White Shadows in the South Seas Part 41

Turning and gazing toward Fatu-hiva I saw the Southern Cross, low in the sky, brilliant, and splendid.

"_Mataike fetu!_" Ghost Girl named the constellation. "The Small Eyes."

"Miope has rivers like Taka-Uku and Atuona," I said, relying on the alleged ca.n.a.ls of Mars to save my soul. "I have seen through a _karahi mea tiohi i te fetu_, the Mirror Thing Through Which One Looks At The Stars, long as a tree and big around as a pig. Miope has people upon it."

"Are they Marquesans?"

"They must be Marquesans for there are islands," I replied.

"And _popoi_ and pigs?" demanded the _ena_-perfumed one.

"_Namu?_ Have they rum?" whispered the Ghost Girl, and nestled closer, remembering that soon we would be at my own house.

I had confidence in Tetuahunahuna's stars. The Polynesians have always had an excellent working knowledge of the heavens and were deeply interested in astronomy. They knew the relative positions of the stars, their changes and phases. They predicted weather changes accurately, and kept in their memories periodicity charts so that they are able to form estimates of what will be, by considering what has been. They had a wonderful art of navigation, considering that they had no compa.s.s, s.e.xtant, or other instrument, and that their vessels were always comparatively small. The handling of canoes, like swimming, is instinctive with them, and no white ever compares with them in skill.

Our boat doubled Point Teachoa, and we were in the Bay of Traitors.

The wind suddenly fell flat, and we rowed several miles to the beach.

A score of lights moved about on the dark waters of the bay, and fishermen shouted to us to come to them. We found Great Fern, my landlord, with Apporo, Broken Plate with the Vagabond, and they had several canoes full of fish. They were delighted at my return, and rubbed noses with me over the gunwales.

Getting ash.o.r.e at the stone steps of Taka-Uka was a task worthy of such boatsmen, in the darkness, the sea beating madly against the cliffs. Tetuahunahuna listened to the smashing waves and peered for the blacker outlines of the stairway and the faint gleam of the foam.

The boat approached; the sea leaped to break it against the rocks.

The steersman held it a second, and in that second you had to leap.

It is touch and go, and heaven help you! If you miss, you fall into the sea, or the boat crushes you against the rocks. The swell sweeps the place you land on, and you must ascend quickly to safety or find hold against the suck of the retiring water.

Tetuahunahuna ran to the nearest house for a lantern and poles, and while two remained in the boat to hold it off the rocks, the others carried my luggage to Atuona. I took the lead in a drizzling rain, carrying the light, mighty glad to stretch my legs after more than a dozen hours of cramp. Pa.s.sing the house of the chief-of-police, I heard laughter and the clink of gla.s.ses. Bauda halted me with a leveled revolver, thinking we were a rum-smuggling gang. That brave African soldier was ever dramatic, and _D'Artagnan_ could not have struck a finer att.i.tude as he thrust the gun in my face and called out, "_Halte la_!"

"_Ah, c'est le Yahnk' Doodl'. Mais tonnerre de dieu_, you have been away a long time!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

Sea sports; curious sea-foods found at low tide; the peculiarities of sea-centipedes and how to cook and eat them.

With what delight I returned to lazy days in Atuona Valley, lounging on the black _paepae_ of my own small blue cabin in the shadow of Temiteu, idling on the sun-warm sands of the familiar beach, walking the remembered road between banana hedges heavy with yellowing fruit!

The heart of man puts down roots wherever it rests; it is perhaps this sense of home that gives the zest to wandering, for new experiences gain their value from contrast with the old, and one must have felt the bondage, however light, of emotion and habit before he can know the joy of freedom from it. Still a man leaves part of himself in every home he makes, and the wanderer, free of the one strong cord that would hold him to one place, feels always the urge of a thousand slender ties pulling him back to the thousand temporary homes he has made everywhere on the world.

So the old routine closed around me pleasantly; mornings in the shade of my palms and breadfruit, eating the breakfasts prepared for me by Exploding Eggs over the fire of cocoanut husks, baths in the clear pool of the river with my neighbors, afternoons spent in the cocoanut-groves or with merry companions on the beach. Exploding Eggs directed the surf board with a sure hand, lying flat, kneeling or even standing on the long plank as he came in on the crest of the breakers. I had now and again succeeded in being carried along while flat on my stomach on the board, but failed many times oftener than I succeeded. Now I set myself in earnest to learn the art of mastering the surf.

Three or four o'clock in the afternoon was the time I usually chose for the sport, and once I had made it a practice, all the boys and girls of the village accompanied me, or waited for me at the sh.o.r.e, sure of hilarious hours. I must make children my companions, here, for my older friends were so oppressed by the gloom of race extinction that save for Malicious Gossip and one or two others, there was no capacity for joyousness left in them. Exploding Eggs was my chum, paid as forager and firemaker, but giving from friendliness his services as a wise and admirable teacher of the unknown to one unmade by civilization.

The bay of Atuona, narrow between high cliffs covered with cocoanut-trees, was the scene of my lessons. The tide came booming into this cove from the Bay of Traitors, often with bewildering force, and a day or two a month as gently as the waves at Waikiki. The river spread a broad mouth to drink the brine, and the white sand was over-run by the flowered vines that crept seaward to taste the salt. No house was in sight, no man-made structure to mar the primitive, as our merry crew of boys and girls sported naked in the surf, fished from the rocks, or lay upon the shining beach.

For my first essay I used the lid of a box that had enclosed an ornate coffin ordered from Tahiti by a chief who antic.i.p.ated dying.

It was large, and weighty to drag or push through the surf to the proper distance. Laboring valiantly with it, I reached some distance from the sh.o.r.e, and prepared a triumphal return. The waves were big, curving above me in sheets of clearest emerald crested with spray, breaking into foam and rising again, endlessly reshaping, repeating themselves.

Awaiting my opportunity, I chose one as it rose behind me, and flung myself upon it. Up and up and still higher I went, carried by resistless momentum, and suddenly like a chip in a hurricane I was flung forward at a fearsome speed, through rushing chaos of wind and water, seeing the beach dashing toward me, shouting with exultation.

At the next instant my trusty board turned traitor. Its prow sank, the end beneath me rose, and like a stone discharged from a sling I was thrown under the waves, head over heels, banging my head and body on the sand, leaped upon by following waves that piled me into shallow water, rolling me over and over, striking me a blow with the coffin-lid at every roll.

I lay high and dry, panting and aching, while from all the beach rose shouts of laughter. Exploding Eggs rolled on the sand in his delight, holding his gasping sides, scarcely able to remind me of the necessity, which in my excitement I had forgotten, of keeping the prow of the board pointed upward as I rode.

Often as I repeated this instruction in my mind, firmly as I determined to remember it while I toiled sea-ward again with the coffin-lid, the result was always the same. A moment of rest in the unresting waves, a quick, agile spring, a moment of mad, intoxicating joy, and then--disaster. I became a ma.s.s of bruises, the skin sc.r.a.ped inch by inch from my chest by contact with the rough wood. I would not give up until I had to, and then for a week I was convalescing.

One stiff ache from head to foot, I lay ignominiously on the sand, and watched Exploding Eggs, with a piece of box not bigger than a fat man's shirt-front, take wave after wave, standing on the board, dashing far across the breakers to the sh.o.r.e, with never a failure, while Gedge's little half-breed daughter, a beautiful fairy-like creature, darted upon the sea as a b.u.t.terfly upon a zephyr.

After several weeks of effort and mishap, one day the secret came to me like a flash, and the trick was learned. I had been using the great board and was weary. I exchanged with Exploding Eggs for a plank three feet long and fourteen inches wide. Almost exhausted, I waited as usual with the b.u.t.t of the board against my stomach for the incoming breaker to be just behind and above me, and then leaped forward to kick out vigorously, the board pressed against me and my hands extended along its sides, to get in time with the wave.

But the wave was upon me before I had thought to execute these instructions, I straightened myself out rigidly, and lo! I shot in like a torpedo on the very top of the billow, holding the point of the board up, yelling like a Comanche Indian. So fast, so straight did I go, that it was all I could do to swerve in the shallow water and not be hurled with force on the sand.

"_Metai! Me metai!_" cried my friends in excited congratulation, while like all men who succeed by accident, I stood proudly, taking the plaudits as my due.

From that afternoon I had most exhilarating sport, and indeed, this is the very king of amus.e.m.e.nts for fun and exercise. Skeeing, tobogganing, skating, all land sports fade before the thrills of this; nor will anything give such abounding health and joy in living as surf-riding in sunny seas.

A hundred afternoons on Atuona Bay I spent in this exhilarating pastime. To it we added embellishments, multiplying excitements. A score of us would start at the same moment from the same line and race to sh.o.r.e; we would carry two on a board; we would stand and kneel and direct our course so that we could touch a marked spot on the beach or curve about and swerve and jostle each other. Exploding Eggs was the king of us all, and Teata was queen. She advanced as effortlessly as a mermaid, her superb figure shining on the shining water, tossing her long black hair, and shrieking with delight.

Occasionally we varied these sports by a much more dangerous and arduous game. We would push our boards far out in the bay, half a mile or more, diving under each wave we faced, until after tremendous effort we reached the farthest sea-ward line of breakers.

Often while I swam, clinging to the board and struggling with the waves for its possession, I saw in the emerald water curling above me the shadowy shapes of large fish, carried on the crests of the combers, transfigured clearly against the sky, fins and heads and tails outlined with light.

Once in smoother water we waited for the proper moment, counting the foam-crests as they pa.s.sed. Waves go in multiples of three, the third being longer and going farther than the two before it, and the ninth, or third third, being strongest of all. This ninth wave we waited for. Choosing any other meant being spilled in tumbling water when it broke far from land, and falling prey to the succeeding ones, which bruised unmercifully.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Double canoes]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Harbor sports]

But taking the ninth monster at its start, we rode marvelously, staying at its summit as it mounted higher and higher, shouting above the lesser rollers, until it dashed upon the smooth sand half a mile away. Exultation kept the heart in the throat, the pulses beating wildly, as the breaker tore its way over the foaming rollers, I on the roof of the swell, lying almost over its front wall, holding like death to my plank while the wind sang in my ears and sky and sea mingled in rushing blueness.

To take such a ride twice in an afternoon taxed my strength, but the Marquesan boys and girls were never wearied, and laughed at my violent breathing.

The Romans ranked swimming with letters, saying of an uneducated man, "_Nec literas didicit nec natare._" He had neither learned to read nor to swim. The sea is the book of the South Sea Islanders. They swim as they walk, beginning as babies to dive and to frolic in the water. Their mothers place them on the river bank at a day old, and in a few months they are swimming in shallow water. At two and three years they play in the surf, swimming with the easy motion of a frog.

They have no fear of the water to overcome, for they are accustomed to the element from birth, and it is to them as natural as land.

It should be so with all, for human locomotion in water is no more tiresome or difficult than on the earth. One element is as suitable to man as the other for transportation of himself, when habitude give natural movement, strength, and fearlessness. A Marquesan who cannot swim is unknown, and they carry objects through the water as easily as through a grove. I have seen a woman with an infant at her breast leap from a canoe and swim through a quarter of a mile of breakers to the sh.o.r.e, merely to save a somewhat longer walk.

One's hours at the beach were not all spent in the water. Many were the curious and delicious morsels we found on the rocks that were uncovered at low tide, stranded fish, crabs, and small crawling sh.e.l.l-fish. One of our favorites was the sea-urchin, called _hatuke_, _fetuke_, or _matuke_. Round, as big as a Bartlett pear, with greenish spines five or six inches long, they were as hideous to see as they were pleasant to eat. In the last quarter of the moon they were specially good, though what the moon has to do with their flavor neither the Marquesans nor I know. It is so; the Marquesans have always known it, and I have proved it.

The spines of these sea-urchins make slate-pencils in some of the islands, and are excellent for hastily writing on a nearby cliff a message to a friend who is following tardily. The creatures are poisonous when alive, however, and revenge a blow of careless hand or foot by wounds that are long in healing.

We found lobsters among the rocks, too, and on some beaches a strange kind of lobsterish delicacy called in Tahiti _varo_, a kind of mantis-shrimp that looks like a superlatively villainous centipede.

They grow from six to twelve inches long and a couple of inches wide, with legs or feelers all along their sides, like the teeth of a pocket-comb. Their sh.e.l.ls are translucent yellow with black markings; the female wears a red stripe down her back and carries red eggs beneath her. Both she and her mate, with their thousand crawling legs, their hideous heads and tails, have a most repulsive appearance. If one did not know they are excellent food and most innocent in their habits, one would flee precipitately at sight of them.

Catching the _varo_ is a delicate and skilful art. They live in the shallows near the beach, digging their holes in the sand under two or three feet of water. When the wind ruffles the surface, it is impossible to see the holes, but on calm days we waded knee-deep in the clear water, stepping carefully and peering intently for the homes of the sea-centipede. Finding one, we cautiously lowered into the hole a spool fitted with a dozen hooks.

A pair of the creatures inhabits the same den. If the male was at home, he seized the grapnel and was quickly lifted and captured, the hooks being lowered again for the female. But if the female emerged first, it was a sure sign that her mate was absent.

I pondered as to this habit of the _varo_, and would have liked to persuade me that the male, being a courteous shrimp, combatted the invading hooks first in an effort to protect his mate. But the grapnel is baited with fish, and though masculine pride could wish that chivalry urged the creature to defend his domestic shrine, it appears regrettably certain that he is merely after the bait, to which he clings with such selfish obstinacy that he sacrifices his liberty and his life. However, the lady soon shows the same grasping tendency, and their deserted tenement is filled by the shifting sands.