White Shadows in the South Seas Part 8

Men were honored for their artistry, highest place being given to the tattooers, the carvers, the designers, and builders of canoes, the architects, doctors, and warriors. Men and women rose to influence and chiefly rank only by deeds that won popular admiration.

These people were hero-worshippers, and in the bloodiest of the old days those of fine soul who had a message of entertainment or instruction were _tapu_ to all tribes, so that they could travel anywhere in safety and were welcome guests in all homes.

It is true that in Hawaii and Tonga conquerors made themselves kings, but not there or in Samoa, Tahiti, or the Marquesas were kings supreme rulers until the whites established them for their own trade purposes and sold them firearms by which to maintain their power.

That day of the whites had pa.s.sed in Vait-hua. The chief now maintained his authority by the fondness of his people alone.

Generous he was, and gentle, yet I minded that he had bitten off the nose of Severin, the French gendarme, when the _namu_ had made him mad. Now whether guided by pride in his discipline or by memory of evil-doing repented, he was strict in his enforcement of the prohibition of cocoanut toddy, and sobriety made the days and nights peaceful.

Early in the mornings I called "Kaoha!" from my _paepae_ to Mrs. Seventh Man, who came each day from her bath in the _via puna_ attired in her earrings only.

Sauntering along the bank of the brook still dripping from the spring, her wet black hair clinging to her shapely back and her tawny skin glistening in flickering light and shade, she was for all the world my conception of Mother Eve before even leaves were modesty. Her nudity was a custom only at this time, for when she reappeared to aid Exploding Eggs in preparing my breakfast she always wore a scarlet _pareu_ and her hair was done like Bernhardt's.

Vanquished Often appeared with her aunt, carefully dressed in spotless, diaphanous tunic, fresh flowers in her hair, a treasured pink silk garter clasping her rounded arm. "Big White Brother," she called me with pride, though often I saw a sad wonder in her great eyes as she squatted near, silently watching me. Her possessive ways were pretty to see as she walked close by my side on the trail from my cabin to the beach, while Exploding Eggs regarded her jealously, insisting on his prerogative as _Tueni Oki Kiki_, Keeper of the Golden Bed, the glittering magnificence of which he described minutely to her.

We arrived at a merry scene upon the beach. Women and children were in the surf, or on rocks under the cliffs, fishing for _popo_, the young of _uua_. With bamboo poles twenty feet long and lines of even greater length, we stood up to our necks in the sea and threw out the hook baited with a morsel of shrimp. The breakers tumbled us about, the lines became tangled, amid gales of laughter and a medley of joyous shouts. Tiring of fishing, Vanquished Often and I would breast the creaming waves side by side, to turn far out and dash in on the breakers, overturning all but the wary. Or a group of us, climbing high on the cliffs, would fling ourselves again and again into the sea, turning in mid-air, life and delight quickening every muscle.

Wearying of this sport, we embarked in canoes, fishing or sailing, and many small adventures we had, for the younger and more daring spirits delighted in scaring me into expostulation or the silence of the condemned and then saving my life by a hair's-breadth.

We had gone one morning about the southern cape, and were harpooning swordfish and the gigantic sunfish when a commotion a thousand feet away brought shouts of warning from my companions. We saw two whales, one with a baby at her breast. The other we took to be the father whale. Huge black beasts they were. Upon this mated pair a band of sharks had flung themselves to seize the infant.

There were at least twenty-five sharks in the mad mob, great white monsters thirty feet in length, man-eaters by blood-taste, tigers in disposition. Though they could not compare with their prey in size or power, they had heads as large as barrels, and mouths that would drag a man through their terrible gaps. That their hunger was past all bounds was evident, for the whale is not often attacked by such inferior-sized fish. Storms had raged on the sea for days, and maybe had cheated the sharks of their usual food.

They swam around and around the mountainous pair, darting in and out, evidently with some plan of drawing off the male. Both the whales struck out incessantly with their mammoth flukes; their great tails, crashing upon the sea-surface, lashed it to mountains of foam. Our boats tossed as in a gale.

Carried away by the pity and terror of the scene, we shouted threats and curses at the monsters, calling down on them in Marquesan the wrath of the sea-G.o.ds. Frenziedly handling tiller and sails, we circled the battle, impotent to aid the poor woman-beast and her baby.

The sharks harried them as hounds a fox. Desperately the parents fought, more than one shark sank wounded to the depths and one, turning its white belly to the sun, floated dead upon the waves.

Another was flung high in air by a blow of the mother's tail. But it was an uneven contest. At last we saw the nursling drawn from her breast, and the mother herself sank, still struggling. She may have risen, of course, far away, but she seemed disabled.

We did not wait about that b.l.o.o.d.y spot when the sharks had fallen upon their prey, for our canoe was low in the water, and with such a sight to warn us, we did not doubt that the loathly monsters would attack us.

From such a sight it was a relief to turn to the mountains. Along the steep trails I roamed far with Vanquished Often and Exploding Eggs. We played at being alone with nature, foregoing in living all that the white man had brought. I left the house of the chief naked save for a loin-cloth of native make, and I wore no shoes or hat.

Vanquished Often and my valet were attired as I, and thus we shouted "Kaoha!" to the chieftess and started toward adventure.

Seventh Man was dubious about my setting off without some prepared food, _popoi_ or canned fish or biscuits, and without sleeping-mats.

"You ketchee hungery by an' soon," he protested. "No got Gold Bed in mountains."

Vanquished Often laughed merrily, and the chief looked like a father whose child has thrown a stone at the bogie-man. I rubbed his nose with mine in farewell, and we began our journey, barehanded as Crusoe, yet more fortunate than he since we were in the best of company and I had the comforting knowledge that Marquesan youth would not go hungry or permit me to do so.

Our way led up heights of marvelous beauty, along the edges of deep defiles that opened below our feet like valleys of Paradise. The candlenut, the _ama_, with its lilac bloom, the hibiscus and panda.n.u.s, green and glossy, the _petavii_, a kind of banana the curving fronds of which spread high in air, the snake-plant, _makomako_, a yellow-flowered shrub, and many others none of us could name, carpeted the farther mountain-sides with brilliant colors.

Everywhere were cocoanuts, guavas, and mangos. In the tree-tops over our heads the bindweed shook its feathery seed-pods, the parasite _kouna_ dripped its deeply serrated leaves and crimson umbels, and thousands of orchids hung like b.u.t.terflies.

"It is beautiful in your islands, is it not?" Vanquished Often said wistfully. "Tell us more of the marvels there! Are the girls of your valleys very lovely, and do they all sleep in golden beds?"

All daughters of chiefs slept in golden beds, I told her. Often they wore golden slippers on their feet. When they wished to go over the mountains they did not walk, or ride on donkeys, but went in seats covered with velvet, a kind of cloth more soft than the silk ribbon of her pink garter-armlet, and these seats were drawn at incredible speed by a snorting thing made of iron, not living, but stronger than a hundred donkeys.

"How do they make that cloth?" said Vanquished Often, eagerly. They did not make it, I explained. It was made for them by girls who were not daughters of chiefs, and therefore had no golden beds.

Her eyes clouded with bewilderment, but Exploding Eggs listened breathlessly, and demanded more tales. I told them of wireless telegraphy. This they believed as they believed the tales of magic told by old sorcerers, but they scoffed at my description of an elevator, perceiving that I was loosing the reins of my fancy and soaring to impossibilities.

"The girls in your island must always be happy," said Vanquished Often, sighing. All daughters of chiefs were happy, I said.

"What is the manner of their fishing?" asked Exploding Eggs.

In such conversation we proceeded, walking for miles through a fairyland in which we were the only living creatures, save for the small scurrying things that slipped across the trail, and the bright-colored birds that fluttered through the tree-tops.

At noon we paused for luncheon. Vanquished Often disappeared in the forest, to return shortly with her gathered-up tunic filled with mangos and guavas, four cocoanuts slung in a neatly plaited basket of leaves on her bare shoulders. Exploding Eggs, cutting two sticks of dry wood from the underbrush, whirled them upon each other with such speed and dexterity that soon a small fire, fed by shreds of cocoanut fiber, blazed on a rock, with plantains heaped about it to roast.

While we rested after the feast Vanquished Often, squatted by my side, made for my comfort a wide-brimmed hat of thick leaves pinned together with thorns, a shelter from the sun's rays that was grateful to my tender scalp. Resuming our way, we met upon the trail a handsome small wild donkey, fearful of our kind, yet longing for company.

"_Pureekee!_" said Exploding Eggs, meaning _bourrique_, the French for donkey. And Vanquished Often related that once hundreds of these beasts roamed through the jungle, descendants of a pair of a.s.ses escaped from a ship decades before, but that most of them had starved to death in dry periods, or been eaten by hungry natives.

Farther on we pa.s.sed acres of the sensitive plant, called by the Marquesans _teita hakaina_, the Modest Herb. A wide glade in a curve of the mountains was filled with a sea of it, and my companions delighted in dashing through its curiously nervous leaf.a.ge, that shuddered and folded its feathery sprays together at their touch. If shocked further it opened its leaflets as if to say, "What's the use?

I'm shy, but I can't stay under cover forever."

In such artless amus.e.m.e.nts the day pa.s.sed, a day that remains forever an idyl of simple loveliness to me, such as any man is the richer for having known. When darkness overtook us, we made for ourselves the softest of ferny beds, and slept serenely, untroubled by anything, under the light of the stars.

As we returned next day to the village in the valley, we found upon a hill far from the beach the tombs of the sailors who first raised the standard of France in these islands. The eternal jungle had so housed in their monuments that we had hot work to break through the jealous lantana and panda.n.u.s to see the stones. Neither Vanquished Often nor Exploding Eggs had ever cast eyes on them, and neither had but a legendary memory of how these men of the conquering race had met their death.

A great slab of native basalt eroded by seventy years of sun and rain bore the barely discernible epitaph:

"Ci Git Edouard Michel Halley Capitaine de Corvette Officier de la Legion d'honneur Fondateur de la colonie de Vait-hua Mort au champ d'honneur Le 17 ----bre, 1842"

I read it to my friends. They pressed their hands to their brows to conjure up a vision of this dead man whom their grandfathers had fought and slain, as I told them the story of his death in the jungle at our feet.

It was at Vait-hua that the French first took possession of the Marquesas. Here already were missionaries and beach-combers of many nationalities, ardent spirits all, fighting each other for the souls of the natives; gin and the commandments at odds, ritual and exploitation contending. Unable to subdue the forces that threatened the peace of his people, Iotete, Vait-hua's chief, sent a message asking the help of the French admiral. It came at once; a garrison was established on the beach, and the tricolor rose.

Whatever the cause, it had been upraised barely two months when chief and people in a body deserted their homes and fled to the hills.

Commander Halley, having vainly exhorted and commanded them to return, declared war on them in punishment for their disobedience, and marshaling his forces in three columns set out to seek them.

Ladebat led the van, armed with a fowling-piece. Halley himself walked at the head of the middle column, a youthful, debonair Frenchman, carrying only a cane, which he swung jauntily as he followed the jungle trail. When the soldiers arrived at a few feet from the main body of the natives, Iotete advanced and cried out, "_Tapu!_"

Ladebat instantly fired his shot-gun at the chief, and instantly two b.a.l.l.s from native guns pierced his brain.

"Halley," runs the old chronicle, "advanced from the shelter of a cocoanut-tree to give orders to his men, but fell on his knees as if in prayer, embracing the tree, three paces from the corpse of Ladebat.

Five of his men dropped mortally wounded beside him. Third Officer Laferriere had the retreat sounded."

Here, but a few feet from the spot where the gay young Frenchman fell, the jungle had covered his tomb. Fifty thousand Marquesans have died to bring peace to the soul of that _corvette_ commander who so jauntily flourished his cane in the faces of the wondering savages.

Iotete would better have endured the pranks of brutal sea-adventurers, perhaps. This mausoleum was the seal of French occupancy.

Farther down the hill we came upon the first church built in the Marquesas. It was a small wooden edifice bearing a weatherbeaten sign in French, "The Church of the Mother of G.o.d." Above the shattered doors were two carven hearts, a red dagger through one and a red flame issuing from the other. A black cross was fixed above these symbols, which Vanquished Often and Exploding Eggs regarded with respect. To the Marquesan these are all _tiki_, or charms, which have superseded their own.

Beside the decaying church stood a refectory far gone in ruin, that once had housed a dozen friars. Breadfruit-, mango- and orange-trees grew in the tangled tall gra.s.s, and the garden where the priests had read their breviaries was a wilderness of tiger-lilies. Among them we found empty bottles of a "Medical Discovery," a patent medicine dispensed from Boston, favored in these islands where liquor is tabooed by government.

Seventh Man, coming up the trail to meet us, found us looking at them.

He lifted one and sniffed it regretfully.

"Prenty strong," he said. "Make drunkee. Call him Kennedee. He cost much. Drinkee two piece you sick three day." He smiled reminiscently, and once more I thought of that day when the unfortunate gendarme had surprised the orgiasts in the forest and lost his nose. The chief accompanied us down the trail.