Chapter VIII: Part 8

"The boy was nineteen when the war broke out; he joined up at once as a cadet in the Flying Corps. During the second year I began to hear of Lieutenant Warner--he had shot down a German plane near Zeebrugge; he had been wounded; he had received the Military cross. Once I saw his picture in the _Sphere_--a handsome lad, very smart in the old uniform of the R.F.C., with a jaunty cap over one eye and ribbons on his breast. This was the little savage whose shrill cries I used to hear at dawn, when he raced with his half-naked companions on the beach! At the end of the war he was Captain Terry Warner, a celebrity in a small way.... I felt a certain pride in him, of course. We had done our best to meet, but something always happened to prevent my getting a glimpse of him.

"I ran across him as I was homeward bound, leaving San Francisco for the islands. I had already gone aboard and was standing by the rail, watching the last of the luggage swing over the side in nets, when a motor drove up to discharge a party of men and women--fashionables of the city, from their looks. One of them, a lean, tanned boy, with the overcoat of a British officer over his civilian clothes, was saying good-by to the others, shaking hands and smiling very attractively. A little later, when the lines were being cast off, I saw him close beside me at the rail. A girl in blue was standing on the dock, waving up at him. 'Good-by, Terry!' she called. I looked closely; there could be no doubt--it was the son of Varana.

"We had long talks on the voyage south; the lad had not forgotten me. The memory of the old life--of the island, of his mother, of his father--would always be fresh in his mind, but he regarded those days as a distant and beautiful episode, now forever closed. He was going to visit Rimarutu for the last time--to bid farewell to those who remembered him. He had not forgotten the friends of his boyhood; there were many little presents in his boxes, and he told me that the schooner--reported sound as on the day of her launching--would be his gift to Varana's old mate. Afterward he would return to San Francisco, where opportunities had been offered him; he had brought letters to America and had been well received.

"The schooner was in port when we arrived. Varana's mate met us on the dock; there were tears in the old man's eyes as he took the boy's hands in his own and murmured in a trembling voice, '_O Terii iti e_.' The tourists descending the gangplank looked with interest at the spectacle of Captain Warner, almost embracing an old barefoot _kanaka_, dressed in dungarees and a faded shirt, wrinkled brown face working with emotion. As Terii shook hands with the crew--some of them boys with whom he had played in childhood--I noticed that a phrase or two of the native came to his lips--twelve years had not been sufficient to blot out all memory of his mother's tongue.

"We had a long passage south, beating against the trade; Varana had installed an engine in the schooner, but time is cheaper than petrol in this part of the world. Terii delighted in handling the boat; there was salt water in his blood; and his father had seen to his training in navigation and the ways of the sea. With each new day I perceived symptoms of a change in the boy. White suits and canvas slippers gave way to pajamas and bare feet; finally the pajamas were replaced by a _pareu_, taken from the trade-room stock. The summers at home had not been wasted; I used to watch him at the wheel, working the schooner to windward, an eye on the canvas aloft, steering with the easy certain movements of a seaman born. He was in love with the schooner before we had been out a week, and he had reason--Frisco-built for the last of the pelagic sealing, Varana's boat was the fastest thing of her tonnage in the South Seas. More than once in our talks Terii seemed to forget the plans he had confided to me.... She needed a new foresail; the set of this one did not please him; he was going to have her copper renewed in places; she was getting dingy below; the cabin needed a touch of paint. At times, speaking of these things, he stopped short in the midst of a sentence and changed the talk to other subjects. The language came back to him surprisingly; he was able to understand and make himself understood before we raised the palms of Rimarutu.

"The mate took her in through the pass. It was late afternoon, cool and cloudless, with a gentle sea nuzzling at the reef. The island was like the memory of a dream--fresh green palms, snowy beaches, cat's-paws ruffling the lagoon in long, blue streaks--so beautiful that the sight of it made one's heart ache and the breath catch in one's throat. A dozen canoes put out to meet us from the first settlement; there were greetings from friends and relatives--embraces and tears. Terii lay silent, propped on his elbows and staring ahead, as we slipped across the lagoon; the island people spoke in tones so low that I could hear the crisp sound of the schooner's bows parting the landlocked water. The other village lay beyond the beach ahead of us, Varana's village, where Terii had been born--a place of dreams in the mystery of the evening light. It was not difficult to guess at the boy's thoughts--the moment was one of those which make up the memories of a lifetime. Every man has known them--rapture, pain, the enjoyment of supreme beauty, the flavor of exotic and unrepeatable experience; but not every man is permitted to taste such contrasts as this boy had known in twenty-four years of life.... I was a little envious, I think, of the rarity of that poignant home-coming.

"On the first evening, when we had greeted the people of the village, Terii was led away by his old aunt, Tupuna's sister. Just before bedtime I saw them at his mother's grave--a lonely shrine, roofed over in island fashion, where the light of a lamp shone on stunted bushes of frangipani. My eccentricities were not forgotten; they had spread my mat under the palms before Varana's house, and toward midnight Terii came quietly and lay down close by. I was wakeful in a revery, living over the old days with my friend, wondering, with the usual idle and somber doubt, if we were destined to meet again. Low over the palm tops a planet glimmered like a shaded lamp; the Milky Way arched overhead through a sky powdered with fixed stars--remote suns, about which revolve myriads of worlds like ours.... I rebelled at the thought that the strong soul of Varana should be snuffed out. Terii said nothing for a long time; I thought he had dropped off to sleep, but suddenly I heard his voice: 'I have the strangest feeling to-night,' he said, thoughtfully; 'if my father were here I could believe that I had never been away, that everything since I left--England, school, my friends, the war--was no more than a dream. I can't explain to you, but somehow this island seems the most real thing in the world. I've been talking with my aunt--I'd almost forgotten her name, you know--and I managed to understand a good bit of what she had to say.... There is no doubt she believes it herself. My father comes to her every now and then, she says, for a talk on family matters; last night he told her we would come to-day, and that I would stop here to take his old place among the people. It seems they are good enough to want me to stay--I almost wish I could.' ...

"The drums were going at daybreak--the feast in Terii's honor was the greatest the island had known since heathen days. The entire population was on hand; the beach black with canoes; dozens of good-humored babies on mats under the trees, with small brothers and sisters stationed to fan the flies away. The people sat in long rows in the shade, strings of shell about their necks, their heads wreathed in hibiscus and sweet fern. Terii was placed between the chief of the other village and Tehina, the chief's daughter, a full-blooded Rimarutu girl of sixteen, barefoot, dressed in a white frock, with gold pendants in her ears and a thick, shining braid of hair. There is an uncommon charm about the women of that island--a stamp of refinement, a delicacy of frame and feature, remarked as long ago as the days of Spanish voyaging in the Pacific. Blood counts for something in Polynesia, and one needed only a glance at Tehina to know that the best blood of the island flowed in her veins; her ancestor--if tradition may be credited--was in the long canoe with Penipeni when the god pulled Rimarutu up from the bottom of the sea. I like those people, and in spite of the night's depression I managed to enjoy the fun--I even danced a bit! Finally I saw that the dancers were taking their seats; voices were lowered, heads were turned.

"Tehina was dancing alone to the rhythm of a hundred clapping hands. In twenty years of the islands I have never seen a girl step more daintily. Little by little she moved toward Terii until she stood directly before him, inviting him to dance, hands fluttering, swaying with an unconscious grace, smiling into his eyes. Every head turned; there were smiles, good-humored chuckles, nudges; they were proud of this girl and anxious that the son of Varana should dance with her. They had not long to wait. Next moment Terii had leaped to his feet and was dancing, with more enthusiasm than skill, to a long burst of cheers and clapping.

"When the canoes put off at nightfall I noticed that Tehina did not leave; she had stopped to visit her uncle, the parson of the village church. I saw Terii with her often during the days that followed--fishing on the lagoon, swimming in the cove, lying on mats in the moonlight where groups of young people were telling their interminable stories of the past. He seemed a little shy of me, and no longer exchanged confidences in the hour which precedes sleep. One evening, smoking and strolling alone after dinner, I passed the parson's house and became aware of the vague figure of Terii, walking to and fro impatiently beside the veranda. He stopped--I heard the rattle of a coral pebble on the roof. A moment later Tehina glided like a phantom around the corner of the house, and they went off arm in arm along the path to the sea. I thought to myself that the lad was not doing badly after his twelve years away from the island, but the blood was in him, of course--there was instinct in his manner of tossing the pebble and in the unhesitating way he had led the girl toward the outer beach: the haunt of dreadful presences, a place no ordinary islander would visit after dark. I fancied him sitting there--the rumble of the surf in his ears, watching the lines of breakers rear up under the moon--with Tehina beside him, admiring and afraid. When his eye was not on her she would glance right and left along the beach and back toward the bush, half expecting to see some monstrous thing, crouched and watching with fiery eyes. As for the boy, one could only guess at the troubled flow of his thoughts, stirred by cross-currents of ancestry and experience. In her own environment Tehina was a girl to make any man look twice; for him, with his mother's blood and the memories of his childhood, she must have possessed a powerful appeal--the touch of her hand; her voice, soft and low-pitched, murmuring the words of a half-forgotten tongue; her dark eyes shining in the moonlight; the scent of the strange blossoms in her hair. It was the test, the final conflict Varana had foreseen. I had my own opinion of the result, and yet the other life pulled hard.

"The days passed in pleasant island fashion; the loading of the schooner went on; there was no mention of a change in plans. The chief came to take his daughter home, and when she had gone Terii spoke to me, not too convincingly, of his return to civilization. My trip to Rimarutu was a matter of pleasure alone; I was already planning to take this berth, and was not sorry when Terii announced one morning that we would sail north that afternoon. One seems perpetually saying good-by down here--these islands are havens of a brief call, of sad farewells, of lingering and regretful memory. Our parting from the people of Rimarutu was more than usually painful; they had hoped to the last that Terii would leave some word, some promise; but he remained silent, though I could see that the leave-taking was not without effect.

"Finally the last canoe put off for shore; the anchor came up, the motor started, and Terii steered across the lagoon for the pass. The sails were still furled, for there was a light head wind. I watched his face as he stood in silence at the wheel; there was a look in his eyes which made me sorry for the boy. We crossed the lagoon, glided past green islets, and drew abreast of the other village. The people lined the shore, fluttering handkerchiefs, shouting good wishes and farewells.

"Beyond the settlement the pass led out, blue and deep, between sunken piers of coral, where the surf thundered in patches of white. All at once the old mate sang out and pointed--a dot was on the water ahead of us, a swimmer moving out from land to cut us off. The son of Varana turned the wheel; the schooner swung inshore; I heard a quick command and felt the speed of the engine slacken.

"Terii was staring ahead with a strange intensity--instinct or premonition was at work. I looked again as we drew near; a cloud of dark hair floated behind the swimmer's head; it was a woman--Tehina! Terii sprang to the rail. A moment later she had been lifted over the side and was standing beside him in the cockpit, dripping, trembling a little with cold and fear, doing her best to smile. The mate was pulling at Terii's arm and pointing back toward the village. A whaleboat had put out from shore and was heading for us at the top speed of the rowers; it was the chief himself, I believe, who stood in the stern and whose shouts were beginning to reach our ears.

"At that moment Terii proved that he was his father's son. He glanced back once, and then, without the smallest interval of hesitation, his arm went about the wet shoulder of Tehina.

"'Full speed ahead,' he ordered in a cool voice."

Tari poured rum into my glass, and tilted the last of the bottle into his own. The schooner was taking it easily with her engine at half speed, riding a gentle swell. The ship's bell rang twice, paused, and rang again--a sharp and mellow sound. It was long past midnight.

"If you ever get down to Rimarutu," said Tari, as he rose to go on deck, "you will find Terii there--he bids fair to leave the island even less than Varana did."

*CHAPTER XII*

*In the Cook Group*

I was close to beginning this letter with a little fun at your expense; you would have been mystified--perhaps convinced that my haunted friends of Ahu Ahu were just a bit uncanny. It is really a pity not to do it! I should have begun with a vivid glimpse of a seance; the quiet moonlight outside, seen through an open door; the glimmer of a turned-down lamp in the house, revealing the rapt sightless face of the medium; the summoning of old Rakamoana from her sleeping place in the _marae_; the unnatural voice proclaiming the coming of the spirit.

Then I would have told how a message from the visitor was announced--for the strange white man vouched for by the mother of Apakura. "I see an island," the ghostly voice might have gone on--"a little land surrounding a great lagoon. It is Nukuhina, in the far-off Sea of Atolls. A schooner lies at anchor in the calm water off the settlement; she does not move, for the lagoon is very still. A boat is putting off for shore, and in the stern sits a dear friend of the white man--a slender man, who gazes eagerly toward the shore with dark eyes like the eyes of our people. A crowd is gathered on the beach; the girls carry gifts of necklaces and wreaths; and in the village the old women are preparing a feast. The man in the boat believes that this welcome is for the captain of the schooner, not knowing that this people was once a race of warriors, and that they are gathered to give him welcome--the first soldier from the army of France to visit their island since the war. The keel of the boat grates on the sand; a score of men seize her to pull her up; the women crowd about the stranger (Aue! They are good to look upon these girls of Nukuhina!), to throw their necklaces over his head and crown him with wreaths of flowers and shell. His face grows red; the old men smile; the girls laugh aloud. One, bolder than the rest, runs at him suddenly, puts her arms about him, and kisses him after the fashion of the white man. His face grows redder still; at that, the old men, too, laugh aloud. One after another, pushing and pulling to be first, the girls scramble to kiss him; he is overwhelmed, suffocated, and now his face is like fire, but he is not angry, for he smiles."

Well, what do you think of Ahu Ahu magic? I really ought to refrain from telling you the truth, which--like the stuff of most spirit messages--is simple, unexpected, and disillusioning. When we got to Avarua I found S---- there, over from Tahiti to buy cattle; before his departure the _Alouette_ had turned up from the Paumotus, bringing word of your reception on Nukuhina.

I fancy you haven't had much time, in your progress through the Low Archipelago, for the pursuits of a landsman, so I'll give you an idea of how I've frittered away the days on Rarotonga.

Soon after our arrival there was a great stir over the coming of a shipload of parliamentary visitors from New Zealand, making a tour of the Cook Islands; a feast of welcome was to be given in Avarua, scores of pigs and hundreds of chickens were set aside for fattening, and the dancers of each village were to be seen rehearsing in the evenings. We drove to Avarua on the appointed day and found the government boat already anchored in the roadstead off the town--an anchorage dreaded by skippers, for unless the anchor strikes exactly on the summit of a sharp submerged peak, it will slide clean off soundings. Long before we reached the settlement the air had been vibrant with the sound of drums, the visitors were coming ashore, the dancing was in full swing.

The performance, of course, was a perfectly sophisticated one--like Papeete, Avarua is a small ocean metropolis, the capital of a group--but it interested me to see that the people, in spite of the efforts of the missionaries to make them ashamed of everything pertaining to heathen days, were not entirely without pride in the past. Each village was represented by a corps of dancers, men and women equally divided, and had its own drums and drummers, who furnished the sole music of the dance. The drums are of three varieties. The smallest are merely hollow sticks--six inches in diameter and a yard long--open on one side, and producing a loud, resonant click when struck with a bit of wood. There are others of medium size, standing on short legs and beaten with the hand, but the huge oldtime drums, suspended from the limbs of trees, interested me most of all. Imagine a five-foot section of the trunk of a big _Barringtonia_, carefully hollowed out and smoothed, with the skins of wild goats stretched over the ends, and sides decorated with outlandish painting.

The big drums are struck with the heel of the hand--with such furious energy that the drummer streams perspiration and is soon exhausted. The deep pulsing sound of them carries for miles in still air; sometimes at night, when there was dancing in the villages, I have heard it far and near, rising, falling, throbbing, from Arorangi, from Titikaveka, and from Ngatangiia, whence the ancients set out on their thousand-league voyages to the south.

I wish I could make you feel, as I have felt, the quality of this savage drumming. Monotonous and rhythmic sound, reduced almost to its simplest form, it is the ancestor of all music, toward which, perhaps, our modern dance music is a reversion. There is syncopation in it when the big drum halts at irregular intervals, and the time is carried by the clicking of hollow wood; but it is solemn and ominous--anything but the meretricious syncopation of ragtime. One feels in it an appeal to the primitive emotions, at once vague and charged with meaning; fear and madness are there, with cruelty, lust, triumph, and a savage melancholy.

Except in the case of the contingent from Manihiki--an atoll far off to the north--there was little variation in the dances, for which one can only say that they showed evidence of careful drilling. The women performed a variety of the dance common to all branches of their race**basically the same whether called _hula_, _hura_, or _ura_--but their motions were awkward and stiff, without the abandon and graceful movements of the arms to be seen in Hawaii or the Society Islands. The men, who carried long staves like spears, were freer in their motions, leaping, thrusting out their arms, and clattering their sticks in unison.

The costumes--unfortunately for the eye of a sensitive spectator--were slipped on over the wearer's best European clothes; a concession to the missionary point of view; but the beauty of some of the kilts, tunics and headdresses, and the trouble evidently taken in braiding them, showed that the Rarotongans have not wholly forgotten the past.

The dance was followed by speeches, and the speeches by a feast--all very conventional and uninteresting. I wonder if you are heartily fed up on baked pig. One needs a dash of Island blood to appreciate it after the twentieth time! Any other sort of meat would be welcome here where bully beef and pork are the staples. The need of a change of diet drives one to the lagoon; fishing becomes a practical as well as a sporting proposition.

During the proper phases of the moon we lead a most irregular life, for the hours from 3 to 5 A.M. are often the ones most profitable to spend on the reef, and the evenings are occupied with a search for hermit crabs. You have probably made the acquaintance of the hermit crab, but in case you have been too busy to give him the notice he deserves, I'll venture to dwell for a bit on his eccentricities. It was not a pure love of natural history that turned my attention to him; I have been obliged to study him--at least superficially--by the fact that he is the dainty preferred by all the fish of this lagoon, and his capture, therefore, an indispensable preliminary to every fishing expedition.

There must be several varieties of hermit crab--I have counted three already: the ordinary small brown one called _kakara_, the huge red one found in deep water, and the black, hairy kind, whose pounded-up body is mixed with grated coconut to extract the oil. This latter is called _unga_; in the old days the lowest class of Rarotonga society was known by the same name--meaning, I suppose, that all of their property could be carried on their backs. The common variety is a good deal like the robber crab in habits; the natives go so far as to say that it is the same creature, in different stages of its existence. I doubt this theory, for while there are plenty of the little _kakara_ on the volcanic islands, the robber crab is very rare; he lives on the atolls, and to my mind it is incredible that he should journey from island to island, through leagues of deep sea. Like his formidable relative, the _kakara_ spends most of his time ashore, frequenting the bush along the water's edge, where he lies hidden throughout the day in a hole or under a pile of leaves. His first duty of the evening is a trip to salt water, for he seems to need a thorough wetting once in each twenty-four hours. After his bath he heads back for the bush to begin his nightly search for food--nearly any kind of edible refuse--a dead fish on the beach, the fallen fruit of a pandanus, a coconut, opened by rat or flying fox, and containing a few shreds of meat.

The size of the _kakara_ can be judged from his shell, which may be as small as a thimble or as large as an orange. The creature inside is marvelously adapted to the life he leads. His soft and muscular body curls into the spiral of the shell and is securely anchored by a twist of the tail. The fore-end of the crab, which protrudes from the shell when he is in motion, reminds one of a tiny lobster; the same stalk eyes, the same legs, the same strong claws. When alarmed he snaps back into his mobile fortress, and you perceive that legs and claws fold into a flat armored barrier, sealing up perfectly the entrance of the shell. Sit still and watch him; presently the claws unfold cautiously and he emerges little by little, feelers waving and eyes peering about in a ludicrously apprehensive manner. Finally he gathers courage and starts off for the bush at his curious rolling gait.

One might suppose the hermit crab the least social of living tilings, but in reality he is gregarious and seems to enjoy the company of his friends. They wander in little bands; very often one finds two or three small ones perched on the back of a larger comrade and enjoying an effortless trip across the beach to the lagoon. One afternoon I came upon three of them traveling in single file; the last member of the party--a frail little chap--crunched under the heel of my boot before I saw him. I stopped a moment in regret and saw that the two other crabs were also stopping--warned, by I know not what obscure sense, that all was not well with their friend. They drew together as they halted, and went through a hasty and obviously anxious exchange of ideas--face to face, with feelers waving nervously. One was reminded irresistibly of a pair of fussy little old gentlemen, halted in the street to decide which should do an unpleasant errand. At length one of the two settled himself to wait, while the other faced about and shambled off briskly to the rear. A few seconds brought him to what was left of his unfortunate comrade; his eyes seemed to start from his head as he felt over the crushed wreck. A moment later he turned and hastened back even faster than he had come. His arrival had an air of palpitating excitement; I fancied I felt transmitted to me a tiny thrill of horror at the news about to be communicated. This time the four antennae fairly vibrated--I imagined the conversation going on an inch above the ground.

"My God!" announced the bearer of ill tidings, breathlessly. "Poor Bill is dead!"

"Bill dead!" exclaimed the other, shocked in spite of his incredulity; "but no, you must be wrong--what could have killed him?"

"I don't know; he's dead all the same--crushed and mangled--it upset me fearfully."

"Come, come--you've been seeing things; he must have taken a short cut to the beach."

"I tell you he's dead; come and have a look if you don't believe me." So off they went together for a look at the corpse, and I left them to mourn their friend--perhaps to eat him.

If you want to see a curious sight get a hermit crab some day and pick up half a dozen empty shells of the size to fit him. Lay the shells on the sand in a circle a few inches across, extract the crab without hurting him from his house, and set him down naked among the empty shells. To get him out, by the way, is not so easy as it sounds, but you can do it by taking hold of his claws and maintaining a steady, gentle pull; in time the muscles of his tail will tire and his grip relax. You will be amused when you see his first attempts to walk without his shell, which weighs three or four times as much as the tenant; it is precisely as a man might act, set down on some planet where gravity is weaker than on our earth. Naked, helpless, and worried--_tres, tres inquiet_--the crab makes a dash for one of the shells, gives it a hasty inspection with his feelers, finds something not quite right, and hobbles off to the next one. Perhaps this suits him. He faces about, in goes his tail to take a grip on the whorls, he snaps in and out a few times as if trying the strategic possibilities of the new quarters, and next moment you will see him ambling off blissfully toward the bush.

The chase of the hermit crab is tame sport, no doubt, but not entirely without interest. One evening we set out just after dark, bucket and torch in hand--not the old South Sea torch of coconut leaf, but the modern tube of galvanized iron, filled with kerosene and plugged with burlap, which acts as a wick. The high beach is best at this hour, for one's quarry is beginning to emerge from the bush for the evening dip, and those that have passed will leave spoor in the soft coral sand. Here is the track of a small one, winding toward the water in eccentric curves and zigzags; follow it and you find him, motionless in the torchlight, hoping to escape notice. He goes into the pail with a clang--you can hear his feet scratching vainly at the smooth sides. There were not many about on this stretch of beach; they are uncertain in their habits and seem to be great wanderers. Here is the track of a monster, broad and corrugated like the trail of a miniature Whippet Tank; the spoor leads to the lagoon--no signs of him at the water's edge--he has doubled back. Lift up that rotten coconut frond ... an _unga_, black, hairy, armed with a vicious pair of claws; you can hear him raging in the pail, a noise halfway between a whine and a growl--a crab with a voice!

A stroll of an hour or two along the btuch usually procures enough bait for a day's fishing, and one turns inland to follow the road home. Sometimes, when the new moon has set behind the Avarua peaks and thick darkness settles over the bush--when the surf murmurs almost maudibly in a stillness broken by the plunge of a fish in the lagoon, or the grating screech of a flying-fox, quarreling with his mates in the palm tops--one is not sorry when the lights of the plantation begin to glimmer through the trees.

We went to bed early that evening, for we had to be up long before daylight to catch the first of the flood tide, but these island nights are not meant for sleep--I was soon up again, to spend a couple of hours alone on the veranda. The feel of the air was like a caress; neither hot nor cold, and perfumed with the scents of strange flowers--waxen _Tiare Tahiti_, sweet and heady frangipani, languorous Queen of the Night. In the mango tree behind the house a mynah twittered--a drowsy overture to one of their abrupt nocturnal choruses. They are quaint birds, the mynahs; introduced to the Islands many years ago, they have increased amazingly in this friendly environment, where they live in a state of half-domesticated familiarity with mankind. One sees them everywhere, hopping fearlessly about the streets of villages, fluttering to the table to finish the bread crumbs left after a meal, perched on the backs of cattle in the coconut groves. They are intensely gregarious, gathering in large flocks at sunset to roost in some thick-foliaged tree--orange, mango, or alligator pear. From time to time during the night, with an abruptness and perfect unison that make one suspect the presence of a feathered leader of the orchestra, the two or three hundred members of the colony burst into deafening song--a chorus which lasts perhaps twenty seconds, and stops as suddenly as it began.

At last I knocked the ashes out of my pipe and turned in; at intervals, before sleep came, I heard the far-off thud of a ripe coconut, or the faint slither and crash of an old frond, falling from a palm. We were awakened at three o'clock by the cook's announcement that coffee was ready; it is a pleasure to live where dressing is only a matter of slipping on a fresh singlet and hitching the _pareu_ tight about one's waist. Each man carried a pair of old shoes, for even the leathery feet of a native must be protected before he ventures on the live coral. Half a dozen plantation boys followed us to the beach, along a path leading down an avenue of coconuts, the slender boles illuminated by the glare of torchlight. In five minutes we were under the dark ironwoods at the water's edge, where the canoes are hauled up; without waiting for us, the boys plunged into the lagoon---half swimming, half wading toward the reef--torches held aloft in their left hands.

The tide was very low; we had only a short paddle to the shallow water on the inner side of the barrier. It was dead calm--ideal weather for the spear--but there had been a storm somewhere to the south; lines of tall glassy combers, faintly visible in the starlight, were curling with the splitting reports of field artillery--crashing down on the reef until the coral beneath us seemed to tremble at each shock. The eastern sky had not yet begun to pale--the constellations glimmered with the soft glow of the tropics: the Southern Cross, Orion, and the Pleiades.

When the water was only knee-deep we moored the canoe to a coral mushroom and went overboard in bare legs and tucked-up _pareus_. Wading slowly, about twenty feet apart--the lagoon so still and clear that it was not easy to tell where air ended and water began--nothing moving in the circle of torchlight could escape notice. It was necessary to watch the bottom and walk warily; the reef is a honeycomb of holes and passages through which the sea boils in at certain tides. Many of these holes, only a few feet in diameter at the surface, lead deep down and out into the caverns lining the edges of the pass--the haunts of octopus and the man-eating rock-cod called _tonu_. A faint ripple revealed a big blue parrot fish skulking in the shadow of a bowlder; one of the native boys slipped his spear close before he thrust with a skill that needs years to acquire. He killed the fish with a stab just where the head joins the body, and strung it on the strip of hibiscus bark at his waist.

These lagoons swarm with strange forms of life unknown in northern waters; until one learns one's way about there is a certain amount of danger in wading through the shallows along the reef. A sea scorpion passed close by us--a wicked-looking thing, all feelers and enormous fins; a touch of those spines would give you a nasty leg. An even more poisonous fish is found here--though fortunately not often: the _noo_, which lies buried in patches of coral sand. I have never seen one, and do not know its name in English, but the spines of its dorsal fin are said to be hollow like the fangs of a rattlesnake, and to inject a poison--when stepped on--that is apt to kill or cripple for life. The _totara_, or sea porcupine, is another odd creature, but not at all to be feared; at the approach of danger he blows himself up like a football, and once inflated, is proof against almost anything--I've seen a man hurl a heavy stone on one a dozen times without being able to burst him open. In a different way, the conger eels are nearly as hard to kill, particularly the big ones, which are no joke to handle when one is wading barelegged. One must be on the alert every moment--torch blazing, spear poised. One moment you jump on a mushroom of coral to avoid a pair of sea snakes, long, slender and spotted--active, fearless creatures whose bite is said to be a serious matter; a moment later you are slipping and scrambling at top speed to cut off some large fish, working his way through the shallows. One of the boys bagged a _patuki_--a young _tonu_; I was glad to have a look at the ugly little brute. He was only a foot long--a marvel of protective coloring, irregularly spotted and blotched so as to be nearly invisible against a background of coral. The size of the mouth, the power of the jaws, and the rows of cruel little teeth, convinced me that the full-grown fish must deserve the bad name given him by the pearl divers.

The light was gray and the cloud banks along the eastern horizon flushing pale rose when the boys extinguished their torches and set out across the lagoon, each one trailing a heavy string of fish. My host had had enough sport for once, but I love to be on the water at dawn, so when I had landed him I paddled out to the pass to fish for _titiara_. The current was slack and not a breath of wind stirred the lagoon. The light grew stronger; the contours of the island developed in sharp serrations against the sky; presently the sun rose.

I anchored the canoe in a fathom of water at the edge of the pass, allowing her to swing out over the depths. Through my water-glass I could examine the precipitous walls of the channel--fifty feet high, overhanging in places, seamed, pitted, broken by the dark mouths of caverns. Shoals of fish moved leisurely along the face of the coral--appearing and disappearing like nesting swallows, seen from a cliff-top: swinish parrot fish, bright blue and long as a man's arm; _taputapu_, spangled orange and black--stopping to nibble at the coral; slender pipefish; swift _nanue_; fish of extraordinary form and coloring--indescribable, perhaps undescribed. At last I saw what I was after--a school of _titiara_, working in from the sea.

I wonder if you know this fish; it is new to me, though I have been told that it exists in the northern Pacific. It is of the true game type--swift and rapacious--with the conformation of a mackerel, and related, I should say, to the pompano of American waters. The young ones, eight to ten inches long, and appearing at certain times of year, in great schools, are called _aturi_. When medium-sized--running from two pounds up to twelve--it is known as _titiara_ in the Cook Islands; _paihere_ in Tahiti and to the east. The fully grown fish, which attains a weight of a hundred pounds or more, is called _urua_. These different names for stages in the life of the same fish are interesting to me, for they illustrate the richness, in certain directions, of a language so poor in others. We have such terms in English, but they are rapidly becoming obsolete; I doubt, for example, if the average man at home knows that a young salmon is called a grilse, and a still younger one, a parr.

One's outfit for this kind of fishing consists of a pail of hermit crabs, a couple of stones for crushing them, a hundred feet of stout cotton line, a single hook on a length of piano wire, and several dozen pebbles, to be used as sinkers. First of all you smash the shells of a few crabs, tear off the soft bodies for bait, and crush the claws and legs to a paste. This chum is thrown overboard little by little to attrach the fish and keep them about the canoe. When a glance through the water-glass shows that the fish you want are gathered beneath you, a pebble is attached to the line by means of a special hitch, which can be undone by a jerk. Now you lower the line over the side until the bait is in the required position; a sharp pull frees the sinker, and you are ready for the first client. The theory of the detachable sinker is that it enables one to fish at a distance from the boat without having the hook rest on the bottom, where it is apt to foul in the coral.

On this occasion my sport was ruined by one of those tantalizing incidents which lend charm to every variety of angling. I had caught two fish and was lowering my line to try for a third, when the small fry gobbling my chum suddenly scattered and disappeared. Next moment a monstrous _titiara_--almost in the _urua_ class--loomed up from the depths, seized my bait, and made off so fast that the line fairly scorched my fingers. My tackle was not designed for such game as this--there was nothing to do but try to play him; but when only a yard of line remained in my hands I was forced to check the rush. A powerful wrench, the line slackened dead, he was off, the light hook had snapped at the bend--and I had no other! The old, old story--it is never the fingerlings that get away.

Cut into filets and soaked for six hours in lime juice, my two fish made a raw _hors d'oeuvre_ of the most delicate kind. I took a plate of it to the house of a neighbor who had asked me to dinner, and this old-timer in the South Seas pronounced it of the very first order. You would enjoy knowing him: he has been in this part of the world since the 'seventies--supercargo, skipper, trader on islands seldom visited even to-day. Now he is retired and lives on a small plantation which represents the savings of a lifetime. After dinner, as we sat on his wide veranda with pipes going and glasses on the table between us, he told me a tale so curious that I cannot resist repeating it to you--the story of an island far away to the north and west--an island I shall call _Ariri_.

Atolls are by nature lonely places, but of all atolls in the Pacific, Ariri is perhaps the loneliest--never visited, far off from any group, out of the paths of navigation. Not very many years ago Ariri was a bit of no man's land; though marked on the chart, its existence was ignored by the Powers--it had never been inhabited, no flag had ever been raised above its benches of dazzling coral sand. At that time, as for centuries before, the sea birds nested undisturbed on the islets within the reef, where all day long the water flashed blue in the sunlight and the trade wind hummed a song of loneliness among the palm tops.

Then a day came when two Frenchmen--shrewd traders and planters of coconuts in the Tuamotu--spoke of Ariri. Here was an island capable of an annual hundred tons of copra, and claimed by no man; they would plant it and reap the rewards of enterprise. The chief difficulty was to find a superintendent to take charge of the project; it needed a white man, but white men willing to undertake a task of such poignant loneliness were not to be found every day in Papeete. As it chanced, their man was at hand.

The natives called him Tino--perhaps his name had once been King. Years among the islands had obliterated whatever stamp of nationality he might have possessed; it was rumored that he was English by birth, and also that he had held a commission in the Confederate navy. Tall, strong, and of fine presence, with a full blond beard and eyes of reckless blue, a great singer and dancer--always the merriest at a feast and the idol of the women, a remarkable linguist and story-teller, drunken, brave, witty, and unprincipled--Tino was of a type which thrives in Polynesia.

When they offered him the position of superintendent at Ariri the two Frenchmen were not without misgivings. He was on the beach at the time, though the only sign of that condition was an unusual laxity in returning the favor when a friend invited him to drink. Tino had no money, but that was his sole limitation; each of a dozen native families vied for the honor of transferring his mat and camphorwood box to their house; when evening came he had his choice of a dozen invitations to dine, and a dozen girls competed for the joy of doing his laundry and making hats for him. But this easy-going philosophy and lack of worry over a situation scarcely respectable in the eyes of Papeete's business men were calculated to sow distrust. In the case of Ariri, however, it was difficult to see how he could go astray; there would be no liquor--they would see to that--and with no visitors and no means of leaving the island there seemed little chance of trouble. Tino was a famous handler of native labor.

The agreement was made and in due time a schooner sailed into the Ariri lagoon to land Tino and a score of Raiatea boys with their wives. The Frenchmen took care to leave no boat capable of putting out to sea, but as there were houses and sheds to build they left a considerable variety of tools and gear, in addition to a year's supply of medicine, food, and clothing. A day or two later the schooner sailed away.

The superintendent called his men together and appointed a foreman. The main island was to be cleared, rows staked out, and the nuts brought for seed to be planted in such a manner. Before this work began, a house was to be built for each family. That was all, except that Tino needed five men at once for special work of his own--let them be those most skilled in woodworking. With that he seems to have dismissed the business of planting coconuts from his mind.

There was a certain amount of hibiscus on the island, as well as the trees called _tou_ and _puka_. In seven months' time, with the help of his men, Tino cut down trees, sawed out timbers and planking, and built a forty-foot cutter--sturdy, fast, and seaworthy. Her mast was the smoothed-down trunk of an old coconut palm; her sails a patchwork of varied fabrics; her cordage of cinnet, twisted and braided coconut fiber--the work of women, incredibly skillful and patient. For anchor, she carried a grooved coral bowlder, and her water tanks were five-gallon kerosene tins. At the end of the seventh month this improbable vessel was launched, rigged, and provisioned. Tino bade his men farewell and set sail--promising to return--to the westward, fearless and alone. His only instrument was a compass, and yet he made the passage to Fiji--twelve hundred miles--in fifteen days.

I forgot to say that before his departure he had ordered the top of a tall palm chopped off, and on this stout flagpole had hoisted a homemade edition of the Union Jack. In Fiji he wasted no time. At the office of the High Commissioner of the Pacific he announced that he had taken possession of Ariri in the name of the British Empire, and petitioned that a fifty years' lease of the island--at nominal rate--be given him. The request was granted; a few days later Tino was again at sea, still alone, and headed for his little kingdom.

The story is that he bought a sextant in Fiji, but at any rate, something went wrong and he was fifty days without a landfall. Think of this extraordinary man, drifting about alone in his absurd boat--careless, self-confident, and unworried! Even Captain Slocum, said to have navigated thousands of miles of ocean with no other chronometer than a Connecticut alarm clock, performed no madder feat. Tino fetched up at a big lagoon island, six or seven hundred miles out of his course. It is enough to say of his stop there that he spent a week and left, loaded down with provisions and drinking nuts, and accompanied by five of the younger and prettier girls of the village.

This time all went smoothly; the plural honeymoon party enjoyed a merry voyage to Ariri, where Tino established his large and amicable family, and proceeded to the less diverting business of planting coconuts. A year passed; a day came when the schooner from Tahiti rounded to in the lagoon and sent a boat ashore. Accompanied by his twenty men, Tino met the supercargo on the beach. Copra from the old trees? There was not much, but what there was belonged to him. This was a British island, and he was the lessee; here were the papers to prove it. He regretted that as the proprietor he could not allow strangers ashore--demoralize the labor, you know. The Frenchmen fumed, but they were too shrewd not to recognize defeat.

The years passed in peaceful and idyllic fashion; a score of Tino's half-savage offspring fished and swam and raced along the beach. Then one day Tino fell ill.

While he lay in bed, despondent, and brooding over the unfamiliar experience, a schooner entered the lagoon and dropped anchor opposite the settlement. Her boat--trim and smartly manned as a yacht's gig--brought ashore the first missionary to set foot on Ariri. Tino was difficult in the beginning, but the moment was perhaps the weakest of his life; when the missionary left he had married the sick man to Manini--his favorite wife--and received permission to install a native teacher for the children of the island.

It amuses me to think of Tino's recovery and probable regret over his weakness--the thing is so natural, so human; bodily illness and spiritual reform have always gone hand in hand. But his word had been given in good faith; he finished the church and schoolhouse he had promised, and in due time installed the teacher among his flock. The supreme irony of the affair comes at this point, for the native teacher, on the lookout for a flirtation, was indiscreet enough to select Manini as the object of his attentions, and ended by being caught with her under circumstances of the most delicate and compromising nature. As Tino said afterward:

"He had a score of women to choose from, beside four of mine who wouldn't have mattered--and then he picked on Manini! Why, damn it all! man, I was a bit fond of the old girl!"

The teacher paid dearly for his indiscretion. Tino lashed him to a post in the sun, where he would probably have died if the missionary schooner had not appeared just at that time. Cowed and whimpering, the culprit was thrown into a canoe by the indignant husband, who pushed off and paddled angrily alongside the schooner.

"Here's your bleeding missionary!" he roared out, as he hurled the struggling native into the lagoon. "I'm through with him--from now on this island will have to get along with me for teacher and missionary and king!"

That is all of the story, except that Tino died not long ago--happy, rich enough, and surrounded by a numerous tribe of grandchildren.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*At the House of Tari*

You will not find Ahu Ahu--under that name--on any chart, and it would be equally useless to search for Nukutere; yet both islands exist, and I like their ancient names better than the modern ones. Glance at your maps and you will see the eastern Pacific dotted with islands bearing names like Jarvis, Maiden, and Starbuck--names which suggest no more than the thought of some wandering skipper, immortalizing himself by adding new dangers to the chart. Then think of Nukutere--the immemorial name of an island known wherever the old Polynesians gathered to tell their tales; Nukutere: The Object of the War Fleet's Voyage ... it needs a dull imagination not to feel a stir.