White Shadows in the South Seas Part 43

"The gendarme died, and you may yet see on the beach sometimes that man who was a strong and brave Marquesan. He trembles now like _hotu_ leaves in the wind, for he never forgets the terrible magic done upon him by that governor. He remembers the hours when he lay bound to that man who was dying, and the dying man sucked his blood from him.

"Now this governor was on the ship going away, and he had not been killed. This made all Marquesans sad, and those in the crew talked to Earth Worm, who had also been wronged, and urged him to rise and strike. But he said nothing.

"The ship came to the Paumotas, and the governor sat all day long on a stool on the deck, watching the islands as they pa.s.sed. Earth Worm sat in his place, watching the governor. One night at dark he rose, and taking an iron rod laid beside him by one of the crew he crept along the deck and stood behind the man on the stool. He raised the iron rod and brought it down with fury upon the head of that man, who fell covered with blood. Then he leaped into the sea.

"But the governor had gone below, and it was Jean Richard who sat on the stool in the darkness. He was found bleeding upon the deck, and the bones of his head were cut and lifted and patched, so that to-day he lives, as well as ever. Earth Worm was never found. A boat with a lantern was lowered, but it found nothing but the fins of sharks.

"That was the work of Drink of Beer, who had hated Earth Worm because he was a brave and strong man of Taaoa. When this was told to Drink of Beer, he smiled and said, 'Earth Worm is safer where he is.'

"I have talked too much. Your rum is very good. I thank you for your kindness. You will not forget to deign to speak to the governor concerning the matter of the gun?"

I promised that I would not forget, and after a prolonged leavetaking the Shan-Shan man slipped silently down the trail and vanished in the moon-lit forest.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

The madman Great Moth of the Night; story of the famine and the one family that ate pig.

Le Brunnec, the trader, was opening a roll of Tahiti tobacco five feet long, five inches in diameter at the center, and tapering toward the ends. It was bound, as is all Tahiti tobacco, in a _purau_ rope, which had to be unwound and which weighed two pounds.

The eleven pounds of tobacco were hard as wood, the leaves cemented by moisture. Le Brunnec hacked it with an axe into suitable portions to sell for three francs a pound, the profit on which is a franc.

The immediate customer was Tavatini (Many Pieces of Tattooing), a rich man of Taaoa, in his fifties. His face was grilled with _ama_ ink. One streak of the natural skin alone remained. Beside him on the counter sat a commanding-looking man, whose eyes, shining from a blue background of tattooing, were signals to make one step aside did one meet him on the trail. They had madness in them, but they were a revelation of wickedness.

Some men, without a word or gesture, make you think intently. There is that in their appearance which starts a train of ideas, of wonder, of guesses at their past, of horror at what is written upon their faces. This man's visage was seamed and wrinkled in a network of lines that said more plainly than words that he was a monster whose villainies would chill imagination. The brain was a spoiled machine, but it had been all for evil.

"That man," said Le Brunnec, "is the worst devil in the Marquesas."

Between blows of the axe, the trader told me something of his history:

The madman was Mohuho, whose name means Great Moth of the Night. He is the chief whom Lying Bill saw shoot three men in Tahuata for sheer wantonness. He was then chief of Tahuata, and the power in that island, in Hiva-oa and Fatu-hiva. He slew every one who opposed him.

He was the scourge of the islands. He harried valley after valley for l.u.s.t of blood and the terrible pride of the destroyer. It was his boast that he had killed sixty people by his own hand, otherwise than in battle.

He was a man of ceaseless energy, a builder of roads, of houses, and canoes. At Hapatone he had constructed several miles of excellent road with the enforced labor of every man in the valley for a year.

It is all lined with _temanu_ trees, is almost solid stone, and endures. Its blocks are cemented with blood, for Great Moth of the Night drove men to the work with bullets.

His a.r.s.enal was stocked by the French, whose ally he was, and to whom he was very useful in furnishing men for work and in upholding French supremacy. In Hapatone he was virtually a king, and the fear of him extended throughout the southern Marquesas.

One day he came as a guest to a feast in Taaoa. There was a blind man, a poor, harmless fellow, who was eating the pig and _popoi_ and saying nothing. Great Night Moth had a new gun, which he laid beside him while he drank plentifully of the _namu enata_, until he became quite drunk.

At last the blind man, scared by his threats, started to walk away in the slow, halting way of the sightless, and attracted Great Night Moth's attention. He picked up his new gun and while all were petrified with fear of being the target, he shot the blind man so that his body fell into the oven in which the pig had been baked. The people could only laugh loudly, if not heartily, as if pleased by the joke.

In Hana-teio a man in a cocoanut-tree gathering nuts was ordered to come down by Great Night Moth who was pa.s.sing on a boar hunt. The man became confused. His limbs did not cling to the tree as usual.

He was fearful and could make no motion.

"_Poponohoo! Ve mai! A haa tata!_ Come down quickly!" yelled the chief.

The poor wretch could not obey. He saw the gun and knew the chief.

Great Night Moth brought him down a corpse.

There was no punishment for him. The French held him accountable only for deeds against their sovereignty. A superst.i.tion that he was protected by the G.o.ds, combined with his strength and desperate courage, made him immune from vengeance by the islanders.

These were incidents Le Brunnec knew from witnesses, but it was Many Pieces of Tattooing who told the ancestry of Great Night Moth.

"Pohue-toa (Male Package) uncle of Earth Worm, was prince of Taaoa and father of this man," said Many Pieces. "He was one of the biggest men of these islands, and the strongest in Taaoa. He lived for a while in Hana-menu.

"There was no war then between the valley of Atuona and that of Hana-menu; the people of both crossed the mountains and visited one another. But it was discovered in Atuona that a number of the people were missing. Some had gone to Hana-menu and never reached there, others had disappeared on their way home. The chief of Atuona sent a messenger who was _tapu_ in all valleys, to count the people of this valley who were in Hana-menu and to warn them to return in a band, armed with spears. Meanwhile the priest went to the High Place and spoke to the G.o.ds, and after two days and nights he returned and said that the danger was at the pa.s.s between the valleys; that a demon had seized the people there.

"The demon was Male Package. You know the precipice there is near the sky, and at the very height is a _puta faiti_, a narrow place.

There Male Package lay in wait, armed with his spear and club, and hidden in the gra.s.s. He was hungry for meat, for Long Pig, and when he saw some one he fancied, he threw his spear or struck them down with the _u'u_. He took the corpse on his back and carried it to his hut in the upper valley of Hana-menu as I would carry a sack of copra.

There he ate what he would, alone.

"Oh, there were those who knew, but they were afraid to tell. After it became known to the people of Atuona, to the kin of those who had been eaten, they did nothing. Male Package was like Great Night Moth later--a man whom the G.o.ds fought for."

Great Night Moth sat smoking, listening to what was said in the listless way that lunatics listen, unable to focus his attention, but gathering in his addled brain that he was being discussed. I watched him as one does a caged tiger, guessing at the beast's thoughts and thankful that it can prey no more.

Many Pieces of Tattooing had no tone of horror or regret in his voice while he recounted the b.l.o.o.d.y deeds of Mohuho and Pohue-toa, but smiled, as if he would say that they had occurred under a different dispensation and were not blameful.

"Was Great Night Moth the real son of Male Package?" I asked.

"Ah, that is to be told," said Many Pieces. "He was his son, yes.

Shall I tell you the tale of how he escaped death at the hands of his father? _Ea!_ I remember the time well. Menike, you have seen the rivers big and the cocoanut-trees felled by the flood, but you have not seen the _ave one_, the time of no food, when the ground is as dry as the center of a dead tree, and hunger is in the valleys like the ghost-women that move as mist. There have been many such periods for the island peoples.

"That two years it did not rain. The breadfruit would not yield. The gra.s.s and plants died. There were no nuts on the palms. The pigs had no food, and fell in the forest. The banana-trees withered. The people ate the _popoi_ from the deepest pits, and day and night they fished. Soon the pits were empty and the people ate roots, bark, anything. There were fish, but it is hard to live on fish alone.

"Some lay in their canoes and ate the _eva_ and died. The stomachs of some became empty of thought, and they threw themselves into the sea. The father of Great Night Moth sent all his children to the hills. There is always more rain there, and there was some food to be found. His wife he kept at the fishing, day and night, till she slept at the paddle, and he himself went to the high plateaus to hunt for pig.

"For many days he came down weak, having found none. But at last she came to find baked meat ready for her, and she wept and ate and thanked him. He had found a certain green spot, he said, where there were more.

"Many times he brought the meat to her, and she said that the children should come back to share the food, but he said, 'No. Eat!

They have plenty.'

"She came from the fishing one day with empty baskets. The sea had been rough, and there were no fish. Her husband had become a surly man, and cruel; he beat her. She said, 'Is there no pig?'

"'Pig, you fool!' said her husband. 'You have eaten no pig. You have eaten your children. They are all dead.'

"Great Night Moth had escaped because he had been adopted by the chief of Taaoa, while his father was hunting the children in the forest."

"That is horrible, horrible!" said Le Brunnec. "Maybe this Great Night Moth could not but be bad with such a father. All these chiefs, the hereditary ones, are rotten. Their children are often insane.

They have degenerated. After the whalers came and gave them whiskey, and the traders absinthe and drugs, they learned the vices of the white man, which are worse for them than for us."

"Do you think the eating of men began by the _ave one_, the famine?"

I put the question to Many Pieces of Tattooing, who was about to leave the store with Great Night Moth.

"_Ae, tiatohu!_ It is so," he answered. "Our legends say that often in the many centuries we have remembered there have been years when food failed. It was in those times that they began to eat one another, and when food was plenty, they continued for revenge. They learned to like it. Human meat is good."

"Ask the gentleman if he has himself enjoyed such feasts," I urged Le Brunnec.