White Shadows in the South Seas Part 23

"The High Priest went to the _Pekia_ again, and when he came away he ran without stopping for two days and a night, till he fell without breath, as one dead, and foam was on his mouth. The G.o.ds were angry.

Still there was no war.

"Then came Tomefitu from Vait-hua. He was chief of that valley, having been adopted by a woman of Vait-hua, but his father and his mother were of Taaoa. He had heard of the slaying of Beaten to Death, his kinsman, and he was hot in the bowels. _Aue!_ The thunder of the heavens was as the voice of Tomefitu when angered. The earth groaned where he walked. He knew the _Farani_ and their tricks. He had guns from the whalers, and he was afraid of nothing save the Ghost Woman of the Night. Again the warriors came to the High Place, and now there were many drums."

Kahuiti sprang to his feet. He struck the corner post of the hut with his fist. His eyes burned.

"'Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe!

Teputuhe! Teputuhe! Teputuhe!

Tuti! Tuti! Tutuituiti!"

"That was what the war drums said. The sound of them rolled from the Pekia, and every man who could throw a spear or hold a war-club came to their call."

Kahuiti's soul was rapt in the story. His voice had the deep tone of the violoncello, powerful, vibrant, and colorful. He had lived in that strange past, and the things he recalled were precious memories.

The sound of the drums, as he echoed them in the curious tone-words of Marquesan, thrilled me through. I heard the booming of the ten-foot war-drums, their profound and far-reaching call like the roaring of lions in the jungle. I saw the warriors with their spears of cocoanut-wood and their deadly clubs of ironwood carved and shining with oil, their baskets of polished stones slung about their waists, and their slings of fiber, dancing in the sacred grove of the Pekia, its shadows lighted by the blaze of the flickering candlenuts and the scented sandalwood.

"'I am The Wind That Lays Low The Mighty Tree. I am The Wave That Fills The Canoe and Delivers The People To The Sharks!' said Tomefitu.

'The flesh of my kinsman fills the bellies of the men of Atuona, and the G.o.ds say war!

"'There is war!' said Tomefitu. 'We must bring offerings to the G.o.ds.

Five men will go with me to Otoputo and bring back the gifts. I will bring back to you the bodies of six of the Atuona pigs. Prepare!

When we have eaten, the chiefs of Atuona will come to Taaoa, and then you will fight!

"'Make ready with dancing. Polish spears and gather stones for the slings. Koe, who is my man, will be obeyed while I am gone. I have spoken,' said Tomefitu. That night Tomefitu and I, with four others, went silently to Otoputo, the dividing rock that looks down on the right into the valley of Taaoa and on the left into Atuona. There we lay among rocks and bushes and spied upon the feet of the enemy.

That man who separated himself from others and came our way to seek food, or to visit at the house of a friend, him we secretly fell upon, and slew.

"Thus we did to the six named by Tomefitu, and as we killed them, we sent them back by others to the High Place. There the warriors feasted upon them and gained strength for battle.

"Then, missing so many of their clan, the head men of Atuona came to Otoputo, and shouted to us to give word of the absent. We shouted back, saying that those men had been roasted upon the fire and eaten, and that thus we would do to all men of Atuona. And we laughed at them."

Kahuiti emitted a hearty guffaw at thought of the trick played upon those devoured enemies.

"But Tufetu, the grandfather of my friend Mouth of G.o.d?" I persisted.

"_Epo!_ There was war. The men of Atuona gathered at Otupoto, and rushed down upon us. We met them at the Stinking Springs, and there I killed Tufetu, uncle of Sliced and Distributed and Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted On A Stick. I pierced him through with my spear at a cocoanut-tree's length away. I was the best spear-thrower of Taaoa. We drove the Atuonans through the gorge of the Stinking Springs and over the divide, and I ate the right arm of Tufetu that had wielded the war-club. That gives a man the strength of his enemy."

He turned again to plaiting the rope of _faufee_.

"_O ia aneihe_, I have finished," he said. "Will you drink _kava_?"

"No, I will not drink _kava_," I said sternly. "Kahuiti, is it not good that the eating of men is stopped?"

The majestic chief looked at me, his deep brown eyes looking child-like in their band of blue ink. For ten seconds he stared at me fixedly, and then smiled uncertainly, as may have Peter the fisherman when he was chided for cutting off the ear of one of Judas' soldiers. He was of the old order, and the new had left him unchanged. He did not reply to my question, but sipped his bowl of _kava_.

CHAPTER XXI

The crime of Huahine for love of Weaver of Mats; story of Tahia's white man who was eaten; the disaster that befell Honi, the white man who used his harpoon against his friends.

During my absence in Taaoa there had been crime and scandal in my own valley. Andre Bauda met me on the beach road as I returned and told me the tale. The giant Tahitian sailor of the schooner _Papeite_, Huahine, was in the local jail, charged with desertion; a serious offense, to which his plea was love of a woman, and that woman Weaver of Mats, who had her four names tattooed on her right arm.

Huahine, seeing her upon the beach, had felt a flame of love that nerved him to risk hungry shark and battering surf. Carried from her even in the moment of meeting, he had resisted temptation until the schooner was sailing outside the Bay of Traitors, running before a breeze to the port of Tai-o-hae, and then he had flung himself naked into the sea and taken the straight course back to Atuona, reaching his sweetheart after a seven-hour's struggle with current and breaker.

Flag, the gendarme, found him in her hut, and brought him to the calaboose.

The following morning I attended his trial. He came before his judge elegantly dressed, for, besides a red _pareu_ about his middle, he wore a pink silk shawl over his shoulders. Both were the gift of Weaver of Mats, as he had come to her without scrip or sc.r.a.p. He needed little clothing, as his skin was very brown and his strong body magnificent.

He was an acceptable prisoner to Bauda, who had charge of the making and repair of roads and bridges, so Huahine was quickly sentenced and put to work with others who were paying their taxes by labor.

Weaver of Mats moved with him to the prison, where they lived together happily, cooking their food in the garden and sleeping on mats beneath the palms.

On all the _paepaes_ it was said that Huahine would probably be sent to Tahiti, as there are strict laws against deserting ships and against vagabondage in the Marquesas. Meantime the prisoner was happy.

Many a Tahitian and white sailor gazes toward these islands as a haven from trouble, and in Huahine's exploit I read the story of many a poor white who in the early days cast away home and friends and arduous toil to dwell here in a breadfruity harem.

"There is a tale told long ago by a man of Hanamenu to a traveler named Christian," I said to Haabunai, the carver, while we sat rolling panda.n.u.s cigarettes in the cool of the evening. "It runs thus:

"Some thirty years ago a sailor from a trading schooner that had put into the bay for sandalwood was badly treated by his skipper, who refused him sh.o.r.e-leave. So, his bowels hot with anger, this sailor determined to desert his hard and unthanked toil, wed some island heiress, and live happy ever after. Therefore one evening he swam ash.o.r.e, found a maid to his liking, and was hidden by her until the ship departed.

"Now Tahia was a good wife, and loved her beautiful white man; all that a wife could do she did, cooking his food, bathing his feet, rolling cigarettes for him all day long as he lay upon the mats. But her father in time became troubled, and there was grumbling among the people, for the white man would not work.

"He would not climb the palm to bring down the nuts; he lay and laughed on his _paepae_ in the Meinui, the season of breadfruit, when all were busy; and when they brought him rusty old muskets to care for, he turned his back upon them. Sometimes he fished, going out in a canoe that Tahia paddled, and making her fix the bait on the hook, but he caught few fish.

"'_Aue te hanahana, aua ho'i te kaikai_,' said his father-in-law. 'He who will not labor, neither shall he eat.' But the white man laughed and ate and labored not.

"A season pa.s.sed and another, and there came a time of little rain.

The bananas were few, and the breadfruit were not plentiful. One evening, therefore, the old men met in conference, and this was their decision: 'Rats are becoming a nuisance, and we will abate them.'

"Next morning the father sent Tahia on an errand to another valley.

Then men began to dig a large oven in the earth before Tahia's house, where the white man lay on the mats at ease. Presently he looked and wondered and looked again. And at length he rose and came down to the oven, saying, 'What's up?'

"'Plenty _kaikai_. Big pig come by and by,' they said.

"So he stood waiting while they dug, and no pig came. Then he said, 'Where is the pig?' And at that moment the _u'u_ crashed upon his skull, so that he fell without life and lay in the oven. Wood was piled about him, and he was baked, and there was feasting in Hanamenu.

"In the twilight Tahia came over the hills, weary and hungry, and asked for her white man. 'He has gone to the beach,' they said.

"He will return soon, therefore sit and eat, my daughter," said her father, and gave her the meat wrapped in leaves. So she ate heartily, and waited for her husband. And all the feasters laughed at her, so that little by little she learned the truth. She said nothing, but went away in the darkness.

"And it is written, Haabunai, that searchers for the _mei_ came upon her next day in the upper valley, and she was hanging from a tall palm-tree with a rope of _purau_ about her neck."

"That may be a true story," said Haabunai. "Though it is the custom here to eat the _eva_ when one is made sick by life. And very few white men were ever eaten in the islands, because they knew too much and were claimed by some woman of power." He paused for a moment to puff his cigarette.

"Now there was a sailor whom my grandfather ate, and he was white.

But there was ample cause for that, for never was a man so provoking.

"He was a harpooner on a whale-ship, a man who made much money, but he liked rum, and when his ship left he stayed behind. They sent two boats ash.o.r.e and searched for him, but my grandfather sent my father with him into the hills, and after three days the captain thought he had been drowned, and sailed away without him.

"My grandfather gave him my father's sister to wife, and like that man of whom you told, he was much loved by her, though he would do nothing but make _namu enata_ and drink it and dance and sleep.