recovered cargo were brought ashore. They emptied the dugout and filled the tins with fresh water; I heard the old woman laugh shrilly as she wrung her clothes on the beach. Presently, coached by a dozen amused spectators, she made a second attempt, and passed the surf without a wetting; when I saw her last she was paddling off steadily to the west.

I was dozing among the rocks when a ringing whistle startled me and I looked up to see a bird like a large sandpiper alight on the beach and begin to feed, running briskly after the receding waves or springing into the air for a short flight when threatened by a rush of water. It was a wandering tattler, and no bird was ever better named. Solitary in its habits, except in the breeding season, when it resorts to northern lands so remote that its nest and eggs are still (I believe) unknown, it travels south at the approach of winter, making lonely passages across some of the widest stretches of ocean in the world ... to Hawaii, to the Galapagos, to the Marquesas, and probably to the remote southern islands of Polynesia. What obscure sense enables the migrating bird to follow its course far out of sight of land? In France, I have flown side by side with wild geese, heading steadily southward above a sea of clouds. It seemed to me that--like the pilot of an airplane--they might guide themselves, in a general way, by the sun, the stars, or the look of the land below--an idea borne out by the fact that geese become lost and confused in a fog. But in considering a bird like the carrier pigeon or the tattler, all such theorizing comes to an end. No general sense of north and south could guide the tattler to the lonely landfalls of the South Pacific; his wanderings--like the migration of the golden plover, or the instinct of the shearwater, which sends him unerringly, on the darkest night of storm, to his individual burrow in the cliff's--must be classed among the inexplicable mysteries of nature.

On the road which passes close to the house of Airima I found Tehinatu in conversation with the driver of a Chinese cart. She was bargaining for a watermelon; the Chinaman stood out for three francs--she offered two. "Enough of talking," she said, firmly; "the melon is the best you have, but it is green. I will give two francs."

"_A toru toata_," muttered the proprietor of the melon, indifferently. ("_Toata_" means a franc, but is obviously a corruption of quarter, for the dollar passed current here long before the money of France.)

"Look at my clothes," pleaded the deceitful girl, changing her tactics suddenly. "I am a poor woman who cannot afford to pay the prices you expect from the chief. Come, dear _Tinito_, give me the melon for two francs."

The Chinaman shrugged his shoulders and glanced at me. The glint in his narrow eye might have meant, "Ah, these women--what's the use!" He sighed; for a moment, while Tehinatu looked at him pleadingly, he was silent.

"Take the melon," he said, "and give me two francs; I must be on my way. But do not think you have deceived me, cunning woman; I know that you are not poor, for only yesterday your brother sold the copra from your land."

Without a sign of embarrassment the girl opened her hand and held up a hundred-franc note. "Ah, you are rich," remarked the Chinaman, as he undid an oilcloth wallet and stripped the change from a substantial roll of bills. "I knew it. Are you not ashamed to practice such deceit?" But Tehinatu only tucked the melon under her arm with a triumphant smile.

It is a curious study to watch the contact of Chinese and Polynesian, races separated by the most profound of gulfs, yet possessing the meeting ground of a common love of bargaining. All through the French islands you will find Chinamen, scattered singly or in little groups--through the windward and leeward Societies; the Marquesas; among the distant atolls of the Paumotu; in the remote Gambiers; in Tupuai, Rurutu, and lonely Rimatara. They are keepers of small stores, for the most part, where you may see them interrupted at their eternal task of copra making to exchange a box of matches for a single coconut or to haggle for a quarter of an hour over a matter of five sous. Patient, painstaking, and unobtrusive--existing in inconceivable squalor, without the common pleasures which enable most of us to tolerate our lives--they seem to be impelled by motives far more profound than the longing for material gam, by a species of idealism equally incomprehensible to the native and to the visitor of European race. It is not beyond possibility that in the course of a few more generations it will be the native islander who lingers here and there, isolated in communities principally Chinese; for the islanders, superb physically, are the least prolific of men, while the weedy little _Tinito_, who brings his own women with him, or succeeds, with his own peculiar knack, in obtaining women from a population which regards him with amused contempt, surrounds himself with children in as short a time as nature allows. I have sometimes thought that the secret of the Chinaman's dogged and self-denying labors might lie here--traceable to his cult of ancestor worship: to become a revered ancestor one must have children, and in order to bring up properly a large family of children one must spend one's life in unceasing toil.

I doubt that Europeans in large numbers will ever be tempted to make the islands their home; the life is too alien, the change too great. As things are, the relation of Polynesian and Chinese amounts to a subtle contest for the land--a struggle of which both parties are aware. The native, incapable of abstract thought, feels and resents it vaguely; to the Chinaman, whose days are spent in meditation undisturbed by the automatic labors of his body, the issue is no doubt clear cut. The native is by far the more attractive of the two--clean, kindly, selfish, jolly, childish, well bred, and pleasing to the eye; but the Chinaman possesses the less attractive qualities which make for the survival of a race--the industry, the unselfishness, the capacity to live for an idea--and in the end, if only by force of numbers, he will win. Looking into the future, one can see the Eastern islands populated by Chinese, as our own islands of Hawaii have been peopled with immigrants from Japan. "They are dying, anyway, and they won't work," the commercial gentleman will tell you; "here is rich cane land, needing only labor to produce bountifully--and the world needs sugar." Perhaps this view is correct--for myself, I feel that the question is debatable. There are certain parts of the world--like our American mountains, deserts, and lonely stretches of coast--which seem planned for the spiritual refreshment of mankind; places from which one carries away a new serenity and the sense of a yearning for beauty satisfied. Ever since the days of Cook the islands of the South Sea have charmed the white man--explorers, naturalists, traders, and the rough crews of whaling vessels; the strange beauty of these little lands, insignificant so far as commercial exploitation is concerned, seems worthy of preservation. And the native, paddling his outlandish canoe or lounging in picturesque attitudes before his house, is indispensable to the scene. If the day comes when his canoe lies rotting on the beach and his house is tenanted by industrious Chinese--though the same jagged peaks rise against the sky and the same sea thunders lazily along the reef--when the anchor drops and the call comes to go ashore, I, for one, shall hesitate.

In the Cook group, six hundred miles west of Tahiti, the prospect is less depressing, for the British have adopted a policy of exclusion and made it impossible for the native to sell his land. The Cook-Islander, reinforced here and there with a dash of white blood, and undiscouraged by a competition he is not fitted to meet, seems to be holding his own. The reason is clear--the native has been little tampered with, left in possession of his land, and protected rigidly against epidemics like the influenza of 1918, which ravaged the island populations wherever infected vessels were permitted to touch. Imported disease, exploitation of the land, and coolie immigration--these are the destroying forces from which the native must be preserved if a shadow of the old charm is to linger for the enjoyment of future generations of travelers.

Following Tehinatu toward the house, I thought to myself how wonderfully the island charm had been preserved here on the peninsula of Taiarapu. We were within fifty miles of Papeete, where business is carried on, and steamers call, and perspiring tourists walk briskly about the streets; yet here, in this lonely settlement by the lagoon, civilization seemed half a world away. When I walked abroad the sight of a white man brought the people to their doors, and bands of children followed me, staring and bright eyed, with interest.

On the veranda children surrounded us while the girl cut and distributed thin slices of her melon. There is a fascination in watching these youngsters, brought up without clothes and without restraint, in an environment nearly as friendly as that of the original human pair. Once they are weaned from their mothers' breasts--which often does not occur until they have reached an age of two and a half or three--the children of the islands are left practically to shift for themselves; there is food in the house, a place to sleep, and a scrap of clothing if the weather be cool--that is the extent of parental responsibility. The child eats when it pleases, sleeps when and where it will, amuses itself with no other resources than its own. As it grows older certain light duties are expected of it--gathering fruit, lending a hand with fishing, cleaning the ground about the house--but the command to work is casually given and as casually obeyed. Punishment is scarcely known; yet under a system which would ruin forever an American or English child the brown youngster flourishes with astonishingly little friction--sweet tempered, cheerful, never bored, and seldom quarrelsome. The small boy tugs at the net or gathers bait for the fishermen, seemingly without a thought of drudgery; the small girl tends her smaller sister in the spirit of playing with a doll. Perhaps the restless and aggressive spirit which makes discipline necessary in bringing up our own children is the very quality that has made the white race master of the world; perhaps the more hostile surroundings of civilization have made necessary the enforcement of prohibitory laws.

I filled my pipe and lay smoking on a mat, with an eye on the youngsters at their play. For the time being, a little girl, at the most attractive period of childhood, was the center of interest. One of her front teeth was loose; she had tied a bit of bark to it and was summoning up courage for a determined pull. A boy stole up behind her, reached over her shoulder, and gave the merciful jerk; next moment he was dancing around her, waving the strip of bark to which the tooth was still attached. The owner of the tooth began to sob, holding a hand over her mouth, but her lamentations ceased when a larger boy shouted, seriously, "Give her the tooth and let her speak to the rat!" The small girl trotted to the edge of the bush, where I heard her repeat a brief invocation before she flung the tooth into a thicket of hibiscus. I knew what she was saying, for I had made inquiries concerning this children's custom--probably as old as it is quaint. It is a sort of exchange; the baby tooth is thrown among the bushes and the rat is invoked to replace it with one as white and durable as his own. The child says:

"Thy tooth, thy tooth, O rat, give to the man;
The tooth, the tooth of the man, I give to the rat."

No doubt the games of children everywhere are very much the same; in the islands, at any rate, an American child would soon find itself at home. The boys walk on stilts, play tag, blindman's buff, prisoner's base, and a game called _Pere Pana_, like what we called Pewee when I was a youngster in California--almost exactly as these things are done at home. The girls play cat's cradle, hopscotch, jackstones, and jackstraws--often joining in the rougher games of their brothers. One curious game, evidently modern, and perhaps originated by the children of missionaries, is called _Pere Puaa Taehae_ (the Game of the Wild Beast). The boys and girls, who pretend to be sheep, stand in line one behind the other, clinging together under the protection of the mother ewe at the head of the line. Presently the wild beast appears, demanding a victim to eat. "You are the wild beast?" the sheep ask. "Yes," he replies, "and I want a male sheep." He then waits while the sheep--in whispers inaudible to him--decide on which boy (for the beast has his choice of sexes) shall be sacrificed. When the decision is made the mother at the head of the line says, "You want a male sheep?" At that, all the others chant in unison, "Then take off your hat, and take off your clothes, and strike the hot iron." The last word is the signal for the victim to make a dash for safety; if he can get behind the mother before the wild beast catches him the performance is repeated until the beast succeeds in catching another boy or girl, who then becomes the _Puaa Taehae_.

The twelve-year-old daughter of Maruae--for Airima was a great-grandmother, not an uncommon thing in this land of rapid generations--had been talking for several days of piercing her ears in order to install a pair of earrings to which she had fallen heir. This evening she had finally mustered courage for the ordeal; I watched her hesitating approach and saw her hand Tehinatu the necessary instruments--a cork, a pair of scissors, and a brace of sharp orange thorns from which the green bark had been carefully stripped. Whatever her color, woman's endurance in the name of vanity is proverbial; the child made no outcry as the thorn passed through the lobe of her ear, sank into the cork, and was snipped off, inside and out, close to the skin--the remaining section to be removed a fortnight later, when the small wound had healed. As Tehinatu smiled at me and flourished the scissors, to which clung a drop of blood, I heard a shrill call from the cook house, "_Haere mai tamaa!_" It was supper time.

Some of the children, in answer to the call, straggled toward where Airima squatted beside her oven; others, already stuffed with odds and ends of fruit, went on with their play. Maruae beckoned to me as he passed. The meal was a casual affair; one helped oneself without ceremony, squatting to exchange conversation between bites, or walked away, food in hand. There were pork, cold fish, baked taro, and sections of cream-colored breadfruit, ripe and delicately cooked.

The sun had set when we finished, and as the sky gave promise of a clear night I spread a mat on the river bank. Bedtime in these places comes when drowsiness sets in; as I fell asleep the clouds veiling the highlands of Tahiti Nui were still luminous in the afterglow.

It was midnight when I awoke. In the house, faintly illuminated by the light of a turned-down lamp, the family of Airima slept. The air was warm and scented with the perfume of exotic flowers. The river was like a dark mirror reflecting the stars; even the Pacific seemed to sleep, breathing gently in the sigh of little waves, dallying with the bar. Presently I became aware of subdued voices--Airima and Tinomana, the chief's mother, were seated on the rocks below me, fishing with long rods of bamboo for the _faia_ which runs in with the night tide. They were recalling the past, as old ladies will.

"The women of Tahiti," remarked Tinomana, "are not what they were when I was young; nowadays you may travel from morning till night without seeing a really beautiful girl."

"Those are true words," said Airima; "_Aue_, if you had seen my eldest daughter, who died when she was fifteen! She was lovely as the _itatae_, the white tern which hovers above the tree tops. Her eyes were brown and laughing, her hair fell in ringlets to her knees, her teeth were small white pearls, and her laughter like the sound of cool water running in a shady place. Alas, my Vahinetua! She was our first-born; my husband loved her as he loved none of the others. A strange, dreamy child.... I used to watch her when she thought herself alone. Sometimes, I know not why, the tears came to my eyes as I saw her gazing into the sky while she chanted under her breath the little old song the children sing to the tern:

"O Itatae, sailing above the still forest, where shall
you fly to-night?
Downwind across the sea to Tetiaroa, the low island ...

"As she grew older a wasting illness fell on her; the doctors could do nothing to stop her coughing; my husband even took her to the white doctor in Papeete--it was on his recommendation that we took her to sea. We were in Mangareva, far off in the Gambier Islands, when I saw that the end was near. My husband was not blind--he headed back for Tahiti at once, giving up the rest of his trip. Vahinetua was never more beautiful than on the last morning of her life--cheeks flushed and eyes shining soft and clear as the first star of evening. We were nearly home--off Maitea, the little island which lies between Tahiti and Anaa; she died in my arms and I covered her with the bright patchwork _tifaefae_ her own hands had sewn. 'Our child is dead,' I told the captain, her father, as I came on deck. He said nothing, but put a hand on my shoulder and pointed toward the masthead, where I saw a small white tern hovering above us. I cannot tell you how, but I knew at once the soul of my daughter was in that pretty bird. It flew with us all day, and at evening, as we entered the harbor of Papeete, it turned back and disappeared in the night. For many years thereafter, each time my husband passed Maitea homeward bound, the white bird was waiting for him at the place where my daughter had died...."

The voices of the old women murmured on, recalling the joys and sorrows of other days. Suddenly, in a mango tree behind the house, a rooster crowed, answered far and near by others of his kind. As the last drawn-out cry died in the silence of the night I yielded to an overpowering drowsiness and fell asleep.

*CHAPTER XV*

*Tahitian Tales*

The evening was very warm and still. The sea rumbled faintly on the reef, half a mile offshore, and behind us--above the vague heights of the interior--a full moon was rising. The palms were asleep after their daily tussle with the trade--fronds drooping and motionless in silhouette against the sky. We had spread mats on the grass close to the beach; Tehinatu lay beside me, chin propped in her hands--she had been bathing, and her dark hair, still damp, hung in a cloud about her face. Her grandmother, Airima--the woman of Maupiti--sat facing us, cross-legged in the position of her people. Now and then a fish leaped in the lagoon; once, far down the beach, a ripe nut thudded to the earth.

"If you two like," said old Airima, "I will tell you the story of my ancestor, the Lizard Woman."

The girl smiled and raised her head in the little gesture which corresponds to our nod. "That is a good tale," she declared, "and true, for I am named after that Lizard Woman who died so many years ago."

The woman of Maupiti lit a match to dry a leaf of black tobacco over the flame; when she had twisted it in a strip of pandanus and inhaled deeply of the smoke, she spoke once more. Her voice was flexible and soft with a sweet huskiness--an instrument to render the music of the old island tongue--its cadences measured or rapid, falling or rising with the ebb and flow of the tale.

"In the old days," Airima began, "so long ago that his name is now forgotten, there was a king of Papenoo, a just man, successful in war and beloved by his people. His wife was a daughter of Bora Bora--the most beautiful woman of that island; she was the delight of his heart, and they had many children. When she fell ill and died, a great sadness came over the king; he could do nothing but brood over his loneliness. In his dreams he saw the face of his wife; life was hateful to him; even his children, shouting and playing about the house, grew hateful in his eyes. A day came at last when he could endure the sight of them no longer, and a plan to be rid of them took form in his mind.

"There had been a storm and he knew that the waves would be running high at a place where there was a break in the reef. 'Come,' he said to the women of his household, 'bring my children to swim--it will hearten me to see them sporting in the surf.' But when they came to that beach and the women saw the great waves thundering in through the pass, they were afraid, for even a strong swimmer could not live in such a sea. Then the king, whose hope was that his children might drown, bade them forget their fears. One after another the young boys and girls went into the sea and were swept out by the undertow--fearless and shouting. The waves broke over them and at times they disappeared; the women began to cover their faces, for they thought, 'Those pretty children, so dear to us, are as good as dead.'

"Then the watchers saw a strange thing--a true thing, told me by my grandfather, who had learned it from the lips of his ancestors. Beyond the breaking of the surf, the children began to sport in the water, diving and leaping higher and higher into the air. Their skins grew black and glistened in the sunlight; their arms turned to fins and their feet became like the tails of fish; the gods of those days had taken pity on their innocence and made of them the first dolphins--the playful children of the sea. And the king was glad, for he saw that his children would not die, and he knew that they could no longer come to his house to bring back bitter memories.

"As the years went on, the daughters of many chiefs were brought to the king, but no woman found favor in his eyes; his heart was always heavy and no man saw him laugh. Sometimes he walked alone in the mountains where men do not go even to-day, for he feared nothing---neither the ravening spirits of the dead, nor the Lizard People, who in those days lived in the interior of the island. Fifty generations of men have lived and died since our ancestors came to this island; they found the Lizard People already in possession of the land. Ta 'a ta Moo, they called them--half human, half lizard; able to climb among the cliffs where no man could follow. The human warriors were more powerful in battle, and as time went on the Lizard Folk were driven into the fastnesses of the mountains. Now the last of them is dead, but if you doubt that they once lived, go into the hills and you will see the remains of their plantain gardens high above cliffs no human creature could scale. My own people are traveling the same path--soon the last of us will also be dead, and the white man will glance at the scattered stones of our _maraes_ to make sure that once upon a time we lived.

"But I was telling you of the king. One day, as he wandered alone in the mountains, a Lizard Woman was lying in the fern beside the trail--a head woman of her people, skilled in magic and able to read the future. This king was a tall man, very strong and handsome; as he passed without looking down, she seized his foot gently. At that he looked down and his heart swelled with love of her. He dwelt with her in the mountains, and when at last he came down to the sea his people had given him up for dead.

"In due time a son was born to that Lizard Woman--a strong and beautiful boy, the image of the king his father; she reared him alone in the mountains and grew to love him better than her life. But when she looked into the future her tears fell. When the child was twelve years old she led him to the mouth of her valley and talked long with him, telling him what he was to do, before she turned away and went back to her own place, weeping. Taking thought of her words, the boy went alone to the village of the king. His dress was the skin of lizards.

"When he came to that Place he said to those about, 'Take me to the king, my father.' But when they repeated his words, the king said, 'It is false; I have no wife and no child.' Then the child sent back word asking the king if he had forgotten walking one day in the mountains many years before. With that the king remembered his love for the Lizard Woman and bade his men bring the boy to him. And when he saw the strong, fearless child and heard his people exclaim at the beauty of the boy and the wondrous likeness to himself his heart softened and he said, 'This is indeed my son!'

"The years passed, and the heart of the Lizard Woman--sad and alone in the mountains--grew ever more hungry for her son, until at length her life became intolerable without sight of him. She stole down from the hills by night and went softly about the village, weeping and lamenting because her son was not to be seen; the people trembled at sight of her in the moonlight and at the sound of her weeping, and the king feared her, for he knew that she was powerful in magic, and thought that she had come to take her son away. In his fear he took canoe with the young man, and they went down the wind to Tetuaroa, the Low Island, where he thought to be safe from her. But the Lizard Woman, by her magic, knew where they had gone; she looked into the future and saw only sadness and death for herself. What must be cannot be avoided. She leaped into the sea and swam first to Raiatea, where she had lands and where the bones of her ancestors lay in the _marae_. When she came to that shore she knew that her death was near and that she would die by the hand of her own son. Close by the beach she stopped to weep, and the place of her weeping is still called Tai Nuu Iti (the Little Falling of Tears). Farther on her path, she stopped again to weep still more bitterly, and to this day the name of that place is Tai Nuu Rahi (the Great Falling of Tears). When she had been to her _marae_, she plunged again into the ocean and swam to Tetuaroa--in all the islands there was no swimmer like her; because of his mother, her son was named Au Moana (Swimmer in the Sea).

"The king and the king's son saw Tehinatu coming far off--for Tehinatu was the name of that Lizard Woman--and they felt such fear that they climbed to the top of a tall palm. Then, knowing the manner of her death, she came out of the water--weeping all the while--and began to climb the palm tree. The two men trembled with fear of her; they threw down coconuts, hoping to strike her so that she would fall to the earth. But though she was bruised and her eyes blinded with tears, she climbed on until she was just beneath them, clinging to the trunk where the first fronds begin to branch. She stopped to rest for a moment, and as she clung to the palm, allowing her body to relax, her son hurled a heavy nut which struck her on the breast. She made no outcry, but her hands let go their hold and she fell far down to the earth. But the men still trembled and were afraid to come down out of the tree, for she struck in a swampy place and was long in dying; all afternoon she lay there, weeping and lamenting, until at sunset the spirit left her body. When she was dead, they took her to Raiatea and buried her in her _marae_. After that the two men returned to Papenoo, and when the king died the son of the Lizard Woman reigned long in his stead, these are true words, for the blood of Swimmer in the Sea, born of the Lizard Woman, flows in my veins."

Old Airima ceased to speak. From the coconut shell at her side she took a lump of black native tobacco and began to tear off a leaf for a fresh cigarette. Her granddaughter turned on one side--head resting on a folded forearm--and looked at me.

"Aye, those are true words," she said; "for is my name not the same as that of the Lizard Woman? During a thousand years, perhaps more--_mai tahito mai_: since the beginning--the women of our family have been called Tehinatu. You yourself, though we call you Tehari, have a real name among us--Au Moana, after her son. These names belong to us; no other family does well to use them."

The flare of a match illuminated for an instant the wrinkled and aquiline face of Airima. As she tossed the glowing stick aside, the moonlight smoothed away the lines; I was aware only of her black eyes, wonderfully alive and young.

"Tell him of Poia," she suggested, "and the dead ones in robes of flame."

"_Aue_," said the girl; "that is a strange tale, and it came about because of a name." She sat up, shaking the hair back over her shoulders.

"The woman who saw these things," she went on, "was another of our ancestors. She was called Poia, a name her grandfather had given. She lived at Tai Nuu Iti in Baiatea, where Tehinatu first stopped to weep.

"One day, in midafternoon, Poia was sitting in the house beside her mother, busy with the weaving of a mat. All at once a darkness closed in before her eyes and she felt the spirit struggling to leap from her body. It was like the pangs of death, but at last her spirit was free and with its eyes she saw her body lying as if in sleep, and perceived that there were strangers in the house--two women and a man. The women were very lovely, with flowers in their hair and robes of scarlet which seemed to flicker like fire. They were Vahinetua and Vivitautua, ancestors dead many years before, who loved Poia dearly. The man was likewise dressed in flaming scarlet, and he wore a tall headdress of red feathers. He was Tanetua, another of Poia's ancestors. The three had come from the _marae_ to seek Poia, and they spoke to her kindly, saying, 'Come with us, daughter.' And though she felt shame when she looked down at her dull dress and disordered hair, she followed where they led.

"They took her to the _marae_ of Tai Nuu Rahi, and there Poia saw a huge woman waiting for them. The right side of that woman was white, and the left side black; when she saw them coming she fell on her knees and began to weep for joy. 'Is it you, Poia?' she cried. 'Then welcome!' As Poia stood there, marveling, the stone of the _marae_ opened before her like the door of a great house, and Vahinetua and Vivitautua said to her, 'Go in.' The door gave on a chamber of stone--the floor was of stone, and the ceiling and the walls. They passed through another door into a second empty room of stone, and thence into a third, and there Poia chanced to look down at herself. She had become lovely as the others; her hair was dressed with flowers and her robe was scarlet, seeming to flicker like fire. While she was looking at herself, no longer ashamed, the two women said to her: 'You must stay here, for you belong to us. We are angry with your grandfather because he called you Poia. That is not all of your name--your true name is Tetuanui Poia Terai Mateatea. That name belongs to us, and you must have it, for you are our descendant and we love you.'

"She did not know that this was her name; she thought it was only Poia. In spite of their kindness she was frightened and told them that she wished to go home. They took her to the door of her house and left her there; and she found herself lying with the half-woven mat in her fingers. Her mother, who was sitting beside her, only said, 'You have slept well.' But Poia, in fear and wonder at what she had seen, said nothing to her mother, not even when the two went to bathe.