Chapter VII: Part 7

All of which proves plainly enough, it seems to me, the folly of keeping a notebook; at any rate, the folly of jumping hastily to conclusions.

Or perhaps, more important than this, it gives further light on the vexed question, Does prohibition prohibit?

I find no other observations on Paumotuan life and character, under this date, unless the word, "_Mamafaaamu_," scribbled on the margin of a leaf, may be regarded as a discouraged hint at one; a suggestion for a commentary on a curious Polynesian relationship, when--and only when--I should have had time to gather all of the available data concerning it. This relationship has to do with the transfer of a child, or children, from the original blood parents to another set known as "feeding-parents." My interest in the practice dates from the moment when I made my first notebook reference to it, and it was aroused in a very casual, leisurely fashion. For this reason it will be best, I think, to tell the story of it in a leisurely way.

Returning to the village from the scene of the perfume orgy, I found the church still occupied, although the service was long over. The benches had been stacked in one corner; the mats shaken out and spread again on the floor, where fifteen or twenty people were reclining at ease or sitting native fashion--some of them talking, some sleeping, some engaged in light tasks such as hat weaving and the fashioning of pearl-shell fish hooks; others in the yet more congenial task of doing nothing at all. It was the practice, on Sunday, for the village to gather at the Reformed church, which they felt at liberty to use for secular as well as for sacred purposes, for it was a native-built structure, with walls and roof of thatch, like those of their own houses. The two other churches were never so used. They were frame buildings, in the European or American style of church architecture, with formal furnishings and windows of colored glass. To have done any sort of work in either of them would have been regarded as a serious offense, certain to be followed by unmistakable evidence of divine displeasure. As Tuina once told me, sores, illness, even death might result as a punishment for such desecration.

I was thinking of this and other primitive reactions to ecclesiastical furniture, and my hand was faltering toward my notebook pocket when Huirai's little daughter, Manava, entered the church, carrying a white cloth which she spread on the pulpit table. She returned a moment later with a tin of sardines, some boiled rice on a _kahaia_ leaf, and a bowl of tea. I was Huirai's guest for the day, and had been anxiously awaiting some evidence that food was on the way; but I had not expected that it would be served in the church. I had not eaten a church dinner since boyhood, and, strangely enough, the memory of some of those early feasts came back to me while Manava was setting the table. As one scene is superimposed upon another on a moving-picture screen, I saw an American village of twenty years ago--a village of board sidewalks and quiet, shaded streets bright with dandelions, taking ghostly form and transparency among the palms of Rutiaro. Two small boys walked briskly along, ringing hand bells, and shouting, "Dinner at the Pres-by-terian church ri-i-i-ight awa-a-a-ay." The G.A.R. band--a fife, two tenor drums, and one bass--played outside the church where the crowd was gathering, and horses, attached to buggies and spring wagons, were pawing the earth around the hitching posts. Then Mrs. MacGregor appeared in the doorway, her kindly face beaming the warmest of welcomes. "Come on in and set down, folks. Everything's all ready." Members of the Ladies' Relief Corps--mothers of large families, used to catering for large appetites--hurried back and forth with platters of roast turkey and chicken, roast beef, mashed potatoes of marvelous smoothness and flakiness--with everything in the way of food which that hospitable Middle-Western country provides. I heard the pleasant talk of homely things, smelled the appetizing odors, saw plates replenished again and again. Throughout the length of the tables old-fashioned gravy boats sailed from cover to cover--but I spared myself further contemplation of the scene, further shadowy participation in a feast which cost the affluent but a quarter, and a bell ringer nothing at all. The vision faded, but before it was quite gone I heard a voice saying: "Land sakes! You boys ain't eating a thing! Have some more of these dumplings? What's the matter with your appetities? Ain't you feelin' well?" It seemed a thousand years away, that voice; and no doubt it was, and is, even farther than that.

Church dinners at Rutiaro were not such sumptuous affairs. They were not, in fact, an integral part of the community life. In so far as I know, this was the only one ever held there and was the result of Huirai's peculiar notions of the hospitality due a white man. I told him that I was not accustomed to dining in churches at home, even on Sunday, and, furthermore, that I liked companionship at table. But he was not convinced, and he refused to join me. He and his family had already eaten, he said; so I sat on a box at the pulpit table, partaking of a solitary meal, and got through with it as quickly as possible.

I smiled inwardly at the thought of the inheritance of prestige, granted me without question, at Rutiaro, merely because I was the sole representative there of a so-called superior race. No white wasters had preceded me at the atoll. This was fortunate in a way, for it gave me something to live up to--the ideal Rutiaroan conception of the _popaa_--white man. Huirai was partly responsible for the fact that it was ideal. His tales of San Francisco--which, to the Paumotuan, means America--had been steadily growing in splendor. He seemed to have forgotten whatever he may have seen there of misery or incompetence or ugliness. All Americans were divinities of a sort. Their energy was superhuman; their accomplishment, as exemplified in ships, trains, buildings, automobiles, moving-picture theaters--beyond all belief unless one had actually seen those things. And the meanest of them lived on a scale of grandeur far surpassing that of the governor of the Paumotus at Fakavava. Yes, I had something to live up to at Rutiaro. The necessity was flattering, to be sure, but it cost some effort and inconvenience to meet it. I didn't dare look as slack as I often felt, both mentally and physically. I could not even sit on the floor, or stretch out at my ease, when in a native house; and I was compelled, when eating, to resume the use of my two-pronged fork and the small tin spoon, although it was much simpler and easier to eat with my fingers as the rest of them did.

Having finished my meal, I took what comfort prestige permitted by placing my box by the wall and leaning back against a post. Takiero, a woman of barbaric beauty, was sitting near by playing, "Conquer the North" on my ocharina. I taught her the air in an unguarded moment and had been regretting it ever since. Hunga, her husband, lay at her side, his strong, fine limbs relaxed in sleep. I would have given all my gratuitous prestige as a _popaa_ to have exchanged legs or shoulders or girth of chest with him. It was at about this time, as I remember it, that my thoughts turned to the subject of feeding-parents. Nui-Vahine was present, still--or again--nursing the three months' old baby. It belonged, as I knew, to Takiero, who appeared to be quite capable of nourishing it herself. Why had she given it to Nui-Vahine? And why had Hunga, the father of the child, consented to this seemingly unnatural gift? The transfer of parenthood had been made a month earlier, since which time Takiero and her husband had shown only a slight, proprietary interest in their offspring. Takiero sometimes dandled it on her knee, as any woman might the child of some one else; but no one would have guessed that she was the mother of it. Nui-Vahine fed, clothed, and bathed it, and her husband, Nui-Tane, was as fond of it as she herself. They kept the child at their house, and between them made as much fuss over it as though it were their own flesh and blood. What could have been the origin of this strange practice of parenthood by proxy? It was a common one throughout eastern Polynesia. I had seen a good many instances of it in the Cook islands, the Marquesas, and the Society group. Here was a subject worthy of an important chapter in the Life and Character monograph, and I decided that I might as well begin my researches at once.

Takiero reluctantly left off her playing and placed herself in a receptive mood. Why, I asked, had she given her child to Nui-Vahine? Her reply was, because Nui-Vahine had asked for it. "But, see here, Takiero," I said, "I should think that you and Hunga would want to keep your own baby. It is none of my business, of course. I ask you only because I would like to get some information on this feeding-parent custom. Can't you feed it yourself? Is that the reason you gave it away?"

I blundered atrociously in asking that question. Without meaning to, I touched her pride as a woman, as a mother. Takiero looked at me for a moment without speaking. Then she tore open her dress and gave me absolute proof--not that I wanted it--of her ability to nurse her own or any other child. Following this, she went over to where Nui-Vahine was sitting, snatched the baby from her arms, and almost smothered it against her body. She fondled it, kissed it, covered it with her magnificent hair. I had never before seen such a display of savage and tender maternal passion.

By that time Nui-Vahine had recovered from her astonishment and came to the defense of her own. Her month of motherhood gave her claims to the child, apparently, and she tried to enforce them physically. Takiero stood her ground, her black eyes flaming and, holding the baby in one arm, pushed Nui-Vahine away with the other. I expected to see hair flying, but, luckily, both women found their tongues at the same moment. They were like--they were, in fact--two superb cats, spitting at each other. The torrent of words did not flow smoothly. It came in hot, short bursts, like salvos of machine-gun fire, and, curiously enough, it was almost pure Paumotuan, not the hybrid Paumotuan-Tahitian commonly used in their temperate speech. It bristled with snarling ng's, with flintlike k's from which fire could be struck in passionate argument. Other women took sides in the quarrel. Had I poked an inquisitive pencil into a wasps' nest the effect could hardly have been more disconcerting. Hunga was awakened by the angry voices and looked on with sleepy perplexity. Nui-Tane grinned reassuringly, as much as to say: "Don't be upset. You know what women are." Finally, Puarei, the chief, who had been an impassive spectator, bellowed out a command for silence. The tumult subsided at once, and the fury of the women with it. Five minutes later everything was as it had been before. Hunga was sleeping and Nui-Tane polishing a pearl-shell fish hook; Nui-Vahine had the baby and Takiero the ocharina. Neither of them showed the least resentment, either toward me or toward each other. In intensity and briefness the gust of passion which swept through the little church was precisely like the squalls of wind and rain which darken the seas of the Low Archipelago in the midst of the hurricane season, which burst almost from a clear sky and then as suddenly melt into pure sunlight again.

When I left the village to return to Soul-Eaters' island Takiero was still playing the old border ballad on my ocharina. It had once been my favorite air for that instrument. I first heard it in northern France on a blustering winter evening when a brigade of English regiments was marching, under heavy shell fire, into one of the greatest battles of the war, to the music of pipes and drums. Humming the air now, although I still feel a tightening of the nerves, a quickening of the pulses, it is not because of the old set of associations. They have been buried forever beneath a newer set. The village at Rutiaro comes into view, and I see Takiero, clutching a baby against her naked breast, standing in the midst of a crowd of turbulent women.

Should there be some other Polynesian scholar who wishes to pursue farther an inquiry into a curious practice of child adoption I would advise extreme caution at an atoll far on the southeasterly fringe of the Low Archipelago.

The place may easily be identified; for he will find there a young woman of barbaric beauty who will be playing "Conquer the North" on an ocharina.

*CHAPTER X*

*Costly Hospitality*

For an authentic test of one's capacity for solitude--or better, perhaps, for convincing proof of the lack of it--two conditions are essential: complete isolation--that goes without saying, of course; and the assurance that such isolation will not be broken into. At Soul-Eaters' Island I expected to find both of these conditions fulfilled. My house was four miles from the settlement, but in reality I had no more seclusion there than a hermit whose retreat is within easy walking distance of a summer hotel. Visitors came in canoes, in cutters; and as the pass and the reef on either side of it were a favorite fishing ground many of them came prepared to spend the day, or the night, or both.

It is as well, perhaps, that the event fell out as it did. If life is to keep its fine zest many wished-for experiences must be perpetually unrealized, and we perpetually following our alluring phantoms until we tumble headlong out of existence. Not having been put to the proof, I may still persuade myself that I am a lover of solitude, gifted for the enjoyment of it beyond other men. Meanwhile, at Soul-Eaters' Island, I had a further experience with Moy Ling, the Chinese storekeeper, which convinced me of very definite limitations in another direction.

Some time after I had taken up residence there the village came in a body to the adjacent island on the other side of the pass. During the year they moved in this way from one piece of land to another, collecting the ripe coconuts and making their copra on the spot. The land was not owned in common, but they worked it in common; and as house building was a simple matter, instead of going back and forth from the village, they erected temporary shelters and remained at each island in turn until the work there was finished. They were not unremitting toilers. After an hour or two of copra making in the cool of the early morning they were content to call it a day, and spent the rest of the time at more congenial occupations--swimming, fishing, visiting back and forth, talking forever of the arrival of the last trading schooner and the probable date of arrival of the next one.

During all of this time I kept open house, and since I was indebted to nearly all of my friendly visitors for past hospitalities I felt that it was necessary to make returns. Unfortunately, I had nothing to make returns with, except such supplies of provisions and trade goods as I was able to purchase on credit of Moy Ling. Fish were abundant in the lagoon, and a few minutes of fine sport each day more than supplied my wants; but I knew that fish was not acceptable to palates long accustomed to little else. Furthermore, having accepted, at the time of my arrival at Rutiaro, the role of the generous, affluent _popaa_, I had to carry it through. As previously related, although I had been left at Rutiaro unexpectedly, the inhabitants took it for granted that I had plenty of money. The possession of wealth in the form of banknotes is regarded there as one of the attributes of a white man, as necessary to his comfort and convenience and as much a part of him as arms and legs. Pride prevented my disillusioning them at first when I was in desperate need of a new wardrobe; but it got me into a devil of a hole with Moy, and I dug myself in more deeply every day.

Having traded upon the native tradition of the mysterious affluence of all white men by opening up a credit account with the Chinaman I had to sustain his confidence in my ability to cancel it at once if I choose; and, feeling inwardly abject, it was all the more necessary to maintain a reassuring front in the face of his growing anxiety. It was growing. I could see that. He never actually dunned me, but I escaped the humiliating experience only by making additional purchases on so vast a scale, according to island standards, that even Moy seemed to be awed, for brief periods, into a stupefied acceptance of the mysteriously affluent myth. I, myself, was awed when I thought of the size of my bill. Trade goods carried across thousands of miles of ocean are more than usually expensive. A one-pound tin of bully beef cost nine francs, and other things were proportionally dear. The worst of it was that Moy's stock of supplies was much larger than I had at first supposed. He had a warehouse adjoining his store which was full of them, and so, with guests making constant demands upon my hospitality, I was forced to buy with the greater abandon as his confidence waned. But I returned from these encounters with a washed-out feeling, regretting that I had ever accepted guile as an ally and longing for relief from a state of affairs which I knew could not continue indefinitely.

Relief came in histrionic, eleventh-hour fashion. Providence saved me when I thought Pride was riding me to a starry fall. One evening I paddled across to the other island for further supplies. Huirai and his family had been staying with me for several days. Fishing was better on my side of the lagoon pass, he said, but I think his real purpose in coming had been to eat my, or, rather, Moy Ling's tinned beef. At any rate, when they returned I had nothing left. It was still fairly early, but no one was abroad in the village street. There was a light in Moy's shop, however, and looking through the open window I saw him sitting at a table with his adding machine before him. He was counting aloud in Chinese, his long, slim fingers playing skilfully over the wooden beads which slid back and forth on the framework with a soft, clicking sound, and as he bent over columns of figures the lamp light filled the hollows of his cheeks and temples with pits of shadow. In repose his face was as expressionless as that of a corpse. I felt my courage going as I looked at it. What chance had I of carrying through successfully this game of beggarman's bluff? How long could I hope to maintain the fiction of affluence before a man wise with the inherited experience of centuries of shopkeeping ancestors? I had a moment of panic, and before I realized what I was doing I had entered the shop and had asked for my bill.

Moy slip-slopped into his back room and returned with a large packet of old newspapers. He was a frugal soul and kept his accounts, as he ordered his life--with an eye to avoiding unnecessary expense. The journals were painted over with Chinese characters--the items of my various purchases. He arranged the lists in order, sat down to his counting machine again, and presently gave me the grand total. The amount was something over four thousand francs.

Thank Heaven for righteous anger! Thank Heaven for anger which is only moderately righteous. I knew that I had bought lavishly, but I had kept a rough estimate of the amount of my purchases, and I also knew that Moy had added at least 10 per cent to his legitimate profit. He had reasoned, no doubt, that a man who bought on mere whim, without asking the price of anything, would settle his obligation as thoughtlessly as he had incurred it. And I would of course. This was necessary if I were to live up to native tradition in the grand style. But when I saw how costly the game had become, and how thoroughly Moy had entered into the spirit of it, too, I felt indignant; and instead of confessing my predicament as I meant to do, I ordered another case of tinned beef and a bag of rice and left the shop without further talk.

This righteous wrath was all very well, but now that I had asked for my bill, I would have to settle it. How was this to be done? If only I had my sea chest which Tino, supercargo of the _Caleb S. Winship_, had carried away with him when he left me at Rutiaro! My pocketbook was in it, containing all of my money, more than enough to cancel the debt with Moy. I had rather an anxious time during the next few days. I remember entertaining as usual, but in a faint-hearted way; sleeping badly, and between times, walking up and down Soul-Eaters' Island, trying to subdue my pride to the point of confession. Then one afternoon, when I was sitting on the ocean beach, watching the surf piling up on the barrier reef, I became aware of a vessel, hull-down, on the horizon. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was like a far halloo from a world which I had almost forgotten existed. All through the afternoon she beat steadily to windward until at dusk she was about two miles distant, and I saw that she was one of the small schooners, without auxiliary power, which are used by Papeete trading companies for collecting copra at the less profitable atolls.

All the village came over to Soul-Eaters' Island, for the anchorage at this end of the atoll lay just behind it. The schooner was recognized. It was the _Potii Ravarava_ which visited the atoll about once a year. She entered the pass with the turn of the tide, lighting her way by the fire which was burning in a primitive galley, a tin-lined box half filled with sand. I could see her native skipper at the wheel, a couple of sailors preparing to take in sail, and two native women sitting on the poop, with a great pile of luggage behind them. One of these was Tepera, daughter of Puarei, chief of the atoll, who had been sent to the Protestant school at Papeete nearly a year ago. The other was Tuarava, her aunt, with whom she had been living there. The crowd on the beach waited in deep silence while the schooner anchored and the sails were being furled. I remember that I could hear very plainly the far-off rumbling of the surf on the windward side of the atoll and the hissing of frying fish, or whatever it was, a native boy was cooking at the galley fire. Then the small boat was lowered and the women brought ashore with their luggage. Tepera went at once to her father and, putting her head on his shoulder, began to cry softly. Not a word was spoken. Tuarava and Poura, her sister, squatted on their heels close by, their arms around each other, moaning in the same softly audible way. The women then went in turn among all their relatives, having their little cry while the rest of the village looked on in sympathetic silence. When they had finished, a fire was lit on the beach and everyone gathered around to hear the news and to examine the schooner's cargo which was being put on shore. More trade goods for Moy Ling, I thought. Remembering my debt, I couldn't summon any great amount of interest in the scene. I was about to return to my house when Huirai came bustling up, carrying my sea chest. "You like this?" he said. What he meant was, "Is this yours?" but for once he misused his English with splendid relevancy. I sat down weakly on the box, holding a letter which he had thrust into my hand. No doubt of it. It was my box, and the letter was addressed to me in Tino's familiar handwriting. It read, in part, as follows:

We have just met the _Potii Ravarava_ here at Hao. She is going to Rutiaro within a few weeks, so I am sending your sea chest by her. Sorry I left you in that God-forsaken hole; but I was tight that evening, and pretty mad at the way you upset my plans with your marble-playing foolishness. Next morning, when I sobered up, I felt like going back for you. But we had a fair wind, and I had my cargo to think of. The price of copra is on the down grade, and I've got to get back to Papeete with mine before the bottom falls out of the market. You said once you wanted to see all you could of life in the Paumotus. Well, I guess you'll have your chance at Rutiaro. If I was you I would come back on the _Potii Ravarava_. She only carries twenty-seven tons cargo, so she'll probably go direct to Papeete from there. I am also sending you an empty three-gallon demijohn. Fill this with water before you leave, if you come back on the _P.R_. Miti, her skipper, is a good sailor, but all he knows about navigation you could write on a postage stamp. I met him once about twenty miles south of Fakahina. He was cruising around looking for Angatau, which was seventy miles to the northeast. Well, he can't miss Tahiti if he gets within a hundred miles of it, so you better take a chance and come back with him. But don't forget to carry your own supply of fresh water. Sometimes these little native boats get becalmed, and it's no joke being thirsty at sea.

Yours, TINO.

P.S.--Miti has a big bunch of letters for you, from your friend Nordhoff. I saw the packet. It looks as though it had been traveling some. Nordhoff, he says, is in Tahiti again. I'll probably see him there and will tell him to wait for you.

Give my regards to all the marble players.

Good old Tino! He did me nothing but good turns. Late that night when the rest of the villagers had crossed the pass I pried open the lid of the chest--having lost the key--and found my belongings just as I had left them--my camera; my binoculars and charts; and, most important of all, in the bottom of the chest, wrapped in a pair of trousers, my pocketbook. I didn't pay Moy until just before the departure of the schooner, and staged the final episode at an hour when his shop was filled with loungers. I came away with his receipted bill, one hundred and twenty francs, and the consciousness of having adequately safeguarded tradition.

We left Rutiaro the following day. I did not realize until the moment of leave-taking how painful the farewells would be. As soon as they were over I went on board, crawled into the little cabin and, despite the cockroaches and copra bugs, remained there until the schooner had left the pass and was well out to sea. After our separation at Papeete, Nordhoff went on to the southwest. He wrote me from an island he called Ahu Ahu, and from there, apparently, he took passage to Rarotonga, the principal island of the Cook group. Long before the discovery of New Zealand Rarotonga was the goal of Polynesian mariners from the north and west--fearless explorers traveling in their double canoes across hundreds of leagues of ocean, guided by sun and stars, some of them arriving at their destination, many others, doubtless, perishing in search of it.

From Samoa--in the early centuries of our era--came the Karika family to reign in Rarotonga down to the present day; and Samoa is believed to have been the principal starting point of the voyagers which peopled the eastern Pacific. In the language of those old-time voyagers, _tonga_ meant south, and they gave that name to the Friendly Islands. Farther to the west and south they came upon the Cook group--in those days, no doubt, the southernmost ends of the earth--and the high island of this group, the faint blot on the horizon which led the canoes to land, they called Rarotonga (Under the South).

*Under the South*

*CHAPTER XI*

*His Mother's People*

The hurricane season ended in a fortnight of calm before the trade came up from the southeast, announcing its arrival with a three days' gale that caught our schooner among the outer islands of the group. It was by no means a great storm, yet the constant fury of the wind, unbroken by lull or gust, and the lines of huge breaking seas running under a cloudless sky impressed me more than anything I have experienced in ships. By day we lived in a world of blue-and-white--pale-blue sky; sea of a dark, angry blue; acres of white foam. To go on deck by night and watch the leaping ridges of salt water rear up to windward--formless, threatening, fringed with wan phosphorescence--was to revise any beliefs one might have had regarding the friendliness of nature.

On the evening of the second day we were laid-to under a rag of foresail, riding the seas obliquely, a few points off the wind. The schooner took them like an eider duck; it was so thick in the cabin that I slid back the hatch and squeezed through into the clean turmoil above. The mood of the Pacific was too impressive for pleasure, but I was glad at least of the fresh air and able to derive a species of awed enjoyment from what went on about me. It may have been fatigue, or carelessness, or inexperience--at any rate, the man at the wheel suddenly allowed the schooner to bear off; she was climbing the slope of a sea at the time--the crest of it caught her weather side with a crash and next instant a rush of solid water swept the decks. Thin and faint as the voices of sea birds above the roaring of the wind, the cries of native passengers drifted back, "_Aue! Aue!_"; the hatch slid back abruptly; the skipper burst on deck--bristling, gesticulating, clad in a waistcloth--to deliver an address in passionate Mangaian, insulting and only partially audible.

Under the swinging lamp in the cabin I found Tari--our singular and philosophic supercargo, whose calm no ordinary gale could disturb--bending over his books, a bottle and a glass in racks at his elbow. A mat was spread on the floor and on it--huddled under a quilt of bright patchwork--lay Apakura, his young native wife. Her feet were bound in a _pareu_ and the quilt pulled over her head, for the cockroaches were everywhere. I entered my stateroom to lie down. A large cockroach, insolent and richly perfumed, trotted along the springs of the upper berth and halted just above my face. Waves of the hand had no effect on him--I had reasons for not wishing to crush him in his tracks. One of his comrades began a tentative nibbling at my hair--something tickled my foot--I started convulsively. The sudden rolls of the schooner flung me against her side; it was useless to try to sleep. As I sat down beside him, Tari closed his books and motioned me to fill a glass.

A faint noise of shouting came from on deck; the engine-room bell sounded a sudden and peremptory signal. The hatch opened with a gust of spray--the head of the skipper appeared dimly in the swaying light. "_Atitu_," he shouted; "I'm going to run into the lee and stand off and on till this blows over." The engine started and Tari and I went on deck for a glimpse of the land, looming close and vague in the starlight. Presently, as we took our seats in the cabin, the schooner ceased her violent pitching and began to ride a long, easy swell. Tari rose, stepped to where his wife lay sleeping, picked up the slender bundle in the quilt, and disappeared into his stateroom; next moment he was beside me again, uncorking a fresh bottle of rum.

"She's had a bad time of it," he said, "with a berth on the weather side; she was spilled on the floor half a dozen times before she gave up and came out here. I shouldn't have let her come along--I had my doubts of the weather, but it was a chance to see the relatives she's got scattered through the group. They're constantly visiting one another; blood means a lot down here where they recognize degrees of consanguinity absurdly farfetched to our minds. First cousins are like brothers, second and third cousins considered members of one's immediate family, and so on through the descendants of remote ancestors. When you stop to think of it, this respect for ties of blood--in the isolated communities of Polynesia--rests on a solid base."

I asked him a question concerning the end of these island people--whether they will fade away and disappear, like our own Narragansett and Seminole, without leaving their mark on the supplanting race or whether they will be absorbed gradually, developing in the process of absorption a new type. Tari set down his glass.

"One thing is certain," he replied--"if left to themselves they would soon be extinct. Wherever you go among the islands you will find couple after couple of full-blooded natives--young, strong, wholesome, and childless. No doubt the white man is partially to blame, but, for myself, I believe the race is worn out with isolation and old age. They are justified in their dread of being childless, but an infusion of European blood--however small--works a miracle; you must have noticed this, to me a most striking and significant fact. It is the cross of white and brown that is repopulating the islands to-day; one can venture a glimpse into the future and see the process of absorption complete--the Polynesian is not fated to disappear without leaving a trace behind ... and perhaps it will be more than a trace, for half-caste children cling strongly to the distaff side.

"The question of half-castes is an interesting one, particularly to men like me--but it is a waste of time to struggle against nature; in the end the solution is nearly always the same. Varana's children furnish the best example I have run across--you've never been to Rimarutu, I fancy; it is not often visited nowadays; probably you've never heard of Varana. And yet he was an extraordinary man, his life an almost unique study in extremes. Like everything real, the story has no beginning, unless one were able to trace back the strain that gifted the man with his exceptional temperament; as for an end, that is still working itself out on Rimarutu. It is, in fact, no story at all, but a bit of life itself--unmarked by any dominating situation, haphazard, inconclusive, grimly logical. No one can know the whole of it---the play of motives, the decisions, the pure chance--but I worked with Varana for years and have patched his story together after a fashion. Now and then, when the mood struck him, he used to speak of himself; sometimes at night when we were working his schooner from island to island; sometimes by day, as we lay smoking under the palms of a remote atoll, while the canoes of the divers dotted the lagoon. On those occasions I had glimpses of a man not to be judged by the standards of everyday life--a man actuated by motives as simple as they were incomprehensible to those about him. His death, if he is dead-- But I will speak of that in its place.

"His real name was Warner--a big, blue-eyed man, slow-spoken and a little dreamy in manner, with an immense blond mustache and a serenity nothing could disturb. I never knew him to hesitate in making a decision or to speak unless he had something to say. All decent men liked him, and the natives, who were better able than a white man to fathom his simplicity, took to him from the first. He had been miserably out of place in England--squeezed through Cambridge, which he detested, unhappily married, done out of a fortune by the defaulting brother-in-law whose last debt he paid, and divorced just before he came out here.

"It is often observed that when an Englishman's feelings are hurt he travels, and in this respect Varana was not exceptional. One day, a little more than a generation ago, he stepped off the mail boat at Papeete--a rather typical English tourist, I fancy--dressed in tropical costumes from Bond Street and accompanied by an extraordinary quantity of luggage. At the club he ran across Jackson of the Atoll Trading Company--the old man liked him from the first and they used to spend the evenings together, lingering over their glasses, talking a little in low tones. A fortnight later Varana left as quietly as he had come--outbound in one of Jackson's schooners for a cruise through the Paumotus.

"It was the year of the hurricane at Motutangi. Varana's boat, commanded by a native skipper, had drifted through the group in a desultory way, touching at an island here and there to pick up a few tons of copra or a bit of shell. One can imagine the effect on a newcomer of those early days among the atolls--long sunlit days when gentle breezes filled the sails of the vessel skirting the shores of the lagoons--waters of unearthly peace and loveliness, bordered by leagues of green. And the nights ashore, when the moon rose at the end of a path of rippling silver, and the people gathered before their thatched houses to sing.... It was not long before Varana realized that he had found his anodyne.

"At home he had been a yachtsman of sorts; by the time they reached Motutangi the brown skipper was leaving a good part of the working of the schooner to his guest. They were diving in the lagoon that year at the end of a long _rahui_ on the shell--a sort of closed season, scrupulously respected by the natives; half a dozen schooners were anchored off the village, where every house overflowed with people from the surrounding islands, and by day their canoes blackened the water above the patches of shell.

"The hurricane gave ample warning of its approach--Varana told me as much as that. He had spent the night ashore with a trader, whose old glass rose and fell spasmodically, sinking always a little lower, until it stood at a figure which sent the trader off, white and cursing, to break open a fresh case of gin. None of the divers went out at daybreak; with the other people, they stood in little frightened groups before the houses. The older men were already beginning to hack off the tops of the stout palms in which they planned to roost. By the time Varana came off in a canoe the schooners were double anchored, the wind was shifting uneasily in sharp gusts, and a tremendous surf was thundering on the outer beach. The native skipper, like the people ashore, knew perfectly well what was coming and, like most of his kind, his spirit broke in the face of a large emergency--before the feeling that the forces of nature were about to overwhelm him. Well, I've been through one hurricane--I can't say that I blame him much! Varana found him not exactly in a funk, but in a state of passive resignation, hoping vaguely that his two anchors would let him ride it out inside. The crew was clustered on the after deck, exchanging scared whispers. Varana, who had the instinct of a deep-water sailor, took in the situation at a glance, and next moment he had taken command of the schooner.

"Without a word of protest the men reefed, got sail on her, heaved up one anchor, and cut the other cable. Varana had very little to say about the rest--how he edged out through the pass and managed to claw off just as the cyclone struck Motutangi--but afterward the story went the rounds of every group. All the other schooners in the lagoon, as well as most of the people ashore, were lost. How Varana weathered it, without piling up his vessel on any one of half a dozen atolls, is a sort of miracle.

"A week later, when he had sailed his battered schooner--the only survivor of the disaster at Motutangi--into Papeete harbor, he found himself famous by nightfall, for the native captain gave him entire credit for the achievement. Old Jackson's imagination was touched, or perhaps it was the destruction of so many rival schooners in the shell and copra trade--at any rate, he acted on impulse for once in his life, sent for Varana, and offered him a remarkably good berth with a fat screw attached. But the wanderer only smiled and shook his head--he had had a taste of the outer islands. It shakes one's faith in Providence to realize that most men die without finding the place in life for which they were designed.

"It was old Jackson who told him of Rimarutu--probably during one of their almost silent evenings at the club. It was a mistake--Jackson thought--to believe that a man could shut himself off from the world; the mood would pass in time, but if Varana wished seriously to try it, he would find no better place than Rimarutu. There was some copra to be had and a little shell in the lagoon; the people numbered about two hundred, a quiet, pleasant lot, not given to wandering from their island. Varana had salvaged a few thousand pounds from the wreck of his affairs at home; Jackson helped him pick up a schooner at a bargain and load her with what was needed; there was some difficulty about a crew, but his uncanny gift with the natives got him three men content to follow his fortunes. On the morning when he shook hands with the old man, stepped aboard his boat, and sailed out of the harbor, Varana severed the last tie with the world he had known.

"I could tell you a good deal about his life on the island--I worked with him for nearly ten years. He began by renting a bit of land--for his store and copra shed--from the chief and setting himself to learn the language. The Polynesian is a shrewd judge of character; they saw that this man was just, kindly, fearless, and to be trusted. Those who had traveled a little declared Varana a phenomenon--a white trader who respected women and never lay on his veranda in a stupor, surrounded by empty bottles. He seemed to know instinctively the best way to take these people, with whom, from the very first, he found himself on terms of a mutual understanding. They regarded him with a mixture of liking and respect, not accorded us, perhaps, as often as we are apt to think; he worked with them, he played with them, and finally took a daughter of the island as his wife--yet it was characteristic that he never permitted himself to run barefoot and that even after twenty years of friendship the native entering Varana's house took off his hat. I remember Tupuna as a woman of thirty--tall, robust, and grave, with delicate hands and masses of bright, rippling hair; the years were kind to her--even in middle life she did not lose a certain quiet charm. Make no mistake--they were happily mated, this man, turned out by what Englishmen believe the highest civilization in the world, and the daughter of an island chief whose father had been a savage and an eater of men. She was not spoiled like so many traders' wives; when they had been on the reef she walked home behind, carrying the torches and the fish--but he felt for her an affection deep as it was undemonstrative, a strong attachment, proven at the end in his own extreme and romantic way.

"During the early years of his life on Rimarutu, Varana had enough to do with his store, his occasional trips for supplies, and his work for the betterment of the island people. He found them living on fish and coconuts, depending for all their luxuries on a dwindling production of copra. He showed them how to thin their palms, how to select nuts for new plantings, how to dry their copra with a minimum of effort. The shell in the lagoon was nearly exhausted; he persuaded the chiefs of the two villages to forbid diving for a term of years. After experiments conducted with Tupuna's aid he set the men to catching flying fish, which swarmed in the waters about the island, and taught the women to split them, rub in salt, and dry them on lines in the sun. Rimarutu is high, as atolls go--five or six yards above the sea in spots; he laid out beds of _puraka taro_, and had pits dug on the high portions of the island, lined the bottoms with rock to keep the taproots from salt water, filled them with humus and topsoil--scraped up in handfuls--and planted breadfruit, mango, and lime, brought from the high islands to the north. At long intervals, when in need of something that only civilization could supply--paint, rigging, or a new set of sails--he went north with a cargo of copra and dried fish and took on a brief charter with Jackson. On these trips he visited scores of islands, and came to know the people of a thousand miles of ocean.

"It was not until his son was born that Varana began to think seriously of money. His daughters had given him no concern; he explained to me once his peculiar philosophy as to their future. Perhaps he was right. With their happiness in mind, he preferred to bring them up as island girls--without education or knowledge of the outside world and no greater prospects than those of their full-blooded playmates--rather than give them the chances of the usual half-caste: half-educated and partially Europeanized, whose most brilliant hope is marriage with a white man of the inferior sort. But the birth of Terii set the father to thinking.

"The child was about ten when I saw him first, a fine strong boy, very fair for a half-caste, with his father's eyes, a high carriage of the head, and skin touched with a faint bloom of the sun. Tupuna was immensely proud of him. I was a youngster then and new to the islands, but I had heard of Varana before Jackson introduced me to him. It was at Jackson's place, on the upper veranda, that he told me how he had leased Fatuhina; some one had spoken of my work. I had operated diving machines? He needed a man familiar with them, for he had leased an atoll with some big shell patches in the lagoon, and machines would be necessary to work the deeper portions. I was doing nothing at the time. I liked what I had heard of Varana, and I liked the man better still. In an hour we had come to an understanding. I worked with him, off and on, from that time until the beginning of the war.

"Without caring in the least for wealth, Varana had set out to make himself rich. Long before I knew him he had decided the question of his son: Terii was to have the same chances that his father had had before nim--was to see both sides and choose for himself.

"Even Varana's friends spoke of his luck; to my mind his success was inevitable. Regarded with an almost superstitious affection by the people of widely scattered groups, he possessed channels of information closed forever to the ordinary man. It was in this way that he learned of the shell in Fatuhina lagoon; perhaps he did not know that the native who approached him, one evening on a distant atoll, to speak casually of the matter and stroll away, had paddled across twelve miles of sea with no other object than to bring the news to Varana. When the _Gaviota_ was beached he was the first to learn of it--that affair alone brought him a neat fortune; and when men had fine pearls to sell they saw him before they went to the Jews. By the time his son was twelve Varana was a rich man.

"I was on Rimarutu when he left to take the boy to England. Tupuna shed a few tears, but there was no scene--she knew he would return. 'I go to take our son to my own land,' he told her; 'there will be six moons before I come.' Five months later I was waiting with the schooner when he stepped off the mail boat. That night, as he lay on a mat on the afterdeck, dressed in a _pareu_ and a pair of slippers, he spoke of England briefly in the midst of our talk on island matters. 'Damned senseless treadmill,' he remarked; 'I can't think how I stood it so many years.' The ordinary man, who had left home under a cloud of misfortune to return twenty years later, after wanderings in distant lands, with a fortune and a beautiful child, would have lingered not without a certain relish. But Varana was different; he grudged every moment spent in civilization and lived only for the day when he would again take the wheel of his schooner and watch the ridges of Tahiti sink beneath the horizon.

"The years passed rapidly and tranquilly on Rimarutu. The days of Varana's activity were over; he was no longer young, though he kept his store and took the schooner out at long intervals for supplies. Then came the outbreak of the war.

"I was in Gallipoli when the letter reached me, written in the native language by Varana's old mate. It told a story fantastically unreal--incredible from the viewpoint of everyday life--and yet to me who knew him, as to the people of his island, the end of Varana seemed a natural thing, in keeping with what had gone before. Tupuna had fallen ill (the old man wrote) and had died suddenly and peacefully, as natives do. Varana stood beside her grave with no great display of grief, returned to his house and spent three days putting his affairs in order. On the fourth day he gave the mate a thick envelope of documents, called together the people of the island and bade each one of them farewell. When he turned to leave they did not disperse; the women had begun to sob--they felt already the desolation of a final parting. It was the hour of sunset, when the trade wind dies away and the lagoon lies like a mirror under an opalescent sky.... I can see in imagination those simple and friendly islanders, standing in little groups before the settlement--raising no voice in protest, moving no hand in restraint--while the man they loved walked to the ocean beach, launched a tiny canoe in the surf, and paddled out to the west. The nearest land in that direction is distant six hundred miles. When he had passed the breakers--they say--Varana did not once turn his head; the watchers stood motionless while the sky faded, their eyes fixed on the dot that was his canoe--a dwindling dot, swallowed up at last in the night."

Tari ceased to speak. He was sitting propped on the lounge, arms folded, legs stretched out, eyes staring at the table. Without seeming aware of what he did, he filled his glass, raised it to his lips, and drank. Presently he emerged from his revery to light a pipe.

"In due time," he went on, "I had word from the lawyers, inclosing a copy of the will and informing me that I had been named executor with old Jackson, who seemed to have discovered the secret of eternal life. There was also a letter from Varana, written after Tupuna's death--a friendly and casual note, with a mere line at the end, asking me to do what I could for his boy. The land Tupuna had brought him was to be divided equally among his daughters; all the rest was for Terii, saving his parting gift to me. Only one condition was attached--Terii must visit Rimarutu before inheriting the property of his father; once he had set foot on the island, he would be his own master, free to choose his path in life.