White Shadows in the South Seas Part 37

The Marquesans never made a pot. They had clay in their soil, as Gauguin proved by using it for his modeling, but they had no need of pottery, using exclusively the gourds from the vines, wooden vessels hollowed out, and temporary cups of leaves.

This absence of pottery is another proof of the lengthy isolation of the islands. The Tongans had earthen ware which they learned to make from the Fijians, but the Polynesians had left the mainland before the beginning of this art. Thus they remained a people who were, despite their startling advances in many lines, the least enc.u.mbered by useful inventions of any race in the world.

Until hardly more than a hundred years ago the natives were like our forefathers who lived millenniums ago in Europe. But being in a gentler climate, they were gentler, happier, merrier, and far cleaner.

One can hardly dwell in a spirit of filial devotion upon the relation of our forefathers to soap and water, but these Marquesans bathed several times daily in dulcet streams and found soap and emollients to hand.

It was curious to me to reflect, while Pere Olivier and I stood watching the two aged crones beating out the _tapa_ cloth, upon what slender chance hung the difference between us. Far in the remote mists of time, when a tribe set out upon its wanderings from the home land, one man, perhaps, hesitated, dimly felt the dangers and uncertainties before it, weighed the advantages of remaining behind, and did not go. Had he gone, I or any one of Caucasian blood in the world to-day, might have been a Marquesan.

It would be interesting, I thought, to consider what the hundred thousand years that have pa.s.sed since that day have given us of joy, of wealth of mind and soul and body, of real value in customs and manners and att.i.tude toward life, compared to what would have been our portion in the islands of the South Seas before his white cousin fell upon the Marquesan.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

Fishing in Hanavave; a deep-sea battle with a shark; Red Chicken shows how to tie ropes to shark's tails; night-fishing for dolphins, and the monster sword-fish that overturned the canoe; the native doctor dresses Red Chicken's wounds and discourses on medicine.

Grelet returned to Oomoa in the whale-boat, but I remained in Hanavave for the fishing. My presence had stimulated the waning interest of the few remaining Marquesans, and the handful of young men and women went with me often to the sea outside the Bay of Virgins, where we lay in the blazing sunshine having great sport with spear or hook and line.

We speared a dozen kinds of fish, specially the cuttlefish and sunfish, the latter more for fun and practice than food. They are huge ma.s.ses, these pig-like, tailless clowns among the graceful families of the ocean, with their small mouths and clumsy-looking bodies, but they made a fine target at which to launch harpoon or spear from the dancing bow of a canoe. Keeping one's balance is the finest art of the Marquesan fisherman, and he will stand firm while the boat rises and falls, rolls and pitches, his body swaying and balancing with the nice adjustment that is second nature to him. It is an art that should be learned in childhood. Many were the splashes into the salt sea that fell to my lot as I practised it, one moment standing alert with poised spear in the sunlight, the next overwhelmed with the green water, and striking out on the surface again amid the joyous, unridiculing laughter of my merry companions.

Wearying of the spear, we trolled for swordfish with hook and line, or used the baitless hook to entice the sportful albicore, or dolphin, whose curving black bodies splashed the sea about us. A piece of mother-of-pearl about six inches long and three-quarters of an inch wide was the lure for him. Carefully cut and polished to resemble the body of a fish, there was attached to it on the concave side a barb of sh.e.l.l or bone about an inch or an inch and a half in length, fastened by _faufee_ fiber, with a few hog's bristles inserted. The line was drove through the hole where the barb was fastened and, being braided along the inner side of the pearl shank, was tied again at the top, forming a chord to the arch. Thus when the beguiled dolphin took the hook and strained the line, he secured himself more firmly on the barb.

This is the best fish-hook, as it is perhaps the oldest, ever invented, and I have found it in many parts of the South Seas, but never more artfully made than here on Hanavave. It needs no bait, and is a fascinating sight for the big fish, who hardly ever discover the fraud until too late.

The line was attached to a bamboo cane about fifteen feet long, and standing in the stern of the canoe, I handled this rod, allowing the hook to touch the water, but not to sink. Behind me my companions, in their red and yellow _pareus_, pushed the boat through the water with gentle strokes of their oars. When I saw a fish approaching, they became active, the canoe raced across the sparkling sea, and the hook, as it skimmed along the surface, looked for all the world like a flying fish, the bristles simulating the tail. Soon the hastening dolphin fell upon it, and then became the tug-of-war, bamboo pole straining and bending, the line now taut, now relaxing, as the fish lunged, and the paddlers watching with cries of excitement until he was hauled over the side, wet and flopping, a feast for half a dozen.

One never-to-be-forgotten afternoon we ran unexpectedly upon a whole school of dolphins a few miles outside the bay, and before the sun sank I had brought from the sea twenty-six large fish. Some of these were magnificent food-fish, weighing 150 to 200 pounds. We had to send for two canoes to help bring in this miraculous draught, and all the population of the valley rejoiced in the supply of fresh and appetizing food.

The Marquesan methods of fishing are not so varied to-day as when their valleys were filled with a happy people delighting in all forms of exercise and prowess and needing the fish to supplement a scanty diet. For many weeks before I came, they said, no man had gone fishing. There were so few natives that the trees supplied them all with enough to eat, and the melancholy Marquesan preferred to sit and meditate upon his _paepae_ rather than to fish, except when appet.i.te demanded it. There is a Polynesian word that means "hungry for fish," and to-day it is only when this word rises to their tongues or thoughts that they go eagerly to the sea or to the tooth-like base of the cliffs.

Often we took large quant.i.ties of fish among these caves and rocks by capturing them in bags, using a wooden fan as a weapon. The sport called for a cool head, marvelous lungs, and skill. It was extremely dangerous, as the sharks were numerous where fish were plentiful, and the angler must needs be under the water, in the shark's own domain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pascual, the giant Paumotan pilot and his friends]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A pearl diver's sweetheart]

The best hand and head for this sport in all Hanavave was a girl, Kikaaki, a name which means Miss Impossibility. She was not handsome, save with the beauty of youth and abounding health, but her wide mouth and bright eyes were intelligent and laughter-loving.

Starting early in the morning, we would go to the edge of the bay, where the coral rises from the ocean floor in fantastic shapes and builds strange grottoes and cells at the feet of the basalt rocks.

While I held the canoe, Miss Impossibility would remove her shapeless calico wrapper, and attired only in scarlet _pareu_, her hair piled high on her head and tied with the white filet of the cocoanut-palm, she would go overboard in one curving dive, a dozen feet or more beneath the sea.

When the water was quiet and shadowed by the cliffs, I could see her through its green translucence, swimming to the coral lairs of the fish that gleamed in the reflected, penetrating sunlight. Walking on the sandy bottom, a hand net of straw in one hand, and a stick shaped like a fan in the other, she would cover a crevice with the net and with the fan urge the fish into it.

Foolish as was their conduct, the fish appeared to be deceived by the lure, or made helpless by fear, for they streamed into the receptacle as Miss Impossibility beat the water or the coral. She would have seemed to me well named had I never seen her at the sport.

She would usually stay beneath the water a couple of minutes, rising with her catch to rest for a moment or two with her hand on the edge of the boat, breathing deeply, before she went down again. Losing sight of her among the under-water caves one day, I waited for what seemed an eternity. I cannot say how long she was gone, for as the time lengthened seconds became minutes and hours, while I was torn between diving after her and remaining ready for emergency in the boat. When at last she came to the surface, she was nearly dead with exhaustion, and I had to lift her into the canoe. She said her hair had been caught in the branching coral, and that she had been barely able to wrench it free before her strength was gone.

I went down with her several times, but could not master the art of entrapping the fish, and was overcome with fear when I had entered one of the dark caves and heard a terrible splashing nearby, as if a shark had struck the coral in attempting to enter my hazardous refuge.

Even Miss Impossibility had not the courage to face a shark; yet every time she dived she risked meeting one. Red Chicken had killed one at this very spot a few weeks earlier. The danger even to a man armed with a knife was that the shark would obstruct from a cave, or come upon him suddenly from behind.

Often we had with us in the fishing a Paumotan, Pascual, the pilot of the ship _Zelee_, who was in Hanavave visiting a relative. He was the very highest physical and mental type of the Paumotan, a honey-comb of good-nature, a well of laughter, and a seaman beyond compare. To be a pilot in the Isles of the Labyrinth demands many strong qualities, but to be the pilot of the only warship in this sea was the very summit of pilotry. He had an accurate knowledge of forty harbors and anchorages, and spoke English fluently, French, Paumotan, Tahitian, Marquesan, and other Polynesian tongues. From boyhood until he took up pilotage he was a diver in the lagoons for sh.e.l.l and in harbors for the repair of ships.

"I have killed many sharks," he said, "and have all but fed them more than once. I had gone one morning a hundred feet. The water is always colder below the surface, and I shivered as I pulled at a pair of big sh.e.l.ls under a ledge. It was dark in the cavern, and I was both busy and cold, so that as I stooped I did not see a shark that came from behind, until he plumped into my spine.

"I turned as he made his reverse to bite me, and pa.s.sed under him, out to better light. I knew I had but a second or two to fight. I seized his tail quickly, and as he swept around to free himself I had time to draw the knife from my _pareu_ and stab him. He pa.s.sed over me again, and this time his teeth entered my shoulder, here--"

He opened his shirt and showed me a long, livid scar, serrated, the hall-mark of a fighter of _mako_.

"But by fortune--you may be sure I called on G.o.d--I got my knife home again, and sprang up for the air, feeling him in the water behind me. Twice I drove the blade into him on the way, for he would not let me go. My friend in the canoe, who saw the struggle, jumped down to my aid, and being fresh from the air, he cut that devil to pieces. I was not too strong when I reached the outrigger and hung my weight upon it. We ate the liver of that _mako_, and d.a.m.ned him as we ate. I had fought him from the ledge upward at least eighty feet of the hundred."

"_Aue!_" said Red Chicken, hearing me exclaim at the tale. "You have never seen a man fight the _mako_? _Epo!_ To-morrow we shall show you."

On the following day when the sun was shining brightly, several of us went in a canoe to a place beneath the cliffs haunted by the sharks, and there prepared to snare one. A rope of hibiscus was made fast to a jagged crag, and a noose at the other end was held by Red Chicken, who stood on the edge of a great boulder eagerly watching while others strewed pig's entrails in the water to entice a victim from the dark caves.

At length a long gray shape slid from the shadows and wavered below our feet. Instantly Red Chicken slipped from the rock, slid noiselessly beneath the water, and slipped the noose over the shark's tail before it knew that he was nearby. The others, whose hands were on the rope, tightened it on the instant, and with a yell of triumph hauled the lashing, fighting demon upon the rocks, where he struggled gasping until he died.

There was still another way of catching sharks, Red Chicken said, and being now excited with the sport and eager to show his skill, he insisted upon displaying it for my benefit, though I, who find small pleasure in vicarious danger, would have dissuaded him. For this exploit we must row to the coral caves, where the man-eating fish stay often lying lazily in the grottoes, only their heads protruding into the sun-lit water.

Here we maneuvered until the long, evil-looking snout was seen; then Red Chicken went quietly over the side of the canoe, descended beside the shark and tapped him sharply on the head. The fish turned swiftly to see what teased him, and in the same split-second of time, over his fluke went the noose, and Red Chicken was up and away, while his companions on a nearby cliff pulled in the rope and killed the shark with spears in shallow water. Red Chicken said that he had learned this art from a Samoan, whose people were cleverer killers of sharks than the Marquesans. It could be done only when the shark was full-fed, satisfied, and lazy.

I had seen the impossible, but I was to hear a thing positively incredible. While Red Chicken sat breathing deeply in the canoe, filled with pride at my praises, and the others were contriving means of carrying home the shark meat, I observed a number of fish swimming around and through the coral caves, and jumped to the conclusion that from their presence Red Chicken had deduced the well-filled stomachs and thoroughly satisfied appet.i.te of the shark.

Red Chicken replied, however, that they were a fish never eaten by sharks, and offered an explanation to which I listened politely, but with absolute unbelief. Imagine with what surprise I found Red Chicken's tale repeated in a book that I read some time later when I had returned to libraries.

There is a fish, the Diodon antennatus, that gets the better of the shark in a curious manner. He can blow himself up by taking in air and water, until he becomes a bloated wretch instead of the fairly decent thing he is in his normal moments. He can bite, he can make a noise with his jaws, and can eject water from his mouth to some distance. Besides all this, he erects papillae on his skin like thorns, and secretes in the skin of his belly a carmine fluid that makes a permanent stain. Despite all these defences, if the shark is fool enough to heed no warning and to eat Diodon, the latter puffs himself up and eats his way clean through the shark to liberty, leaving the shark riddled and leaky, and, indeed, dead.

Should this still be doubted, my new authority is Charles Darwin.

After his display of skill and daring--and, as I thought, vivid imagination--Red Chicken became my special friend and guide, and on one occasion it was our being together, perhaps, saved his life, and afforded me one of the most thrilling moments of my own.

He and I had gone in a canoe after nightfall to spear fish outside the Bay of Virgins. Night fishing has its attractions in these tropics, if only for the freedom from severe heat, the glory of the moonlight or starlight, and the waking dreams that come to one upon the sea, when the canoe rests tranquil, the torch blazes, and the fish swim to meet the harpoon. The night was moonless, but the sea was covered with phosph.o.r.escence, sometimes a glittering expanse of light, and again black as velvet except where our canoe moved gently through a soft and glamorous surface of sparkling jewels. A night for a lover, a lady, and a lute.

Our torch of cocoanut-husks and reeds, seven feet high, was fixed at the prow, so that it could be lifted up when needed to attract the fish or better to light the canoe. Red Chicken, in a scarlet _pareu_ fastened tightly about his loins, stood at the prow when we had reached his favorite spot off a point of land, while I, with a paddle, noiselessly kept the canoe as stationary as possible.

Light is a lure for many creatures of land and sea and sky. The moth and the bat whirl about a flame; the sea-bird dashes its body against the bright gla.s.s of the lonely tower; wild deer come to see what has disturbed the dark of the forest, and fish of different kinds leap at a torch. Red Chicken put a match to ours when we were all in readiness. The brilliant gleam cleft the darkness and sent across the blackness of the water a beam that was a challenge to the curiosity of the dozing fish. They hastened toward us, and Red Chicken made meat of those who came within the radius of his harpoon, so that within an hour or two our canoe was heaped with half a dozen kinds.

Far off in the path of the flambeau rays I saw the swordfish leaping as they pursued small fish or gamboled for sheer joy in the luminous air. They seemed to be in pairs. I watched them lazily, with academic interest in their movements, until suddenly one rose a hundred feet away, and in his idle caper in the air I saw a bulk so immense and a sword of such amazing size that the thought of danger struck me dumb.

He was twenty-five feet in length, and had a dorsal fin that stood up like the sail of a small boat. But even these dimensions cannot convey the feeling of alarm his presence gave me. His next leap brought him within forty feet of us. I recalled a score of accidents I had seen, read, and heard of; fishermen stabbed, boats rent, steel-clad ships pierced through and through.

Red Chicken held the torch to observe him better, and shouted:

"_Apau!_ Look out! Paddle fast away!"

I needed no urging. I dug into the glowing water madly, and the sound of my paddle on the side of the canoe might have been heard half a mile away. It served no purpose. Suddenly half a dozen of the swordfish began jumping about us, as if stirred to anger by our torch.

I called to Red Chicken to extinguish, it.

He had seized it to obey when I heard a splash and the canoe received a terrific shock. A tremendous bulk fell upon it. With a sudden swing I was hurled into the air and fell twenty feet away. In the water I heard a swish, and glimpsed the giant espadon as he leaped again.