White Shadows in the South Seas Part 35

"_Peo! Pepo! Huepe! Huope!_" yelled the scouts, in the "tally-ho!"

cry of Marquesan, and the boars struck the trail with hatred hot in their eyes and with gnashing tusks.

The three slayers were five hundred feet apart. The first struck at all ten, as singly they rushed past him. Three he stopped. The second man laid prostrate four. The three remaining were, naturally, the fittest. They were huge, hideous, snarling beasts, bared teeth gleaming in a slather of foam, eyes bloodshot and vicious. The old chief saw them coming; he saw, too, that I had shrunk to a plaster on the wall while he faced the danger like a warrior in the spear-test of their old warfare.

"_Aia! Aia!_" he said to encourage me. His club of ironwood, its edge sharp and toothed, he grasped with both hands; he widened his foothold and threw his body forward to withstand a shock. He calculated to an inch the arrival of the first boar, and swung his _u'u_ on its head with precision. The boar crumpled up and fell down the hillside. The second he struck as unerringly, but the third he chose to kill with his knife.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Feis_, or mountain bananas Man in _pareu_, native loin cloth]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Where river and bay meet at Oomoa, Island of Fatu-hiva]

He laid down the _u'u_ and drew the knife with one motion, and as the powerful brute rushed at him, stepped aside in the split second between his gauge of its position and its leap. His knife was thrust straight out. It met the boar with perfect and delicate accuracy.

The beast fell, quivered a moment, and lay still.

It was a perfection of butchery, for one slash of those tusks, ripping the chief's legs, and he would have been down, crashing over the cliff, and dead. I was almost in chants of admiration for his nerve and accuracy.

"Ah, if this had been war, and these had been enemies!"

The dead boars were slung on poles, but a half dozen had to be left on branches of trees for the morrow, and it was late in the day when we reached Grelet's house for the feast.

Pae, the elder woman of the household, received us joyously. In the master's absence she had become a different being from the sulky, contrary one I had seen while he was at home. Usually she and Hinatiaiani, the mother of the baby, ate their food squatting beside the cook-house; they rarely came upon the veranda, never sat upon a chair, and never were asked to our table. Now they were in complete possession of the house and Pae was transformed into a jolly soul, her kinsfolk about her on the veranda and the bottles emptying fast. She celebrated our arrival with the boars by bringing out two quarts of _creme de menthe_ and a bottle of absinthe, so that the mice with the big cat away played an uncorking air right merrily.

All was now a bustle of preparation for the feast. While many prepared the earth-oven for the pig, the head cook made fire in their primitive way, using the fire-plough of _purau_-wood braced against a pillar of the veranda. Meantime the oven was dug, sides and bottom lined with stones, and sticks piled within it for the fire. A top layer of stones was placed on the flames and when it had grown red-hot, the pig was pulled and hauled over it until the bristles were removed. The carca.s.s was then carried to the river, the intestines removed, and inside and outside thoroughly washed in a place where the current was strong.

The oven was made ready for its reception by removing the upper layer of stones and the fire, and placing banana-leaves all about the bottom and sides, in which the pig, his own interior filled with hot stones wrapped in leaves, was placed, with native sweet-potatoes and yams beside him. More leaves covered all, and another layer of red hot stones. A surface of dirt sealed the oven.

A young dog was also part of the fare, and was cooked in the same manner as the pig. The Marquesans are fond of dogs. This particular one had been brought to this valley from another and was not on friendly terms with any of his butchers. In fact, his death was due more to revenge than to hunger for his flesh. He had bitten the leg of a man who lived in the upper part of Oomoa, and when this man came limping to the banquet, he brought the biter as his contribution.

Those who would turn up their noses at Towser must hear Captain Cook, who was himself slain and dismembered in Hawaii:

"The flesh of the South Sea Dog is a meat not to be despised. It is next to our English Lamb."

Personally I am willing to let it be next to lamb at every meal, and I shall always take its neighbor, but it argues a narrow taste not to concede that the dishes of our foreign friends may have a relish all their own. Dog has been a Maori tidbit for thousands of years.

It was introduced into New Zealand from these islands. The aborigines had a fierce, undomesticated dog, which they hunted for its flesh. It was a sort of fox, but disappeared before the Polynesians reached the islands.

All Polynesians have liked dogs, liked them as pets, as they do to-day, and liked them as grub. If one asks how one can pet Fido Monday and eat him Tuesday, I will reply that we, the highest types of civilization, pet calves and lambs, chickens and rabbits, and find them not a whit the less toothsome. The Marquesan loves his pig as we love our dog, cuddles him, calls him fond names, believes that he goes to heaven,--and nevertheless roasts him for dinner.

The yams, potatoes, breadfruit, and other accompaniments of the dog, pig, and chicken were all ready at six o'clock, when cries of delight summoned us idlers. The earth had been cleared from the oven, the leaves removed, and the pig was lifted into the air, cooked to a turn, succulent, steaming, delicious. The feast was spread in a clearing, so that the sun, sinking slowly in the west, might filter his rays through the lofty trees and leave us brightened by his presence, but cool in the shadows. For me a Roman couch of mats was spread, while the natives squatted in the comfort of men whose legs are natural.

The women waited upon us, pa.s.sing all the food in leaves, in cleanly fashion. Pae herself, though hostess, could not eat till all the men were satisfied, for the _tapu_ still holds, though without authority.

Knives nor forks hindered our free onslaught upon the edibles, and there were cocoanut-sh.e.l.ls beside each of us for washing our hands between courses, a usual custom.

_Piahi_, the native chestnuts sh.e.l.led and cooked in cocoanut-milk, were an appetizer, followed by small fish, which we ate raw after soaking them in lime juice. There is no dish that the white man so soon learns to crave and so long remembers when departed. Some of the guests did not like the sauce, but took their small fish by the tail, dripping with salt water, and ate it as one might eat celery, bones, and all.

With the main course were served dried squid and porpoise, and fresh flying-fish and bonito and shrimp. The feast was complete with mangoes, oranges, and pineapples, also bananas ripened in the expeditious way of the Marquesas. They bury them in a deep hole lined with cracked candlenuts and gra.s.s and cover all with earth. In several days--and they know the right time to an hour--the bananas are dug up, yellow and sweet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sacred banyan tree at Oomoa]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Elephantiasis of the legs]

Pae furnished a limited quant.i.ty of rum for the fete, and a cocoanut-sh.e.l.l filled with _namu_ was pa.s.sed about. Every one was already enthusiastic, and after several drinks of the powerful sugar-distillation pipes were lit and palaver began. I had to tell stories of my strange country, of the things called cities, large villages without a river through them, so big that they held _tini tini tini tini mano mano mano mano_ people, with single houses in which more people worked than there were in all the islands. Such a house might be higher than three or four cocoanut trees stood one on the other, and no one walked up-stairs, but rode in boxes lifted by ropes.

"How many men to a rope?" asked Pae.

The old men told me about their battles, much as at a reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic the veterans fight again the Civil war.

One man, whose tattooing striped his body like the blue bands of a convict's suit, said that it was the custom on Fatu-hiva for the leader or chief on each side to challenge the enemy champion.

"Our army stood thirty or forty feet away from the other army," said he, "and our chief stood still while the other threw his spear. If it struck our chief, at once the warriors rushed into battle; if it missed, our chief had the right to go close to the other and thrust a spear through his heart. The other stood firm and proud. He smiled with scorn. He looked on the spear when it was raised, and he did not tremble. But sometimes he was saved by his courage, for our chief after looking at him with terrible eyes, said, 'O man of heart, go your way, and never dare again to fight such a great warrior as I!'

"That ended the war. The other chief was ashamed, and led his men down to their own valley. But if our chief had killed him, then there was war; at once we struck with the _u'u_ and ran forward with our spears. These battles gave many names to children, names remembering the death or wounding of the glorious deeds of the warriors. To await calmly the spear of the other chief, the head raised, the eyes never winking, to look at the spear as at a welcome gift--that was what our chiefs must do. Death was not so terrible, but to leave one's body in the hands of the foe, to be eaten, to know that one's skull would be hung in a tree, and one's bones made into tattoo needles or fish-hooks--! _Toomanu!_

"We are not the men we were. We do not eat the 'Long Pig' any more, but we have not the courage, the skill, or the strength. When the spears were thrown, and each man had but one, then the fight was with the _u'u_, hand to hand and eye to eye. That was a fight of men!

The gun is the weapon of cowards. It is the gun that fights, not the man.

"Our last fight we brought back four bodies. Meat spoils quickly. We had our feast right here where we sit now."

Excited barking of the dogs announced the arrival of Grelet with several men. They had rowed all the way to Oia and had sailed back, arriving by chance in time to share the abundance of our feast.

After the twelve-mile pull in the blazing sun and the toilsome journey back by night this feast was their reward, and all their pay.

Pae, reduced once more to sullen servitude, poured the rum, generous portions of it in cocoanut-sh.e.l.ls, which the newcomers emptied as they ate, hastening soon to join the other guests on the broad veranda, where late at night a chant began.

Half a dozen men, tattooed from toes to waist and some to the roots of their hair, sat on a mat on the floor, all naked except for their _pareus_, the red and yellow of which shone in the light of the oil-lamps in brightening contrast to brown skins and dark blue ink.

One was far gone with _fefe_, his legs almost as large as those of an elephant. He was a grotesque in hideous green. The blue of the candlenut-ink, in bizzare designs upon body and legs, had turned a scaly greenish hue from age and _kava_ excesses. Revealed in the yellow light, he was like a ghastly bronze monstrosity that had known the weathering of a century.

He was the leader of the chant and, like all the others, had drunk plenty of Grelet's rum. The pipe was pa.s.sing, and Grelet took his pull at it in the circle. The chant was of the adventures of the day.

The hunters and specially Namu Ou Mio, the slayer of the three boars, told of the deed of prowess on the cliff-side, while the others sang of their journey and the sea. Squatting on the mat, they bent and swayed in pantomime, telling the tales, lifting their voices in praises of their own deeds and of the virtues of Grelet.

That thrifty Swiss, in red breech-clout and spectacles, the lamplight shining on his bald head, sat in the midst of them, familiar by a score of years with their chants. Pae filled the pipe and the bowls and joined in the chorus, while the Paumotan boys, in a shadowy recess, sipped their rum and rolled their eyes in astonished appreciation of the first joviality of their lives. When the leader began the ancient cannibal chant, the song of war and of feasting at the High Place, the tattooed men forgot even the rum.

The nights of riot after return from the battle, the fighting qualities of their fathers, the cheer of the fires, the heat of the ovens, and the baking of the "Long Pig," and the hours when the most beautiful girls danced naked to win the acclaim of the mult.i.tude and to honor their parents; all these they celebrated. The leader gave the first line in a dramatic tone, and the others chanted the chorus.

Most of the verses they knew by rote, but there were improvisations that brought applause from all.

At midnight the man with the elephantiasis removed his _pareu_ to free his enormous legs for dancing, and he and the others, their hands joined, moved ponderously in a tripping circle before the couch on which I lay. The chant was now a recital of my merits, the chief of which was that I was a friend of Grelet, that mighty man wiser than Iholomoni (Solomon), with more wives than that great king, and stronger heart to chase the wild bull. He steers a whale-boat with a finger, but no wave can tear the helm from his grasp. Long has he been in Oomoa, just and brave and generous has he been, and his rum is the best that is made in the far island of Tahiti.

So pa.s.sed the night and the rum, in a pandemonium of voices, gyrating tattooed bodies, flashes of red and yellow and blue _pareus_, rolling eyes, curls of smoke drifting under the gently moving canvas ceiling, while from the garden came the scent of innumerable dewy flowers; and at intervals in the chanting I heard from the darkness of the bay the sound of a conch-sh.e.l.l blown on some wayfaring boat.

I dozed, and wakened to see Grelet asleep. Pae was still filling the emptied cocoanut-sh.e.l.ls, and the swollen green man postured before me like some horrid figment of a dream. I roused myself again. Pae had locked up the song-maker, and all the tattooed men slumbered where they sat, the Paumotan boys with sunbonnets tied about their heads lay in their corner, dreaming, perhaps, of their loved home on Pukaruha. I woke again to find the garden green and still in the gray morning, and the veranda vacant.

The Marquesans were all in the river, lying down among the boulders to cool their aching heads. The _fefe_ sufferer stood like a slime-covered rock in the stream. His swollen legs hurt him dreadfully. Rum is not good for _fefe_.

"Guddammee!" he said to me in his one attempt at our cultured language, and put his body deep in a pool.

CHAPTER x.x.x

A visit to Hanavave; Pere Olivier at home; the story of the last battle between Hanahouua and Oi, told by the sole survivor; the making of _tapa_ cloth, and the ancient garments of the Marquesans.