Chapter II: Part 2

Their parents, as I have said, are but children of mature stature, with the same gift of frank, generous laughter, the same delight in the new and strange. Very little is required to amuse them. I had a mandolin which I used to take ashore with me at various atolls, after I had become convinced that their enjoyment of my music was not feigned. At first I was suspicious, for I had no illusions about my virtuosity, and even when I thought of it in the most flattering way their pleasure seemed out of all proportion to the quality of the performance. But there was no doubting the genuineness of it. The whole village would assemble to hear me play. I had a limited repertoire, but that seemed to matter very little. They liked to hear the same tunes played over and over again. I learned some of the old missionary hymns which they knew: "From Greenland's Icy Mountains," "Oh, Happy Day," "We're Marching to Zion," and others.

It was strange to find those songs, belonging, fortunately, to a bygone period in English and American life, living still in that remote part of the world, not because of anything universal in their appeal, but merely because they had been carried there years ago by representatives of the missionary societies. Many eccentric changes had been made in both the rhythm and melody, greatly to the improvement of both, but no amount of changing could make them other than what they are--the uncouth expression of a narrow and ugly kind of religious sentiment. I don't think the Paumotuans care much for them, either. They always seemed glad to turn from them to their own songs, which have nothing either of modern or old-time missionary feeling. A woman usually began the singing, in a high-pitched, nasal, or throaty voice, which she modulated in an extraordinary way. Immediately other women joined in, then several men whose voices were of tenor quality, followed by other men in basses and barytones, chanting in two or three tones which, for rhythm and tone, quality, were like the beating of kettledrums. The weird blending of harmonics was unlike anything I had ever heard before. There is nothing in our music which even remotely resembles theirs, so that it is impossible to describe the effect of the full chorus. Some of the songs make a strong appeal to savage instincts. The less resolute of the early missionaries, hearing them, must have thrown up their hands in despair at the thought of the long, difficult task of conversion awaiting them. But if there were any irresolute missionaries, they were evidently overruled by their sterner brothers and sisters.

On nearly every island there is now a church, either Protestant or Catholic. In the Protestant ones the native population practice the only true faith, largely to the accompaniment of this old barbaric music. Those unsightly little structures rock to the sound of exultant choruses which ought never to be sung withindoors. The Paumotuans themselves know best the natural setting for their songs--the lagoon beach with a great fire of coconut husks blazing in the center of the group of singers. I liked to hear them from a distance where I could get their full effect; to look on from the schooner lying a few hundred yards offshore. All the inhabitants of the village would be gathered within the circle of the firelight, which brought their figures and the white, straight stems of the coconut palms into clear relief against a background of deep shadow. The singing continued far into the night, so that I often fell asleep while listening, and heard the music dying away, mingling at last with the interminable booming of the surf.

By degrees we worked slowly through the heart of the archipelago, pursuing a general southeasterly course, the islands becoming more and more scattered, until we had before us an expanse of ocean almost unbroken to the coast of South America. But Tanao lay at the edge of it, and at length, on a lowering April day, we set out on that last leg of our outward journey. The _Caleb S. Winship_ lay very low in the water. By that time she had a full cargo of copra, one hundred tons in the hold and twelve, sacked, on deck. A portion of the deck cargo was lost that same afternoon, during a gale of wind and rain which burst upon us with fury and followed us with a seeming malignity of intent. We ran before it, far out of our course, for three hours. To me the weight of air was something incredible, an unusually vigorous flourish of the departing hurricane season. Water spouted out of the scuppers in a continuous stream, and loose articles were swept clear of the ship, disappearing at once in a cloud of blinding rain. There was a fearful racket in the cabin of rolling biscuit tins and smashing crockery. Then an eight-hundred-pound safe broke loose and started to imitate Victor Hugo's cannon. Luckily it hadn't much scope and no smooth runway, so that it was soon brought to a halt by Ruau, the old Paumotuan woman, who was the only one below at the time. She made an effective barricade of copra sacks and bedding, dodging the plunging monster with an agility surprising in a woman of sixty. But what I remember best was Tane, a monkey belonging to one of the sailors, skidding along the cabin deck until he was blown against the engine-room whistle, which rose just clear of the forward end of it. He wrapped arms and legs around it in his terror, opening the valve in some way, and the shrill blast rose high above the mighty roar of wind, like the voice of man lifted with awe-inspiring impudence in defiance of the mindless anger of nature.

The storm blew itself out toward sundown and the night fell clear--a night for stars to make one wary of thought; but the moon rose about nine, softening the pitiless distances, throwing a veil of mild light across the black voids in the Milky Way, seen so clearly in those latitudes. The schooner was riding a heavy swell, and, burdened as she was, rose clumsily to it, sticking her nose into the slope of every sea. Ruau was at her accustomed place against the cabin ventilator, unmindful of the showers of spray, maintaining her position on the slanting deck with the skill of three months' practice. The thought that I must soon bid her good-by saddened me, for I knew there was small chance that I should ever meet her again. I envied Crichton his opportunity for friendship with that noble old woman, so proud of her race, so true to her own beliefs, to her own way of living. Her type is none too common among Polynesians in these days. One gets all too frequently an impression of a consciousness of inferiority on their part, a sense of shame because of their simple way of living as compared with ours. Ruau was not guilty of it. She never could be, I think, under any circumstances. I learned afterward of an attempt which had been made to convert her to Christianity during her stay at Tahiti. Evidently she had not been at all convinced by the priest's arguments, and when he made some slighting remark about the ghosts and spirits which were so real to her, she refused to listen any longer. Frightened though she was of spirits, she was not willing that they should be ridiculed.

We sighted her atoll at dawn, such a dawn as one rarely sees outside the tropics. The sky was overcast at a great height with a film of luminous mist through which the sun shone wanly, throwing a sheen like a dust of gold on the sea. Masses of slate-colored cloud billowed out from the high canopy, overhanging a black fringe of land which lay just below the line of the horizon. The atoll was elliptical in shape, about eight miles long by five broad. There were seven widely separated islands on the circle of reef and one small motu in the lagoon. We came into the wind about a half mile offshore and put off in the whaleboat. The sea was still running fairly high, and the roar of the surf came across the water with a sound as soothing as the fall of spring rain; but it increased in volume as we drew in until the ears were stunned by the crash of tremendous combers which toppled and fell sheer, over the ledge of the reef. It was by far the most dangerous-looking landing place we had seen on the journey. There was no break in the reef; only a few narrow indentations where the surf spouted up in clouds of spray. Between the breaking of one sea and the gathering of the next, the water poured back over a jagged wall of rock bared for an instant to an appalling depth. Only a native crew could have managed that landing. We rode comber after comber, the sailors backing on their oars, awaiting the word of the boat steerer, who stood with his feet braced on the gunwales, his head turned over his shoulder, watching the following seas. All at once he began shouting at the top of his voice. I looked back in time to see a wall of water, on the point of breaking, rising high above us. It fell just after it passed under us, and we were carried forward across the edge of the reef, through the inner shallows to the beach.

The two traders started off at once on a tour of inspection and we saw nothing more of them until late in the evening. Meanwhile I went with Ruau and Crichton across the island to the lagoon beach where her house was. As in most of the atolls, the ground was nearly free from undergrowth, the soil affording nourishment only to the trees and a few hardy shrubs. Coconuts and dead fronds were scattered everywhere. A few half-wild pigs, feeding on the shoots of sprouted nuts, gazed up with an odd air of incredulity, of amazement as we approached, then galloped off at top speed and disappeared far in the distance. Ruau stopped when we were about halfway across and held up her hand for silence. A bird was singing somewhere, a melodious varied song like that of the hermit thrush. I had heard it before and had once seen the bird, a shy, solitary little thing, one of the few species of land birds found on the atolls.

While we were standing there, listening to the faint music, Crichton took me by the arm. He said nothing, and in a moment withdrew his hand. I was deeply moved by that manifestation of friendliness, an unusual one for him to make. He had some unaccountable defect in his character which kept him aloof from any relationship approaching real intimacy. I believe he was constantly aware of it, that he had made many futile attempts to overcome it. It may have been that which first set him on his wanderings, now happily at an end. It was plain to me the moment we set foot on shore that he would have to seek no farther for asylum. Tanao is one of the undoubted ends of the earth. No one would ever disturb him there. He himself was not so sure of this. Once, I remember, when we were looking at the place on the chart, he spoke of the island of Pitcairn, the old-time refuge of the Bounty mutineers. Before the opening of the Panama Canal it had been as far removed from contact with the outside world as an island could be. Now it lies not far off the route through the Canal to New Zealand and is visited from time to time by the crews of tramp steamers and schooners. Tanao, however, is much farther to the north, and there is very slight possibility that its empty horizons will ever be stained by a smudge of smoke. As for an actual visit, one glance at the reef through the binoculars would convince any skipper of the folly of the attempt.

Even our own crew of natives, skilled at such hazardous work, came to grief in their second passage over it. They had gone out to the schooner for supplies Crichton had ordered--a few sacks of flour, some canned goods, and kerosene oil; in coming back the boat had been swept, broadside, against a ledge of rock. It stuck there, just at the edge of the reef, and the sailors jumped out with the line before the next wave came, capsizing the boat and carrying it inshore, bottom up. All the supplies were swept into deep water by the backwash and lost. There had been a similar accident at the other atoll--flour and rice brought so many thousands of miles having been spoiled within a few yards of their destination. I remember the natives plunging into the water at great risk to themselves to save a few sacks of soggy paste in the hope that a little of the flour in the center might still be dry; and a Chinese storekeeper, to whom it was consigned, standing on the shore, wringing his hands in dumb grief. It was the first time I had ever seen a Chinaman make any display of emotion, and the sight brought home to me a conception of the tragic nature of such accidents to the inhabitants of those distant islands.

Crichton took his own loss calmly, concealing whatever disappointment he may have felt. Ruau was not at all concerned about it, and, while we were making an examination of the house, went out on the lagoon in a canoe and caught more than enough fish for supper. Then we found that all of our matches had been spoiled by sea water, so we could make no fire. Judging by the way Crichton brightened up at his discovery, one would have thought the loss a piece of luck. He set to work at once to make an apparatus for kindling fire, but before it was finished Ruau had the fish cleaned and spread out on a coverlet of green leaves. We ate them raw, dipping them first into a sauce of coconut milk, and for dessert had a salad made of the heart of a tree. I don't remember ever having eaten with heartier appetite, but at the same time I couldn't imagine myself enjoying an unrelieved diet of coconuts and fish for a period of ten years--not for so long as a year, in fact. Crichton, however, was used to it, and Ruau had never known any other except during her three months' stay at Tahiti, where she had eaten strange hot food which had not agreed with her at all, she said.

Dusk came on as we sat over our meal. Ruau sat with her hands on her knees, leaning back against a tree, talking to Crichton. I understood nothing of what she was saying, but it was a pleasure merely to listen to the music of her voice. It was a little below the usual register of women's voices, strong and clear, but softer even than those of the Tahitians, and so flexible that I could follow every change in mood. She was telling Crichton of the tupapaku of her atoll which she dreaded most, although she knew that it was the spirit of one of her own sons. It appeared in the form of a dog with legs as long and thick as the stem of a full-grown coconut tree, and a body proportionally huge. It could have picked up her house as an ordinary dog would a basket. Once it had stepped lightly over it without offering to harm her in any way. Her last son had been drowned while fishing by moonlight on the reef outside the next island, which lay about two miles distant across the eastern end of the lagoon. She had seen the dog three times since his death, and always at the same phase of the moon. Twice she had come upon it lying at full length on the lagoon beach, its enormous head resting on its paws. She was so badly frightened, she said, that she fell to the ground, incapable of further movement; sick at heart, too, at the thought that the spirit of the bravest and strongest of all her sons must appear to her in that shape. It was clear that she was recognized, for each time the dog began beating its tail on the ground as soon as it saw her. Then it got up, yawned and stretched, took a long drink of salt water, and started at a lope up the beach. She could see it very plainly in the bright moonlight. Soon it broke into a run, going faster and faster, gathering tremendous speed by the time it reached the other end of the island. From there it made a flying spring, and she last saw it as it passed, high in air, across the face of the moon, its head outstretched, its legs doubled close under its body. She believed that it crossed the two-mile gap of water which separated the islands in one gigantic leap.

That is the whole of the story as Crichton translated it for me, although there must have been other details, for Ruau gave her account of it at great length. Her earnestness of manner was very convincing; and left no doubt in my mind of the realness to her of the apparition. As for myself, if I could have seen ghosts anywhere it would have been at Tanao. Late that night, walking alone on the lagoon beach, I found that I was keeping an uneasy watch behind me. The distant thunder of the surf sounded at times like a wild galloping on the hard sand, and the gentle slapping of little waves near by like the lapping tongue of the ghostly dog having its fill of sea water.

We left Tanao with a fair wind the following afternoon, having been delayed in getting away because of the damaged whaleboat, which had to be repaired on shore. Tino, the supercargo, insisted on pushing off at once, the moment the work was finished. Crichton and Ruau were on the other beach at the time, so that I had no opportunity to say good-by; but as we were getting under way I saw him emerge from the deep shadow and stand for a moment, his hand shading his eyes, looking out toward the schooner. I waved, but evidently he didn't see me, for there was no response. Then he turned, walked slowly up the beach, and disappeared among the trees. For three hours I watched the atoll dwindling and blurring until at sunset it was lost to view under the rim of the southern horizon. Looking back across that space of empty ocean, I imagined that I could still see it dropping farther and farther away, down the reverse slope of a smooth curve of water, as though it were vanishing for all time beyond the knowledge and the concern of men.

My first packet of letters from Nordhoff was brought by the skipper of the schooner _Alouette_. He had been carrying it about for many weeks, and had it in the first place from the supercargo of another vessel, met at Rurutu, in the Austral group. The envelope, tattered and weather-stained, spoke of its long journey in search of me.

Before separating at Papeete we had arranged for a rendezvous, but at that time we still possessed American ideas of punctuality and well-ordered travel. Now we know something of the casual movements of trading schooners and have learned to regard the timely arrival of a letter as an event touching on the miraculous--the keeping of a rendezvous, a possibility too remote for consideration. One hears curious tales, in this part of the world, of the outcome of such temporary leave-takings as ours was meant to be--husbands seeking their wives and wives their husbands; families scattered among these fragments of land and striving for many months to reunite.

I witnessed, not long ago, the sequel of one of these unsuccessful quests. A native from a distant group of islands set out for one of the atolls of the Low Archipelago, the home of his sweetheart. Arrangements for the marriage had been made long before, but letters had gone astray, and upon his arrival the young man found that the family of his prospective father-in-law had gone to another atoll for the diving season. With no means of following, he submitted to the inevitable, and married another girl. Months later, the woman of his first choice returned with her second choice of a husband; and the former lovers met, for the young man had not yet been able to return to his own island. Neither made any question of the other's decision--life is too short; and from the native point of view, it is foolish to spend it in wanderings which, at the last, may never fulfill their purpose.

Nevertheless, I shall make a search for Nordhoff--a leisurely search, with some expectation of finding him. Our islands, like those of Mr. Conrad's enchanted Heyst, are bounded by a circle two thousand or more miles across, and it is likely that neither of us will ever succeed in breaking through to the outside world--if, indeed, there is an outside world. I am beginning to doubt this, for the enchantment is at work. As for Nordhoff, his letters, which follow, may speak for themselves.

*Eaters of the Lotos*

*CHAPTER III*

*Marooned on Mataora*

The sun was low when the _Faaite_ steamed out through the pass and headed for the Cook group, six hundred miles west and south. Dark clouds hung over Raiatea--Rangi Atea of Maori tradition, the Land of the Bright Heavens--but the level sunlight still illuminated the hillsides of Tahaa, the lovely sister island, protected by the same great oval reef. Far off to the north, the peak of Bora Bora towered abruptly from the sea.

It was not yet the season of the Trades, and the northeast breeze which followed us brought a sweltering heat, intolerable anywhere but on deck. Worthington was sitting beside me--a lean man, darkly-tanned, with very bright blue eyes. His feet were bare; he wore a singlet, trousers of white drill, and a Manihiki hat--beautifully plaited of bleached pandanus leaf--a hat not to be bought with money. The dinner gong sounded.

"I'm not going down," he remarked; "too hot below. I had something to eat at Uturoa. How about you?"

I shook my head--it needed more than a normal appetite to drive one to the dining saloon. Banks of squall cloud, shading from gray to an unwholesome violet, were gathering along the horizon, and the air was so heavy that one inhaled it with an effort.

"This is the worst month of the hurricane season," Worthington went on; "it was just such an evening as this, last year, that the waterspout nearly got us--the night we sighted Mataora. I was five months up there, you know--marooned when Johnson lost the old _Hatutu_.

"I was pretty well done up last year, and when I heard that the _Hatutu_ was at Avarua I decided to take a vacation and go for a six weeks' cruise with Johnson. Ordinarily he would have been laid up in Papeete until after the equinox, but the company had sent for him to make a special trip to Penrhyn. We had a wretched passage north--a succession of squalls and broiling calms. The schooner was in bad shape, anyway: rotten sails, rigging falling to pieces, and six inches of grass on her bottom. On a hot day she had a bouquet all her own--the sun distilled from her a blend of cockroaches and mildewed copra that didn't smell like a rose garden. On the thirtieth day the skipper told me we were two hundred miles from Penrhyn and so close to Mataora that we might sight the palm tops. I'd heard a lot about the place (it has an English name on the chart)--how isolated it was, what a pleasant crowd the natives were, and how it was the best place in the Pacific to see old-fashioned island life.

"We had been working to windward against a light, northerly breeze, but the wind began to drop at noon, and by three o'clock it was glassy calm. There was a wicked-looking mass of clouds moving toward us from the west, but the glass was high and Johnson said we were in for nothing worse than a squall. As the clouds drew near I could see that they had a sort of purplish-black heart, broad at the top, pointed at the bottom, and dropping gradually toward the water. There was something queer about it; the mate was pointing, and Johnson's Kanakas were all standing up. Suddenly I heard a rushing sound, like a heavy squall passing through the bush; the point of the funnel had touched the sea three or four hundred yards away from us--a waterspout! There wasn't a breath of air, and the _Hatutu_ had no engine. It was moving straight for us, so slowly that I could watch every detail of its formation. The boys slid our boat overboard; the mate sang out something about all hands being ready to leave the schooner.

"I've heard of waterspouts ever since I was a youngster, but I never expected to see one as close as we did that day. As the point of cloud dropped toward the sea it was ragged and ill defined; but when it touched the water and the noise began I saw its shape change and its outlines grow hard. It was now a thin column, four or five feet in diameter, rising a couple of hundred feet before it swelled in the form of a flat cone, to join the clouds above. Curiously enough, it was not perpendicular, but had a decided sagging curve. Nearer and nearer it came, until I could make out the great swirling hole at its base, and see the vitreous look of this column of solid water, revolving at amazing speed. It hadn't the misty edges of a waterfall. The outside was sharply defined as the walls of a tumbler. I wondered what would happen when it struck the _Hatutu_. The mate was shouting again, but just then the skipper pushed a rifle into my hands. 'Damned if I leave the old hooker,' he swore. 'Shoot into the thing--maybe we can break it up.' And, believe me or not, we did break it up.

"It didn't come down with a crash, as one might have expected. When we had pumped about twenty shots into it, and it was not more than fifty yards away, it began to dwindle. The column of water became smaller and drew itself out to nothing; the rushing noise ceased; the hole in the sea disappeared in a lazy eddy; the dark funnel rose and blended with the clouds above.

"A fine southeast breeze sprang up as the clouds dispersed, and we were reaching away for Penrhyn when a boy up forward gave a shout and pointed to the northwest. Sure enough there was a faint line on the horizon--the palms of Mataora. A sudden idea came to me. I was fed up with the schooner. Why not ask to be put ashore and picked up on the _Hatutu's_ return from Penrhyn? She would be back in a fortnight, and it was only a few miles out of her way to drop me and pick me up.

"Johnson is a good fellow; his answer to my proposition was to change his course at once and slack away for the land twelve miles to leeward. 'You'll have a great time,' he said; 'I wish I were going with you. Old Tari will put you up--I'll give you a word to him. Take along two or three bags of flour and a few presents for the women.'

"At five o'clock we were off the principal village, with canoes all about us and more coming out through the surf. The men were a fine, brawny lot, joking with the crew, and eager for news and small trade. I lowered my box, some flour, tobacco, and a few bolts of calico, into the largest canoe, and said good-by to Johnson.

"It was nearly a year before I saw him again; as you know, he lost the _Hatutu_ on Flying Venus Shoal. They made Penrhyn in the boat and got a passage to Tahiti two months later. Everyone knew I was on Mataora, but it was five months before a schooner could come to take me off.

"There is no pass into the lagoon. As we drew near the shore I saw that the easy, deceptive swell reared up to form an ugly surf ahead of us. At one point, where a crowd of people was gathered, there was a large irregular fissure in the coral, broad and deep enough to admit the passage of a small boat, and filled with rushing water each time a breaker crashed on the reef. My two paddlers stopped opposite this fissure and just outside the surf, watching over their shoulders for the right wave. They let four or five good-sized ones pass, backing water gently with their paddles; but at last a proper one came, rearing and tossing its crest till I thought it would break before it reached us. My men dug their paddles into the water, shouting exultantly as we darted forward. The shouts were echoed on shore. By Jove! it was a thriller! Tilting just on the break of the wave, we flew in between jagged walls of coral, up the fissure, around a turn--and before the water began to rush back, a dozen men and women had plunged in waist deep to seize the canoe.

"Mataora is made up of a chain of low islands--all densely covered with coconut palms--strung together in a rough oval to inclose a lagoon five miles by three. Though there is no pass, the surf at high tide breaches over the gaps between the islands. The largest island is only a mile and a half long, and none of them are more than half a mile across. Dotted about the surface of the lagoon are a number of motu--tiny islets--each with its flock of sea fowl, its clump of palms, and shining beach of coral sand. Set in a lonely stretch of the Pacific, the place is almost cut off from communication with the outside world; twice or three times in the course of a year a trading schooner calls to leave supplies and take off copra. Undisturbed by contact with civilization, the life of Mataora flows on--simple, placid, and agreeably monotonous--very little changed, I fancy, since the old days. It is true that they have a native missionary, and use calico, flour, and tobacco when they can get them; but these are minor things. The great events in their annals are the outrage of the Peruvian slavers in eighteen sixty-two, when many of the people were carried off to labor and die in the Chinchas Islands, and the hurricane of nineteen thirteen.

"After presenting myself to the missionary and the chief I was escorted by a crowd of youngsters to the lagoon side of the island, where Tairi lived, in a spot cooled by the trade wind and pleasantly shaded by coconuts. The old chap was a warm friend of Johnson's and made me welcome; I soon arranged to put up with him during my stay on the island. His house, like all the Mataora houses, was worth a bit of study.

"Pandanus logs, five or six inches in diameter and set four feet apart, made the uprights. On each side of these logs, and extending from top to bottom a groove was cut. Thin laths, split from the aerial roots of the pandanus, were set horizontally into the grooves, making a wall which permitted the free circulation of air. At the windward end of the house, a large shutter of the same material was hung on hinges of bark; on warm days it could be opened to admit the breeze. The plates and rafters were made of the trunks of old coconut palms--a beautiful hard wood which blackens with age and can be polished like mahogany. The roof was thatched with kakao--strips of wood over which were doubled selected leaves of pandanus, six feet long and four inches across. The kakao are laid on like shingles, so deeply overlapped that only six inches of each is exposed, and the result is a cool and perfectly water-tight roof which lasts for years.

"The floor of Tari's house was of fine white gravel, covered with mats. A bed of mats, a few odds and ends of fishing gear, and a Bible in the Rarotongan language made up the furniture. The old man had been a pearl diver for many years; he knew all the lagoons of this part of the Pacific, and could give the history of every large pearl discovered in these waters. Twenty fathoms he considered an ordinary depth for the naked divers--twenty-five, the limit. One day he went too deep, and since then he had been a cripple with paralyzed legs, dependent for care on the kindly people of his island. He busied himself in carving out models of the ancient Polynesian sailing canoes, beautifully shaped and polished, inlaid with shell, and provided with sails of mother-of-pearl. Now and then he presented a canoe to the captain of a trading schooner visiting the island, and received in return a bag of flour or a few sticks of tobacco.

"I had some interesting yarns with Tari--I speak Rarotongan, and the Mataora language is a good deal the same. They have three extra consonants, by the way--the f, l, and h. What a puzzle these island dialects are!

"Tairi told me a lot about pearl fishing. The people had divided their lagoon into three sections, one of which was fished each year. In this way each section got a two years' rest. The shell is the object of the diving--pearls are a secondary issue. The divers are not much afraid of sharks, but dread the tonu and the big conger eel. Some years before, when Tari was resting in a boat after a spell under water, one of his companions failed to return to the surface. Looking through his water glass, he saw a great tonu lying on the bottom, sixty feet beneath him--the legs of his comrade hanging from its jaws. Fancy the ugly brute, ten feet long and all head, like an overgrown rock cod, with a man in his mouth. Tairi and several others seized their spears and were over the side next moment; they killed the tonu, but too late to save the life of their companion.

"Conger eels grow to enormous size in the pearl lagoons, and the divers keep a close watch for them. They lie in holes and crevices of the coral and dart out their heads to seize a passing fish, or the wrist of a diver stooping and intent on his task. When the conger's jaws close on wrist or ankle, the diver needs a cool head; no amount of struggling will pull the eel from his hole. One must wait quietly, Tairi told me, until the conger relaxes his jaws preparatory to taking a better grip. Then a quick wrench, and one is free.

"On an atoll like Mataora, where the food supply is limited to fish and coconuts, with a chicken or a piece of pork as an occasional treat, fishing plays a large part in the life of the people. The men were all expert fishermen, and used a variety of ingenious methods to catch the different kinds of fish. Tairi, of course, was no longer able to go out; but a friend of his--an old fellow named Tamatoa--used to take me with him. He was a fine specimen--six feet tall, muscular and active as a boy, with clear eyes and thick gray hair. One day he proposed trying for koperu, a small variety of mackerel.

"The settlement is on the lee side of the island, where a coral shoal runs out half a mile to sea, covered with twenty to forty fathoms of water. It was early in the morning--a dead calm--when we launched the big canoe and slipped out through the surf. About a quarter of a mile offshore Tamatoa asked me to hold the canoe stationary while he went about his fishing. Fastening a twenty-foot rope to the thwart, he made a noose at the other end and passed it under his arms. Then he took a ripe coconut, split it, and gouged out the meat with his knife. With the white pulp in one hand, he slipped overboard and swam down as far as the rope would let him. Through my water glass I watched him put pieces of coconut into his mouth and blow out clouds of the finely chewed stuff, which drifted and eddied about him in the gentle current. He seemed to stay under indefinitely--the lungs of a pearl diver are wonderful things! Now and then he came to the surface for a fresh supply of chum, and finally--at first in twos and threes, and then in shoals--the koperu began to appear from the depths. Little by little he enticed them close to the surface, until they swam all about him fearlessly, gobbling the morsels of coconut. At last the old man reached up for his fishing tackle--an eighteen-inch twig, with a bit of doubled sewing cotton and a tiny barbless hook. He baited the hook with a particle of coconut and dangled it under the nose of the nearest koperu. While he hung on the shortened rope, just beneath the surface, his right arm broke water in a series of jerks, and each time it rose a fish tumbled into the canoe until they lay in the bottom by dozens.

"Though the people of Mataora made sport of their work, they had plenty of leisure for other things. In the evening, when the tasks of the day had been completed by lighting the lamps in the roofed-over sleeping places of the dead, the young people loved to gather for a session of _akatu talanga_--story telling. They met in some one's house or brought mats to spread in the bright moonlight outside; and while the others lay about, intent on the tale, one after another related the adventures of some Polynesian hero or the loves of some legendary island princess--strange fragments from the old days, full of specters and devils and monstrous heathen gods. There was a girl named Porima who told her stories marvelously well--a tall youngster of seventeen, with a dash of off-island blood; Hawaiian, I think. She was an artist in her way; one could imagine in her the pioneer of a literature to come. Her broad forehead, the masses of black hair which from time to time, with an impatient gesture, she shook back over her shoulders, and the slumberous eyes, with a suggestion of hypnotic power, made her a person not easily forgotten. Although she had told them many times, Porima's stories never failed to hold her audience; the whispering ceased when she began, and every head turned toward where she sat, her hands continually in motion, her voice rising in excitement, or dying away to a murmur, while the listeners held their breath. As the hours passed, both audience and performers used to grow weary and drop off to sleep, one by one; finally a rooster crowed and one awoke with a start to realize that it was day.

"One evening, at a story telling, I heard a shout from the beach and remembered that I had been invited to go after flying fish. A dozen canoes were putting out through the surf, each manned by four paddlers. I made a fourth in the last canoe; we shot out of the opening with a receding wave, paddled desperately through the surf, and a moment later were rocking gently beyond the breakers. The canoes were formed into a rough line; each stern-man lit a torch of coconut leaves bound with bark, and a man forward took his place standing--net in hand. The net is like a shallow landing net, set on a haft of stiff bamboo, and can be handled only after years of unconscious training. My position, paddling amidships, enabled me to watch how the net was managed--one doesn't often see such an exhibition of dexterity and strength. The art consists in clapping the net over the fish just at the moment when he is lying at the surface, hesitating before taking flight; at any instant the netter may see a fish to port, to starboard, or directly ahead. Our man swung his net continually, and each time it passed over the canoe he flipped it upside-down to drop a fish. Think of the muscles needed for this sort of thing; the quickness of eye and hand, where a delicate balance must be maintained, and one is constantly alert to guard one's face against the fish, which whizz past at all angles. Then remember that it is a pretty serious matter to capsize in this torch-lit water, swarming with sharks, where it is imprudent even to trail one's hand overboard.

"In the bend of a bow-shaped islet at the north end of the lagoon, under the palms behind a shore of blue water and dazzling sand, lived an old chap named Ruri, who introduced me to another kind of fishing. Ruri was close to seventy, but a strong man still; his only complaint was lack of teeth, which compelled him to live on _varuvaru_--the grated-up meat of the young coconut, mixed with its own milk. The ambition of his life was a trip to Tahiti to get a set of false teeth. He was not a native of Mataora--his mother was a Gilbert-Islander and his father a Samoan. For many years Ruri had followed the sea--cabin boy under Bully Hayes; deserter (to keep a whole skin) from the famous _Leonora_; blackbirder in the New Hebrides and Solomon Islands; pearl fisher in Penrhyn and the lagoons of the Paumotu. At last, on a black night of storm, his vessel struck and went to pieces on the coral of Mataora, and Ruri's days of wandering were over. He married a woman of the island, but now she was dead and the old man lived alone, a mile from the settlement, occupied with his simple wants and immersed in dreams of the past. Close beside his house was the grave of his wife--a tomb of cement inclosed in a neat building of octagonal shape, with a door and a small curtained window. A fine lamp, carefully tended and lit every evening at sunset, hung above the grave, and a few stunted gardenias and frangipanis, brought from enormous distances, were planted about the door. Ruri's little plantation of coconuts and coarse taro was free from weeds, and the neatness of his house, shipshape and scrupulously clean, betrayed the old sailor.

"After a spell of calm weather, when the breaching surf had ceased to cloud the waters of the lagoon, and the suspended particles of coral sand had settled to the bottom, Ruri offered to show me how to catch tenu--a fine fish, inhabiting the lagoon in ten to twenty fathoms of water--speckled like a trout on a ground of brown and gold, and reaching a weight of twenty pounds.

"In the absurdly complicated process of obtaining bait, tenu-fishing is typical of the South Pacific. The night before, Ruri had spent two hours with a torch, catching hermit crabs; now, using these crabs for bait we had to catch some ku ta--a small, prickly fish which alone has power to interest the tenu. We set out in Ruri's leaky canoe and paddled to a big, coral mushroom, which rose to within a yard of the surface. Here the old man smashed the shells of his hermit crabs with a stone, broke off the claws, set the soft bodies to one side, and mashed the claws to a paste, which he dropped overboard and allowed to drift into a dark hole in the coral. Then he produced a short line, baited the hook with a body of a crab, and let it sink out of sight into the darkness of the hole. In ten minutes a dozen ku ta were gasping in the bottom of the canoe--fantastic little fish, colored scarlet and vermilion, with enormous black eyes and a dorsal fin which seemed to be carved out of red sealing wax. We put them in a basket, trailed overboard to keep them alive, and began the real fishing of the day. I paddled slowly, while Ruri--who did not believe in fishing till the fish was in sight--leaned over the side, scrutinizing the bottom through his water glass. Finally he signaled me to stop--his eye had caught the movement of a tenu among the masses of live coral, forty feet below us. The rest was simple: one hooked a ku ta under the dorsal fin, tossed him overboard, and allowed the weight of the hook and line to carry him to the bottom. By means of the water glass, one could watch the approach of the tenu, see him seize the bait, and judge the proper moment to strike.

"The bonito, which they call atu, is the most important of all fish to the people of Mataora. Almost any fine day one could see a fleet of canoes working offshore, busy at bonito catching, surrounded by a cloud of the sea birds which guide one to the schools. They use a pretty lure for this fishing--a sort of jig cut out of mother-of-pearl, equipped with a tuft of red-dyed coconut husk and a barbless hook of shell. Each fisherman carries a stiff bamboo rod and half a dozen of these lures--ranging in color from pale green to black--attached to ten-foot lengths of line. The islanders have discovered that the condition of the water and the variations of light make certain colors more attractive than others at a given time; and when a school is found they try one shade after another till they discover which the bonito prefer. Then the jigs not in use are hooked to a ring at the base of the pole, and the fisherman begins to pull bonito from the water, heaving them out by main strength, without a moment's play. The barbless hook releases itself the moment the fish is in the canoe, and the lure goes overboard without the loss of an instant.

"One day, after a period of low tides, I saw another method of fishing--rarely practised nowadays--an ora, or fish-poisoning picnic. You know the barringtonia, probably--the big tree from which they make their drums; it grows on all the high islands, and sometimes one finds it on the richer atolls. There were a few on Mataora. Ever notice the flower? It is a lovely thing--a tassel of silky cream-colored stamens, shading to old rose at the ends, and tipped with golden beads. The fruit is odd-looking, like a squarish pomegranate, and it has odd properties, for when pounded up and put into shallow water it seems to stupefy the fish.

"I was sitting in the shade beside Tari's house when a boy came through the settlement, blowing melancholy blasts on a conch shell and announcing that the chief wanted everyone to be on hand that afternoon at a certain part of the lagoon, where an ora was to be held. We set out at noon, the women carrying the crushed seeds of the barringtonia in hastily woven baskets of green coconut frond. A crowd from the other settlements was awaiting our arrival; and when the babies had been put to sleep in the shade, with small children stationed beside them to fan away the flies, the fun began. A shallow stretch of lagoon lay before us, half a mile long by a quarter wide, and into this plunged the women and girls, wading and swimming in all directions, trailing behind them their baskets of poison. As time went on, a faint and curious odor began to rise from the water--a smell which reminded me vaguely of potassium cyanide. Soon the spearmen were busy--wild brown figures, naked except for scarlet loin cloths--pursuing the half-stupefied fish among the crevices of the coral. Before the effect of the poison wore off and the reviving fish began to make their escape to deeper water the men were returning to the beach, the strings of hibiscus bark at their belts loaded and dragging.

"On another day I joined a party of young people for a picnic across the lagoon. It was glassy calm; the water was like a mirror in which the palms of the wooded islets were reflected with motionless perfection. The beaches on the far side, invisible on an ordinary day, seemed to rise far out of water in the mirage. We landed on an uninhabited island, hauled up our canoes, and set out on a hunt for coconut crabs.

"They are extraordinary creatures, these crabs, enormous, and delicious to eat. You will not find many on the high islands; but in a place like Mataora there are hundreds of them, and they do a lot of damage to the coconuts. During the day they hide in their holes, deep among the roots of some big trees; at night they come out, climb the palms, nip off the nuts with their powerful claws, descend to the ground, tear off the husks, break open the shells, and devour the meat. To catch them, one can either dig them out or build a fire at the mouth of the hole, which never fails to draw them. Fire simply fascinates the brutes. They must be handled warily, for their claws can grip like a pair of pipe tongs and shear off a man's finger without an effort.

"We lit a fire under the shade of a puka tree and liberated the crabs we had captured. It sounds incredible, but they walked into the fire, and sat down quietly on the embers to roast! One of the boys climbed a palm and brought us some coconuts of a variety called nu mangaro, with an edible husk, sweet and fibrous, like sugar cane. After lunch we had a swim in the deep water close inshore and lay about smoking while the girls wove us wreaths of sweet fern. It was an idyllic sort of a day.

"I spent five months on Mataora. At first, when the schooner did not appear, I was worried and used to fret a little; but as time went on I grew to like the easy-going, dreamy life, and when at last a schooner came to take me off I didn't know whether to be glad or sorry--there were moments when I almost decided to send for a few things and follow the example of old Ruri.

"During those five months I knew more disinterested kindliness than I had supposed existed in the world; my heart warmed to the people of Mataora.

"Finally the day came when the schooner dropped anchor in the lee of the village--Whitmore's _Tureia_. Canoe after canoe shot out through the surf; the women gathered in the shade of the canoe houses on the beach, awaiting the landing of the boatmen, who would bring news of husbands diving for shell in distant lagoons, or relatives scattered among far-off groups of islands. As I shook hands with Whitmore I heard a prolonged wailing from the village--the tangi of a new widow.

"When I went to the house to get my things together Tari informed me that, as the schooner would not leave till next day, the people were preparing a farewell feast in my honor. It was held in the assembly house of the village, decorated with arches of palm frond, garlands of scented fern, and the scarlet flowers of the hibiscus. Everyone brought a gift for the departing stranger--a fan, a hat, a pearl fishhook, a drinking cup of ornamented coconut shell, a carved paddle of porcupine wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I distributed what little I had to offer, wishing it were a dozen times as much.

"On the beach next morning the people of Mataora gathered for a last handclasp; smile cynically if you will--there were tears shed; I wasn't too happy myself when I heard their plaintive song of farewell floating out across the water."

Worthington ceased speaking and leaned forward to scratch a match. The squall had passed long since; the immense arch of the Milky Way stretched overhead, and low in the south--beyond Hull Island and Rimatara, over the loneliest ocean in the world--the Southern Cross was rising. Lying on mats behind us, a party of Cook-Islanders spoke in soft tones, their faces illuminated fitfully by the glow of their cigarettes. My companion was lighting his pipe, and in the flare of the match I could see that he was smiling to himself.

"Some day," he said, "you will hear that I have closed up my affairs and disappeared. Don't worry when that happens; you'll know I have gone to Mataora--this time to stop for good."

*CHAPTER IV*

*The Land of Ahu Ahu*