White Shadows in the South Seas Part 3

"To put the fear of G.o.d in the n.i.g.g.e.r's hearts," were the words of many a sanguinary captain and crew. They did not, of course, mean that literally. They meant the fear of themselves, and of all whites.

They used the name of G.o.d in vain, for after a century and more of such intermittent effort the Polynesians have small fear or faith for the G.o.d of Christians, despite continuous labors of missionaries.

G.o.d seems to have forgotten them.

The French made the islands their political possessions with little difficulty. The Marquesans had no king or single chief. There were many tribes and clans, and it was easy to persuade or compel petty chiefs to sign declarations and treaties. But it was not easy to kill the independence of the people, and France virtually abandoned and retook the islands several times, her rule fluctuating with political conditions at home.

There were wars, horrible, b.l.o.o.d.y scenes, when the clansmen slew the whites and ate them, and the bones of many a gallant French officer and sea-captain have moldered where they were heaped after the orgy following victory. But, as always, the white slew his hundreds to the natives' one, and in time he drove the devil of liberty and defense of native land from the heart of the Marquesan.

Before the French achieved this, however, the white had sowed a crop of deadly evils among the Marquesans that cut them down faster than war, and left them desolate, dying, pa.s.sing to extinction.

As I looked from the deck of the _Morning Star_ I was struck by the fittingness of the scene. Fatu-hiva had been left behind and Hiva-oa, our destination, was before us, bleak and threatening. To my eyes it appeared as it had been in the eyes of the gentler Polynesians of old time, the abode of demons and of a race of terrible warriors.

Hence descended the Marquesans, Vikings of the Pacific, in giant canoes, and sprang upon the fighting men of the Tahitians, the Raiateans and the Paumotans, slaughtering their hundreds and carrying away scores to feast upon in the High Places.

"Mauri i te popoi a ee i te au marere i hiti tovau.

Ia tari a oe. Tari a rutu mai i hea?

A rutu mai i toerau i hitia!

O te au marere i hiti atu a Vaua a ratu i reira A rutu i toerau roa!

Areare te hai o Nu'u-hiva roa.

I te are e huti te tai a Vavea."

"The spirit of the morning rides the flying vapor that rises salt from the sea.

Bear on! Bear on! And strike--where?

Strike to the northeast!

The vapor flies to the far rim of the Sea of Atolls.

Strike there! Strike far north!

The sea casts up distant Nuka-Hiva, Land of the War Fleet, where the waves are towering billows."

This was the ancient chant of the Raiateans, sung in the old days before the whites came, when they thought of the deeds that were done by the more-than-human men who lived on these desolate islands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Harbor of Tai-o-hae]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Schooner _Fetia Taiao_ in the Bay of Traitors The little isle behind the schooner is Hanake]

CHAPTER IV

Anchorage of Taha-Uka; Exploding Eggs, and his engagement as valet; inauguration of the new governor; dance on the palace lawn.

As we approached Hiva-oa the giant height of Temetiu slowly lifted four thousand feet above the sea, swathed in blackest clouds. Below, purple-black valleys came one by one into view, murky caverns of dank vegetation. Towering precipices, seamed and riven, rose above the vast welter of the gray sea.

Slowly we crept into the wide Bay of Traitors and felt our way into the anchorage of Taha-Uka, a long and narrow pa.s.sage between frowning cliffs, spray-dashed walls of granite lashed fiercely by the sea. All along the bluffs were cocoanut-palms, magnificent, waving their green fronds in the breeze. Darker green, the mountains towered above them, and far on the higher slopes we saw wild goats leaping from crag to crag and wild horses running in the upper valleys.

A score or more of white ribbons depended from the lofty heights, and through the binoculars I saw them to be waterfalls. They were like silver cords swaying in the wind, and when brought nearer by the gla.s.ses, I saw that some of them were heavy torrents while others, gauzy as wisps of chiffon, hardly veiled the black walls behind them.

The whole island dripped. The air was saturated, the decks were wet, and along the shelves of basalt that jutted from the cliffs a hundred blow-holes spouted and roared. In ages of endeavor the ocean had made chambers in the rock and cut pa.s.sages to the top, through which, at every surge of the pounding waves, the water rushed and rose high in the air.

Iron-bound, the mariner calls this coast, and the word makes one see the powerful, severe mold of it. Molten rock fused in subterranean fires and cast above the sea cooled into these ominous ridges, and stern unyielding walls.

There upon the deck I determined not to leave until I had lived for a time amid these wild scenes. My intention had been to voyage with the _Morning Star_, returning with her to Tahiti, but a mysterious voice called to me from the dusky valleys. I could not leave without penetrating into those abrupt and melancholy depths of forest, without endeavoring, though ever so feebly, to stir the cold brew of legend and tale fast disappearing in stupor and forgetfulness.

Lying Bill protested volubly; he liked company and would regret my contribution to the expense account. Gedge joined him in serious opposition to the plan, urging that I would not be able to find a place to live, that there was no hotel, club, lodging, or food for a stranger. But I was determined to stay, though I must sleep under a breadfruit-tree. As I was a mere roamer, with no calendar or even a watch, I had but to fetch my few belongings ash.o.r.e and be a Marquesan.

These belongings I gathered together, and finding me obdurate, Lying Bill reluctantly agreed to set them on the beach.

On either side of Taha-Uka inlet are landing-places, one in front of a store, the other leading only to the forest. These are stairways cut in the basaltic wall of the cliffs, and against them the waves pound continuously. The beach of Taha-Uka was a mile from where we lay and not available for traffic, but around a shoulder of the bluffs was hidden the tiny bay of Atuona, where goods could be landed.

While we discussed this, around those jutting rocks shot a small out-rigger canoe, frail and hardly large enough to hold the body of a slender Marquesan boy who paddled it. About his middle he wore a red and yellow _pareu_, and his naked body was like a small and perfect statue as he handled his tiny craft. When he came over the side I saw that he was about thirteen years old and very handsome, tawny in complexion, with regular features and an engaging smile.

His name, he said, was Nakohu, which means Exploding Eggs. This last touch was all that was needed; without further ado I at once engaged him as valet for the period of my stay in the Marquesas. His duties would be to help in conveying my luggage ash.o.r.e, to aid me in the mysteries of cooking breadfruit and such other edibles as I might discover, and to converse with me in Marquesan. In return, he was to profit by the honor of being attached to my person, by an option on such small articles as I might leave behind on my departure, and by the munificent salary of about five cents a day. His grat.i.tude and delight knew no bounds.

Hardly had the arrangement been made, when a whaleboat rowed by Marquesans followed in the wake of the canoe, and a tall, rangy Frenchman climbed aboard the _Morning Star_. He was Monsieur Andre Bauda, agent special, _commissaire_, postmaster; a _beau sabreur_, veteran of many campaigns in Africa, dressed in khaki, medals on his chest, full of gay words and fierce words, drinking his rum neat, and the pink of courtesy. He had come to examine the ship's papers, and to receive the new governor.

A look of blank amazement appeared upon the round face of M. L'Hermier des Plantes when it was conveyed to him that this solitary whaleboat had brought a solitary white to welcome him to his seat of government. He had been a.s.siduously preparing for his reception for many hours and was immaculately dressed in white duck, his legs in high, brightly-polished boots, his two stripes in velvet on his sleeve, and his military cap shining. He knew no more about the Marquesas than I, having come directly via Tahiti from France, and he was plainly dumfounded and dismayed. Was all that tender care of his whiskers to be wasted on scenery?

However, after a drink or two he resignedly took his belongings, and dropping into the wet and dirty boat with Bauda, he lifted an umbrella over his gaudy cap and disappeared in the rain.

"'E's got a bloomin' nice place to live in," remarked Lying Bill.

"Now, if 'e 'd a-been 'ere when I come 'e 'd a-seen something! I come 'ere thirty-five years ago when I was a young kid. I come with a skipper and I was the only crew. Me and him, and I was eighteen, and the boat was the _Victor_. I lived 'ere and about for ten years.

Them was the days for a little excitement. There was a chief, Mohuho, who'd a-killed me if I 'adn't been _tapu'd_ by Vaekehu, the queen, wot took a liking to me, me being a kid, and white. I've seen Mohuho shoot three natives from cocoanut-trees just to try a new gun. 'E was a bad 'un, 'e was. There was something doing every day, them days.

G.o.d, wot it is to be young!"

A little later Lying Bill, Ducat, and I, with my new valet's canoe in the wake of our boat, rounded the cliffs that had shut off our view of Atuona Valley. It lay before us, a long and narrow stretch of sand behind a foaming and heavy surf; beyond, a few scattered wooden buildings among palm and banian-trees, and above, the ribbed gaunt mountains shutting in a deep and gloomy ravine. It was a lonely, beautiful place, ominous, melancholy, yet majestic.

"b.l.o.o.d.y Hiva-oa," this island was called. Long after the French had subdued by terror the other isles of the group, Hiva-oa remained obdurate, separate, and untamed. It was the last stronghold of brutishness, of cruel chiefs and fierce feuds, of primitive and terrible customs. And of "the man-eating isle of Hiva-oa" Atuona Valley was the capital.

We landed on the beach dry-shod, through the skill of the boat-steerer and the strength of the Tahitian sailors, who carried us through the surf and set my luggage among the thick green vines that met the tide. We were dressed to call upon the governor, whose inauguration was to take place that afternoon, and leaving my belongings in care of the faithful Exploding Eggs, we set off up the valley.

The rough road, seven or eight feet wide, was raised on rocks above the jungle and was bordered by giant banana plants and cocoanuts. At this season all was a swamp below us, the orchard palms standing many feet deep in water and mud, but their long green fronds and the darker tangle of wild growth on the steep mountain-sides were beautiful.

The government house was set half a mile farther on in the narrowing ravine, and on the way we pa.s.sed a desolate dwelling, squalid, set in the marsh, its battered verandas and open doors disclosing a wretched mingling of native bareness with poverty-stricken European fittings. On the tottering veranda sat a ragged Frenchman, bearded and s.h.a.ggy-haired, and beside him three girls as blonde as German _Madchens_. Their white delicate faces and blue eyes, in such surroundings, struck one like a blow. The eldest was a girl of eighteen years, melancholy, though pretty, wearing like the others a dirty gown and no shoes or stockings. The man was in soiled overalls, and reeling drunk.

"That is Baufre," said Ducat. "He is always drunk. He married the daughter of an Irish trader, a former officer in the British Indian Light Cavalry. Baufre was a _sous-officier_ in the French forces here.

There is no native blood in those girls. What will become of them, I wonder?"

A few hundred yards further on was the palace. It was a wooden house of four or five rooms, with an ample veranda, surrounded by an acre of ground fenced in. The sward was the brilliantly green, luxuriant wild growth that in these islands covers every foot of earth surface.

Cocoanuts and mango-trees rose from this volunteer lawn, and under them a dozen rosebushes, thick with excessively fragrant bloom.

Pineapples grew against the palings, and a bed of lettuce flourished in the rear beside a tiny pharmacy, a kitchen, and a shelter for servants.

On the spontaneous verdure before the veranda three score Marquesans stood or squatted, the men in shirts and overalls and the women in tunics. Their skins, not brown nor red nor yellow, but tawny like that of the white man deeply tanned by the sun, reminded me again that these people may trace back their ancestry to the Caucasian cradle. The hair of the women was adorned with gay flowers or the leaves of the false coffee bush. Their single garments of gorgeous colors clung to their straight, rounded bodies, their dark eyes were soft and full of light as the eyes of deer, and their features, clean-cut and severe, were of cla.s.sic lines.

The men, tall and ma.s.sive, seemed awkwardly constricted in ill-fitting, blue cotton overalls such as American laborers wear over street-clothes. Their huge bodies seemed about to break through the flimsy bindings, and the carriage of their striking heads made the garments ridiculous. Most of them had fairly regular features on a large scale, their mouths wide, and their lips full and sensual.

They wore no hats or ornaments, though it has ever been the custom of all Polynesians to put flowers and wreaths upon their heads.

Men and women were waiting with a kind of apathetic resignation; melancholy and unresisting despair seemed the only spirit left to them.