White Shadows in the South Seas Part 30

"No," he replied. "There are one hundred and twenty people in Tai-o-hae now, and but a few are whites. Alas, _mon ami_, they do not set a good example. They mean well; they are brave men, but they do not keep the commandments. Here is a chart I drew showing the rise of the church since Peter. It is divided into twenty periods, and I have allotted the fifteenth to Joan. She well merits a period."

My mind continually harked back to the prompting of Pere Victorien concerning the horse and the girl of the jubilee.

"There were signs at the commemoration?" I interposed.

Pere Simeon glanced at me eagerly. His naivete was not of ignorance of men and their motives. He had confessed royalty, cannibals, pirates, and nuns. The souls of men were naked under his scrutiny.

But his faith burned like a lambent flame, and to win to the standard of the Maid of Orleans one who would listen was a duty owed her, and a rare chance to aid a fellow mortal.

He rose and brushed the cigarette ashes down the front of his frayed ca.s.sock as an old native woman responded to his call and brought another bottle of Bordeaux. The _nonos_ were incessantly active. I slapped at them constantly and sucked at the wounds they made. But he paid no attention to them at all except when they attacked him under his soutane; then he struck convulsively at the spot.

"G.o.d sends us such trials to brighten our crown," he said comfortingly. "I have seen white men dead from the _nonos_. They were not here in the old days, but since the jungle has overrun us because of depopulation, they are frightful. During the ma.s.s, when the priest cannot defend himself, they are worst, as if sent by the devil who hates the holy sacrifice. But, _mon vieux_, you were asking about those signs. _Alors_, I will give the facts to you, and you can judge."

He poured me a goblet of the wine; I removed my cotton coat, covered my hands with it, against the gadflies, and prepared to listen.

"Seven years before the great anniversary," said Pere Simeon, sipping his wine, "I thought out my plan. There would be ma.s.ses, vespers, benedictions, litanies, and choirs. But my mind was set upon a representation of the Maid as she rode into Rheims to crown the king after her victories. She was, you will remember, clothed all in white armor and rode a white horse, both the emblems of purity.

That was the note I would sound, for I believe too much had been made of Joan the warrior, Joan the heroine, and not enough of Joan the saint. Oh, _Monsieur_, there have been evil forces at work there!"

He clasped his thigh with both hands and groaned, and I knew that though a _nono_ had bitten him there, his anguish was more of soul than body. I lighted his cigarette, as he proceeded:

"Two things were needful above all; a handsome white horse and a Marquesan girl of virtue. Three years before the jubilee I was enabled, through a gift inspired by Joan, to buy a horse of that kind in Hiva-oa. I had this mare pastured on that island until the time came for bringing her here.

"Now as to the girl, I found in the nun's school a child who was beautiful, strong, and good. Her father was the captain of a foreign vessel and had dwelt here for a time; he was of your country. Of the mother I will not speak. The girl was everything to be desired. But this was seven years before the day of the fete. That was a difficulty.

"I stressed to the good sisters the absolute necessity of bringing up the child in the perfect path of sanct.i.ty. I had her dedicated to Joan, and special prayers were said by me and by the nuns that the evil one would not trap her into the sins of other Marquesan girls.

Also she was observed diligently. For seven years we watched and prayed, and _Monsieur_, we succeeded. I will not say that it was a miracle, but it was a very striking triumph for Joan.

"That for the human; now for the beast. A month before the fete I commissioned Captain Capriata to bring the mare to Tai-o-hae in his schooner. The animal came safely to the harbor. She was still on deck when a storm arose, and Capriata thought it best for him to lift his anchor and go to the open sea. The wind was driving hard toward the sh.o.r.e, and there was danger of shipwreck."

The old priest stood up and, leading me to a window, pointed to the extreme end of the horseshoe circle of the bay.

"See that point," he said. "Right there, just as Capriata swung his vessel to head for the sea, the mare broke loose from her halter, and in a bound reached the rail of the schooner and leaped into the waves. Capriata could do nothing. The schooner was in peril, and he, with his hand upon the wheel and his men at the sails, could only utter an oath. He confesses he did that, and you will find no man more convinced of the miracle than he."

The aged missionary paused, his eyes glowing. The _nonos_ that settled in a swarm on his swollen, poisoned hands were nothing to him in the rapture of that memory.

"This happened at night. Throughout the darkness the schooner stayed outside the bay, returning only at daylight. Immediately after anchoring, the captain hastened to inform me of the misfortune, and found me saying ma.s.s. It was one of the few times he had ever been in the sacred edifice."

Pere Simeon smiled, and held up one finger to emphasize my attention.

"As soon as ma.s.s was finished, Capriata told me of what had happened, and his certainty that the mare was drowned. I fell on my knees and said a despairing prayer to Joan. That instant we heard a neigh outside, and rushing out of the church, we saw, cropping the gra.s.s in the mission enclosure, the white mare that was destined to bear the figure of Joan in the celebration of her fete."

I could not restrain an exclamation of amazement. "_Vraiment?_"

"_Absolument_," answered Pere Simeon. "Unbelievers might explain that waves swept the mare ash.o.r.e, and that through some instinct she found her way along the beach or over the hills. But that she should come to the mission grounds, to the very spot where her home was to be, though she had never seen the islands before--no, my friend, not even the materialist could explain that as less than supernatural. I have sent the proofs to our order in Belgium. They will form part of the evidence that will one day be offered to bring about the canonization of Joan."

"And the procession, was it successful?" I inquired.

"_Mais oui!_ It was magnificent. When it started there was a grand fanfare of trumpets, drums, fireworks, and guns. Never was there such a noise here since the days of battle between the whites and the natives. There were four choirs of fifty voices each, the natives from all these nearby islands, each with a common chant in French and particular _himines_ in Marquesan. I walked first with the Blessed Sacrament; then came Captain Capriata with the banner of the mission, and then, proceeded by a choir, came the virgin on the white horse.

"She was all in silver armor, as was the mare. Two years before I had sent to France for the pasteboard and the silver paper, and had made the armor. The helmet was the _piece de resistance_. The girl wore it as the Maid herself, and sat the horse without faltering, despite the _nonos_ and the heat. It was a wonderful day for Joan and for the Marquesas."

He sat for a moment lost in the vision.

"So it was all as you had planned?"

"_Mon ami_, it was not I, but Joan herself, to whom all honor belongs.

There was a moment--Captain Capriata had taken absinthe with his morning _popoi_, and was unsteady. He stumbled. I called to him to breathe a prayer to his patron saint--he is of Ajaccio in Corsica--and to call upon Joan for aid. He straightened up at once, after one fall, and bore the white banner of the Maid in good style from the mission to the deserted inn by the leper-house.

"We had three superb feasts, one on each day of the fete. We had speeches and songs, three ma.s.ses a day to accommodate all, four first communicants, and two marriages. I will tell you, though it may be denied by the commercial missionaries, that five protestants attended and recanted."

Pere Simeon's eyes flashed as he recalled those memorable days. He fell into a reverie, scratching his legs after the _nonos_ and letting his cigarette go out.

I arose to depart. He must go to Huapu with the chief, who was again at the door,

"And did the fete help the parish?" I asked with that bromidic zeal to please that so often discloses the fly just when the ointment's smell is sweetest.

"Alas!" he replied, with a sorrowful shake of his beard. "Even the girl who had worn the white armor leaped from the mast of a ship to escape infamy and was drowned. Yet there was grandeur of sacrifice in that. But for the others, they die fast, too. Some day the priest will be alone here without a flock."

He picked up a garment or two, placed the Holy Sacrament with pious care in his breast, and we walked together through the mournful and decaying village, pa.s.sing a few melancholy natives.

I said to Pere Simeon as he stepped into the canoe, "You are like a shepherd who pursues his sheep wherever they may wander, to gather them into the fold at last."

"_C'est vrai_," he smiled sadly. "The bishop himself had to go to Hiva-oa from here, because there were really not enough people left alive for the seat of his bishopric. At least, there will be some here when I die, for I am old. Ah, thirty years ago, when I came here, there were souls to be saved! Thousands of them. But I love the last one. There are still a hundred left on Huapu. There is work yet, for the devil grows more active yearly."

CHAPTER XXV

America's claim to the Marquesas; adventures of Captain Porter in 1812; war between Haapa and Tai-o-hae, and the conquest of Typee valley.

America might have been responsible for the death of the Marquesan race had not the young nation been engaged in a deadly struggle with Great Britain when an American naval captain, David Porter, seized Nuka-hiva. A hundred years ago the Stars and Stripes floated over the little hill above the bay, and American cannon upon it commanded the village of Tai-o-hae. Beneath the verdure is still buried the proclamation of Porter, with coins of the young republic, unless the natives dug up the bottle after the destruction of the last of Porter's forces. They witnessed the ceremony of its planting, which must have appeared to them a ritual to please the powerful G.o.ds of the whites. Unless respect for the _tapu_ placed on the bottle by "Opotee" restrained them, they probably brought it to the light and examined the magic under its cork.

The adventures of Porter here were as strange and romantic as those of any of the hundreds of the gypsies of the sea who sailed this tropic and spilled the blood of a people unused to their ways and ignorant of their inventions and weapons of power.

Porter had left the United States in command of the frigate _Ess.e.x_, to destroy British shipping, capture British ships, and British sailors. Porter, son and nephew of American naval officers, destined to be foster-father of Farragut, the first American admiral, and father of the great Admiral Porter, was then in his early thirties and loved a fight. He harried the British in the Atlantic, doubled Cape Horn without orders, and did them evil on the high seas, and at last, with many prisoners and with prize crews aboard his captures, he made for the Marquesas to refresh his men, repair his ships, and get water, food, and wood for the voyage home.

In Tai-o-hae Bay he moored his fleet, and was met by flocks of friendly canoes and great numbers of the beautiful island women, who swam out to meet the strangers. Among them he found Wilson, an Englishman who had long been here and who was tattooed from head to foot. On first seeing this man Porter was strongly prejudiced against him, but found him extremely useful as an interpreter, and concluded that he was an inoffensive fellow whose only failing was a strong attachment to rum. With Wilson's eagerly offered help, Porter made friends with the people of Tai-o-hae, established a camp on sh.o.r.e, and set about revictualing his fleet.

The tribes of Tai-o-hae, or Tieuhoy, as Porter called it, were annoyed by the combative Hapaa tribe, or collection of tribes, which dwelt in a nearby valley, and these doughty warriors came within half a mile of the American camp, cut down the breadfruit trees, and made hideous gestures of derision at the white men. In response, Porter landed a six-pound gun, tremendously heavy, and said that if the Tai-o-hae tribe would carry it to the top of a high mountain overlooking the Hapaa valley, he would drive the Hapaas from the hills where they stood and threatened to descend.

To Porter's amazement, the Tai-o-hae men, surmounting incredible difficulties, laid the gun in position, and as the Hapaas scorned the futile-looking contrivance and declared that they would not make peace with the whites, Porter sent his first a.s.sistant with forty men, armed with muskets and accompanied by natives carrying these weapons and ammunition for the cannon.

The battle began with a great roar of exploding gunpowder, and from the ships the Americans saw their men driving from height to height the Hapaas, who fought as they retreated, daring the enemy to follow them. A friendly native bore the American flag and waved it in triumph as he skipped from crag to crag, well in the rear of the white men who pursued the fleeing enemy.

In the afternoon the victorious forces descended, carrying five dead.

The Hapaas, fighting with stones flung from slings and with spears, had taken refuge, to the number of four or five thousand, in a fortress on the brow of a hill. Not one of them had been wounded, and from their impa.s.sable heights they threw down jeers and showers of stones upon the retiring Tai-o-haes and their white allies.

This was intolerable. On the second day, with augmented forces, the Americans stormed the height and took the fort, killing many Hapaas, who, knowing nothing of the effect of musket bullets, fought till dead. The wounded were dispatched with war-clubs by the Tai-o-haes, who dipped their spears in the blood. Wilson said the Tai-o-haes would eat the corpses. Porter, horrified, interrogated his allies, who denied any such horrid appet.i.te, so that Porter was not sure what to believe.