IN THE SOUTH SEAS

PART 1: THE MARQUESAS

CHAPTER I--AN ISLAND LANDFALL

For nearly ten years my health had been declining; and for somewhile before I set forth upon my voyage, I believed I was come tothe afterpiece of life, and had only the nurse and undertaker toexpect. It was suggested that I should try the South Seas; and Iwas not unwilling to visit like a ghost, and be carried like abale, among scenes that had attracted me in youth and health. Ichartered accordingly Dr. Merrit's schooner yacht, the Casco, seventy-four tons register; sailed from San Francisco towards theend of June 1888, visited the eastern islands, and was left earlythe next year at Honolulu. Hence, lacking courage to return to myold life of the house and sick-room, I set forth to leeward in atrading schooner, the Equator, of a little over seventy tons, spentfour months among the atolls (low coral islands) of the Gilbertgroup, and reached Samoa towards the close of '89. By that timegratitude and habit were beginning to attach me to the islands; Ihad gained a competency of strength; I had made friends; I hadlearned new interests; the time of my voyages had passed like daysin fairyland; and I decided to remain. I began to prepare thesepages at sea, on a third cruise, in the trading steamer JanetNicoll. If more days are granted me, they shall be passed where Ihave found life most pleasant and man most interesting; the axes ofmy black boys are already clearing the foundations of my futurehouse; and I must learn to address readers from the uttermost partsof the sea. 

That I should thus have reversed the verdict of Lord Tennyson'shero is less eccentric than appears. Few men who come to theislands leave them; they grow grey where they alighted; the palmshades and the trade-wind fans them till they die, perhapscherishing to the last the fancy of a visit home, which is rarelymade, more rarely enjoyed, and yet more rarely repeated. No partof the world exerts the same attractive power upon the visitor, andthe task before me is to communicate to fireside travellers somesense of its seduction, and to describe the life, at sea andashore, of many hundred thousand persons, some of our own blood andlanguage, all our contemporaries, and yet as remote in thought andhabit as Rob Roy or Barbarossa, the Apostles or the Caesars. 

The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, thefirst sunrise, the first South Sea island, are memories apart andtouched a virginity of sense. On the 28th of July 1888 the moonwas an hour down by four in the morning. In the east a radiatingcentre of brightness told of the day; and beneath, on the skyline, the morning bank was already building, black as ink. We have allread of the swiftness of the day's coming and departure in lowlatitudes; it is a point on which the scientific and sentimentaltourist are at one, and has inspired some tasteful poetry. Theperiod certainly varies with the season; but here is one caseexactly noted. Although the dawn was thus preparing by four, thesun was not up till six; and it was half-past five before we coulddistinguish our expected islands from the clouds on the horizon. Eight degrees south, and the day two hours a-coming. The intervalwas passed on deck in the silence of expectation, the customarythrill of landfall heightened by the strangeness of the shores thatwe were then approaching. Slowly they took shape in theattenuating darkness. Ua-huna, piling up to a truncated summit, appeared the first upon the starboard bow; almost abeam arose ourdestination, Nuka-hiva, whelmed in cloud; and betwixt and to thesouthward, the first rays of the sun displayed the needles of Ua-pu. These pricked about the line of the horizon; like thepinnacles of some ornate and monstrous church, they stood there, inthe sparkling brightness of the morning, the fit signboard of aworld of wonders. 

Not one soul aboard the Casco had set foot upon the islands, orknew, except by accident, one word of any of the island tongues;and it was with something perhaps of the same anxious pleasure asthrilled the bosom of discoverers that we drew near theseproblematic shores. The land heaved up in peaks and rising vales;it fell in cliffs and buttresses; its colour ran through fiftymodulations in a scale of pearl and rose and olive; and it wascrowned above by opalescent clouds. The suffusion of vague huesdeceived the eye; the shadows of clouds were confounded with thearticulations of the mountains; and the isle and its unsubstantialcanopy rose and shimmered before us like a single mass. There wasno beacon, no smoke of towns to be expected, no plying pilot. Somewhere, in that pale phantasmagoria of cliff and cloud, ourhaven lay concealed; and somewhere to the east of it--the only sea-mark given--a certain headland, known indifferently as Cape Adamand Eve, or Cape Jack and Jane, and distinguished by two colossalfigures, the gross statuary of nature. These we were to find; forthese we craned and stared, focused glasses, and wrangled overcharts; and the sun was overhead and the land close ahead before wefound them. To a ship approaching, like the Casco, from the north, they proved indeed the least conspicuous features of a strikingcoast; the surf flying high above its base; strange, austere, andfeathered mountains rising behind; and Jack and Jane, or Adam andEve, impending like a pair of warts above the breakers. 

Thence we bore away along shore. On our port beam we might hearthe explosions of the surf; a few birds flew fishing under theprow; there was no other sound or mark of life, whether of man orbeast, in all that quarter of the island. Winged by her ownimpetus and the dying breeze, the Casco skimmed under cliffs, opened out a cove, showed us a beach and some green trees, andflitted by again, bowing to the swell. The trees, from ourdistance, might have been hazel; the beach might have been inEurope; the mountain forms behind modelled in little from the Alps, and the forest which clustered on their ramparts a growth no moreconsiderable than our Scottish heath. Again the cliff yawned, butnow with a deeper entry; and the Casco, hauling her wind, began toslide into the bay of Anaho. The cocoa-palm, that giraffe ofvegetables, so graceful, so ungainly, to the European eye soforeign, was to be seen crowding on the beach, and climbing andfringing the steep sides of mountains. Rude and bare hillsembraced the inlet upon either hand; it was enclosed to thelandward by a bulk of shattered mountains. In every crevice ofthat barrier the forest harboured, roosting and nestling there likebirds about a ruin; and far above, it greened and roughened therazor edges of the summit. 

Under the eastern shore, our schooner, now bereft of any breeze, continued to creep in: the smart creature, when once under way, appearing motive in herself. From close aboard arose the bleatingof young lambs; a bird sang in the hillside; the scent of the landand of a hundred fruits or flowers flowed forth to meet us; and, presently, a house or two appeared, standing high upon the anklesof the hills, and one of these surrounded with what seemed agarden. These conspicuous habitations, that patch of culture, hadwe but known it, were a mark of the passage of whites; and we mighthave approached a hundred islands and not found their parallel. Itwas longer ere we spied the native village, standing (in theuniversal fashion) close upon a curve of beach, close under a groveof palms; the sea in front growling and whitening on a concave arcof reef. For the cocoa-tree and the island man are both lovers andneighbours of the surf. 'The coral waxes, the palm grows, but mandeparts, ' says the sad Tahitian proverb; but they are all three, solong as they endure, co-haunters of the beach. The mark ofanchorage was a blow-hole in the rocks, near the south-easterlycorner of the bay. Punctually to our use, the blow-hole spouted;the schooner turned upon her heel; the anchor plunged. It was asmall sound, a great event; my soul went down with these mooringswhence no windlass may extract nor any diver fish it up; and I, andsome part of my ship's company, were from that hour the bondslavesof the isles of Vivien. 

Before yet the anchor plunged a canoe was already paddling from thehamlet. It contained two men: one white, one brown and tattooedacross the face with bands of blue, both in immaculate whiteEuropean clothes: the resident trader, Mr. Regler, and the nativechief, Taipi-Kikino. 'Captain, is it permitted to come on board?'were the first words we heard among the islands. Canoe followedcanoe till the ship swarmed with stalwart, six-foot men in everystage of undress; some in a shirt, some in a loin-cloth, one in ahandkerchief imperfectly adjusted; some, and these the moreconsiderable, tattooed from head to foot in awful patterns; somebarbarous and knived; one, who sticks in my memory as somethingbestial, squatting on his hams in a canoe, sucking an orange andspitting it out again to alternate sides with ape-like vivacity--all talking, and we could not understand one word; all trying totrade with us who had no thought of trading, or offering us islandcurios at prices palpably absurd. There was no word of welcome; noshow of civility; no hand extended save that of the chief and Mr. Regler. As we still continued to refuse the proffered articles, complaint ran high and rude; and one, the jester of the party, railed upon our meanness amid jeering laughter. Amongst otherangry pleasantries--'Here is a mighty fine ship, ' said he, 'to haveno money on board!' I own I was inspired with sensible repugnance;even with alarm. The ship was manifestly in their power; we hadwomen on board; I knew nothing of my guests beyond the fact thatthey were cannibals; the Directory (my only guide) was full oftimid cautions; and as for the trader, whose presence might elsehave reassured me, were not whites in the Pacific the usualinstigators and accomplices of native outrage? When he reads thisconfession, our kind friend, Mr. Regler, can afford to smile. 

Later in the day, as I sat writing up my journal, the cabin wasfilled from end to end with Marquesans: three brown-skinnedgenerations, squatted cross-legged upon the floor, and regarding mein silence with embarrassing eyes. The eyes of all Polynesians arelarge, luminous, and melting; they are like the eyes of animals andsome Italians. A kind of despair came over me, to sit therehelpless under all these staring orbs, and be thus blocked in acorner of my cabin by this speechless crowd: and a kind of rage tothink they were beyond the reach of articulate communication, likefurred animals, or folk born deaf, or the dwellers of some alienplanet. 

To cross the Channel is, for a boy of twelve, to change heavens; tocross the Atlantic, for a man of twenty-four, is hardly to modifyhis diet. But I was now escaped out of the shadow of the Romanempire, under whose toppling monuments we were all cradled, whoselaws and letters are on every hand of us, constraining andpreventing. I was now to see what men might be whose fathers hadnever studied Virgil, had never been conquered by Caesar, and neverbeen ruled by the wisdom of Gaius or Papinian. By the same step Ihad journeyed forth out of that comfortable zone of kindredlanguages, where the curse of Babel is so easy to be remedied; andmy new fellow-creatures sat before me dumb like images. Methought, in my travels, all human relation was to be excluded; and when Ireturned home (for in those days I still projected my return) Ishould have but dipped into a picture-book without a text. Nay, and I even questioned if my travels should be much prolonged;perhaps they were destined to a speedy end; perhaps my subsequentfriend, Kauanui, whom I remarked there, sitting silent with therest, for a man of some authority, might leap from his hams with anear-splitting signal, the ship be carried at a rush, and the ship'scompany butchered for the table. 

There could be nothing more natural than these apprehensions, noranything more groundless. In my experience of the islands, I hadnever again so menacing a reception; were I to meet with such to-day, I should be more alarmed and tenfold more surprised. Themajority of Polynesians are easy folk to get in touch with, frank, fond of notice, greedy of the least affection, like amiable, fawning dogs; and even with the Marquesans, so recently and soimperfectly redeemed from a blood-boltered barbarism, all were tobecome our intimates, and one, at least, was to mourn sincerely ourdeparture. 

CHAPTER II--MAKING FRIENDS

The impediment of tongues was one that I particularly over-estimated. The languages of Polynesia are easy to smatter, thoughhard to speak with elegance. And they are extremely similar, sothat a person who has a tincture of one or two may risk, notwithout hope, an attempt upon the others. 

And again, not only is Polynesian easy to smatter, but interpretersabound. Missionaries, traders, and broken white folk living on thebounty of the natives, are to be found in almost every isle andhamlet; and even where these are unserviceable, the nativesthemselves have often scraped up a little English, and in theFrench zone (though far less commonly) a little French-English, oran efficient pidgin, what is called to the westward 'Beach-la-Mar, 'comes easy to the Polynesian; it is now taught, besides, in theschools of Hawaii; and from the multiplicity of British ships, andthe nearness of the States on the one hand and the colonies on theother, it may be called, and will almost certainly become, thetongue of the Pacific. I will instance a few examples. I met inMajuro a Marshall Island boy who spoke excellent English; this hehad learned in the German firm in Jaluit, yet did not speak oneword of German. I heard from a gendarme who had taught school inRapa-iti that while the children had the utmost difficulty orreluctance to learn French, they picked up English on the wayside, and as if by accident. On one of the most out-of-the-way atolls inthe Carolines, my friend Mr. Benjamin Hird was amazed to find thelads playing cricket on the beach and talking English; and it wasin English that the crew of the Janet Nicoll, a set of black boysfrom different Melanesian islands, communicated with other nativesthroughout the cruise, transmitted orders, and sometimes jestedtogether on the fore-hatch. But what struck me perhaps most of allwas a word I heard on the verandah of the Tribunal at Noumea. Acase had just been heard--a trial for infanticide against an ape-like native woman; and the audience were smoking cigarettes as theyawaited the verdict. An anxious, amiable French lady, not far fromtears, was eager for acquittal, and declared she would engage theprisoner to be her children's nurse. The bystanders exclaimed atthe proposal; the woman was a savage, said they, and spoke nolanguage. 'Mais, vous savez, ' objected the fair sentimentalist;'ils apprennent si vite l'anglais!'

But to be able to speak to people is not all. And in the firststage of my relations with natives I was helped by two things. Tobegin with, I was the show-man of the Casco. She, her fine lines, tall spars, and snowy decks, the crimson fittings of the saloon, and the white, the gilt, and the repeating mirrors of the tinycabin, brought us a hundred visitors. The men fathomed out herdimensions with their arms, as their fathers fathomed out the shipsof Cook; the women declared the cabins more lovely than a church;bouncing Junos were never weary of sitting in the chairs andcontemplating in the glass their own bland images; and I have seenone lady strip up her dress, and, with cries of wonder and delight, rub herself bare-breeched upon the velvet cushions. Biscuit, jam, and syrup was the entertainment; and, as in European parlours, thephotograph album went the round. This sober gallery, theireveryday costumes and physiognomies, had become transformed, inthree weeks' sailing, into things wonderful and rich and foreign;alien faces, barbaric dresses, they were now beheld and fingered, in the swerving cabin, with innocent excitement and surprise. HerMajesty was often recognised, and I have seen French subjects kissher photograph; Captain Speedy--in an Abyssinian war-dress, supposed to be the uniform of the British army--met with muchacceptance; and the effigies of Mr. Andrew Lang were admired in theMarquesas. There is the place for him to go when he shall be wearyof Middlesex and Homer. 

It was perhaps yet more important that I had enjoyed in my youthsome knowledge of our Scots folk of the Highlands and the Islands. Not much beyond a century has passed since these were in the sameconvulsive and transitionary state as the Marquesans of to-day. Inboth cases an alien authority enforced, the clans disarmed, thechiefs deposed, new customs introduced, and chiefly that fashion ofregarding money as the means and object of existence. Thecommercial age, in each, succeeding at a bound to an age of warabroad and patriarchal communism at home. In one the cherishedpractice of tattooing, in the other a cherished costume, proscribed. In each a main luxury cut off: beef, driven undercloud of night from Lowland pastures, denied to the meat-lovingHighlander; long-pig, pirated from the next village, to the man-eating Kanaka. The grumbling, the secret ferment, the fears andresentments, the alarms and sudden councils of Marquesan chiefs, reminded me continually of the days of Lovat and Struan. Hospitality, tact, natural fine manners, and a touchy punctilio, are common to both races: common to both tongues the trick ofdropping medial consonants. Here is a table of two widespreadPolynesian words:-

 House. Love. 

Tahitian FARE AROHA

New Zealand WHARE

Samoan FALE TALOFA

Manihiki FALE ALOHA

Hawaiian HALE ALOHA

Marquesan HA'E KAOHA

The elision of medial consonants, so marked in these Marquesaninstances, is no less common both in Gaelic and the Lowland Scots. Stranger still, that prevalent Polynesian sound, the so-calledcatch, written with an apostrophe, and often or always thegravestone of a perished consonant, is to be heard in Scotland tothis day. When a Scot pronounces water, better, or bottle--wa'er, be'er, or bo'le--the sound is precisely that of the catch; and Ithink we may go beyond, and say, that if such a population could beisolated, and this mispronunciation should become the rule, itmight prove the first stage of transition from t to k, which is thedisease of Polynesian languages. The tendency of the Marquesans, however, is to urge against consonants, or at least on the verycommon letter l, a war of mere extermination. A hiatus isagreeable to any Polynesian ear; the ear even of the stranger soongrows used to these barbaric voids; but only in the Marquesan willyou find such names as Haaii and Paaaeua, when each individualvowel must be separately uttered. 

These points of similarity between a South Sea people and some ofmy own folk at home ran much in my head in the islands; and notonly inclined me to view my fresh acquaintances with favour, butcontinually modified my judgment. A polite Englishman comes to-dayto the Marquesans and is amazed to find the men tattooed; politeItalians came not long ago to England and found our fathers stainedwith woad; and when I paid the return visit as a little boy, I washighly diverted with the backwardness of Italy: so insecure, somuch a matter of the day and hour, is the pre-eminence of race. Itwas so that I hit upon a means of communication which I recommendto travellers. When I desired any detail of savage custom, or ofsuperstitious belief, I cast back in the story of my fathers, andfished for what I wanted with some trait of equal barbarism:Michael Scott, Lord Derwentwater's head, the second-sight, theWater Kelpie, --each of these I have found to be a killing bait; theblack bull's head of Stirling procured me the legend of Rahero; andwhat I knew of the Cluny Macphersons, or the Appin Stewarts, enabled me to learn, and helped me to understand, about the Tevasof Tahiti. The native was no longer ashamed, his sense of kinshipgrew warmer, and his lips were opened. It is this sense of kinshipthat the traveller must rouse and share; or he had better contenthimself with travels from the blue bed to the brown. And thepresence of one Cockney titterer will cause a whole party to walkin clouds of darkness. 

The hamlet of Anaho stands on a margin of flat land between thewest of the beach and the spring of the impending mountains. Agrove of palms, perpetually ruffling its green fans, carpets it (asfor a triumph) with fallen branches, and shades it like an arbour. A road runs from end to end of the covert among beds of flowers, the milliner's shop of the community; and here and there, in thegrateful twilight, in an air filled with a diversity of scents, andstill within hearing of the surf upon the reef, the native housesstand in scattered neighbourhood. The same word, as we have seen, represents in many tongues of Polynesia, with scarce a shade ofdifference, the abode of man. But although the word be the same, the structure itself continually varies; and the Marquesan, amongthe most backward and barbarous of islanders, is yet the mostcommodiously lodged. The grass huts of Hawaii, the birdcage housesof Tahiti, or the open shed, with the crazy Venetian blinds, of thepolite Samoan--none of these can be compared with the Marquesanpaepae-hae, or dwelling platform. The paepae is an oblong terracebuilt without cement or black volcanic stone, from twenty to fiftyfeet in length, raised from four to eight feet from the earth, andaccessible by a broad stair. Along the back of this, and coming toabout half its width, runs the open front of the house, like acovered gallery: the interior sometimes neat and almost elegant inits bareness, the sleeping space divided off by an endlong coaming, some bright raiment perhaps hanging from a nail, and a lamp and oneof White's sewing-machines the only marks of civilization. On theoutside, at one end of the terrace, burns the cooking-fire under ashed; at the other there is perhaps a pen for pigs; the remainderis the evening lounge and al fresco banquet-hall of theinhabitants. To some houses water is brought down the mountains inbamboo pipes, perforated for the sake of sweetness. With theHighland comparison in my mind, I was struck to remember thesluttish mounds of turf and stone in which I have sat and beenentertained in the Hebrides and the North Islands. Two things, Isuppose, explain the contrast. In Scotland wood is rare, and withmaterials so rude as turf and stone the very hope of neatness isexcluded. And in Scotland it is cold. Shelter and a hearth areneeds so pressing that a man looks not beyond; he is out all dayafter a bare bellyful, and at night when he saith, 'Aha, it iswarm!' he has not appetite for more. Or if for something else, then something higher; a fine school of poetry and song arose inthese rough shelters, and an air like 'Lochaber no more' is anevidence of refinement more convincing, as well as moreimperishable, than a palace. 

To one such dwelling platform a considerable troop of relatives anddependants resort. In the hour of the dusk, when the fire blazes, and the scent of the cooked breadfruit fills the air, and perhapsthe lamp glints already between the pillars and the house, youshall behold them silently assemble to this meal, men, women, andchildren; and the dogs and pigs frisk together up the terracestairway, switching rival tails. The strangers from the ship weresoon equally welcome: welcome to dip their fingers in the woodendish, to drink cocoanuts, to share the circulating pipe, and tohear and hold high debate about the misdeeds of the French, thePanama Canal, or the geographical position of San Francisco and NewYo'ko. In a Highland hamlet, quite out of reach of any tourist, Ihave met the same plain and dignified hospitality. 

I have mentioned two facts--the distasteful behaviour of ourearliest visitors, and the case of the lady who rubbed herself uponthe cushions--which would give a very false opinion of Marquesanmanners. The great majority of Polynesians are excellentlymannered; but the Marquesan stands apart, annoying and attractive, wild, shy, and refined. If you make him a present he affects toforget it, and it must be offered him again at his going: a prettyformality I have found nowhere else. A hint will get rid of anyone or any number; they are so fiercely proud and modest; whilemany of the more lovable but blunter islanders crowd upon astranger, and can be no more driven off than flies. A slight or aninsult the Marquesan seems never to forget. I was one day talkingby the wayside with my friend Hoka, when I perceived his eyessuddenly to flash and his stature to swell. A white horseman wascoming down the mountain, and as he passed, and while he paused toexchange salutations with myself, Hoka was still staring andruffling like a gamecock. It was a Corsican who had years beforecalled him cochon sauvage--cocon chauvage, as Hoka mispronouncedit. With people so nice and so touchy, it was scarce to besupposed that our company of greenhorns should not blunder intooffences. Hoka, on one of his visits, fell suddenly in a broodingsilence, and presently after left the ship with cold formality. When he took me back into favour, he adroitly and pointedlyexplained the nature of my offence: I had asked him to sell cocoa-nuts; and in Hoka's view articles of food were things that agentleman should give, not sell; or at least that he should notsell to any friend. On another occasion I gave my boat's crew aluncheon of chocolate and biscuits. I had sinned, I could neverlearn how, against some point of observance; and though I was drilythanked, my offerings were left upon the beach. But our worstmistake was a slight we put on Toma, Hoka's adoptive father, and inhis own eyes the rightful chief of Anaho. In the first place, wedid not call upon him, as perhaps we should, in his fine newEuropean house, the only one in the hamlet. In the second, when wecame ashore upon a visit to his rival, Taipi-Kikino, it was Tomawhom we saw standing at the head of the beach, a magnificent figureof a man, magnificently tattooed; and it was of Toma that we askedour question: 'Where is the chief?' 'What chief?' cried Toma, andturned his back on the blasphemers. Nor did he forgive us. Hokacame and went with us daily; but, alone I believe of all thecountryside, neither Toma nor his wife set foot on board the Casco. The temptation resisted it is hard for a European to compute. Theflying city of Laputa moored for a fortnight in St. James's Parkaffords but a pale figure of the Casco anchored before Anaho; forthe Londoner has still his change of pleasures, but the Marquesanpasses to his grave through an unbroken uniformity of days. 

On the afternoon before it was intended we should sail, avaledictory party came on board: nine of our particular friendsequipped with gifts and dressed as for a festival. Hoka, the chiefdancer and singer, the greatest dandy of Anaho, and one of thehandsomest young fellows in the world-sullen, showy, dramatic, light as a feather and strong as an ox--it would have been hard, onthat occasion, to recognise, as he sat there stooped and silent, his face heavy and grey. It was strange to see the lad so muchaffected; stranger still to recognise in his last gift one of thecurios we had refused on the first day, and to know our friend, sogaily dressed, so plainly moved at our departure, for one of thehalf-naked crew that had besieged and insulted us on our arrival:strangest of all, perhaps, to find, in that carved handle of a fan, the last of those curiosities of the first day which had now allbeen given to us by their possessors--their chief merchandise, forwhich they had sought to ransom us as long as we were strangers, which they pressed on us for nothing as soon as we were friends. The last visit was not long protracted. One after another theyshook hands and got down into their canoe; when Hoka turned hisback immediately upon the ship, so that we saw his face no more. Taipi, on the other hand, remained standing and facing us withgracious valedictory gestures; and when Captain Otis dipped theensign, the whole party saluted with their hats. This was thefarewell; the episode of our visit to Anaho was held concluded; andthough the Casco remained nearly forty hours at her moorings, notone returned on board, and I am inclined to think they avoidedappearing on the beach. This reserve and dignity is the finesttrait of the Marquesan. 

CHAPTER III--THE MAROON

Of the beauties of Anaho books might be written. I remember wakingabout three, to find the air temperate and scented. The long swellbrimmed into the bay, and seemed to fill it full and then subside. Gently, deeply, and silently the Casco rolled; only at times ablock piped like a bird. Oceanward, the heaven was bright withstars and the sea with their reflections. If I looked to thatside, I might have sung with the Hawaiian poet:

Ua maomao ka lani, ua kahaea luna, Ua pipi ka maka o ka hoku. (The heavens were fair, they stretched above, Many were the eyes of the stars. )

And then I turned shoreward, and high squalls were overhead; themountains loomed up black; and I could have fancied I had slippedten thousand miles away and was anchored in a Highland loch; thatwhen the day came, it would show pine, and heather, and green fern, and roofs of turf sending up the smoke of peats; and the alienspeech that should next greet my ears must be Gaelic, not Kanaka. 

And day, when it came, brought other sights and thoughts. I havewatched the morning break in many quarters of the world; it hasbeen certainly one of the chief joys of my existence, and the dawnthat I saw with most emotion shone upon the bay of Anaho. Themountains abruptly overhang the port with every variety of surfaceand of inclination, lawn, and cliff, and forest. Not one of thesebut wore its proper tint of saffron, of sulphur, of the clove, andof the rose. The lustre was like that of satin; on the lighterhues there seemed to float an efflorescence; a solemn bloomappeared on the more dark. The light itself was the ordinary lightof morning, colourless and clean; and on this ground of jewels, pencilled out the least detail of drawing. Meanwhile, around thehamlet, under the palms, where the blue shadow lingered, the redcoals of cocoa husk and the light trails of smoke betrayed theawakening business of the day; along the beach men and women, ladsand lasses, were returning from the bath in bright raiment, red andblue and green, such as we delighted to see in the coloured littlepictures of our childhood; and presently the sun had cleared theeastern hill, and the glow of the day was over all. 

The glow continued and increased, the business, from the main part, ceased before it had begun. Twice in the day there was a certainstir of shepherding along the seaward hills. At times a canoe wentout to fish. At times a woman or two languidly filled a basket inthe cotton patch. At times a pipe would sound out of the shadow ofa house, ringing the changes on its three notes, with an effectlike Que le jour me dure, repeated endlessly. Or at times, acrossa corner of the bay, two natives might communicate in the Marquesanmanner with conventional whistlings. All else was sleep andsilence. The surf broke and shone around the shores; a species ofblack crane fished in the broken water; the black pigs werecontinually galloping by on some affair; but the people might neverhave awaked, or they might all be dead. 

My favourite haunt was opposite the hamlet, where was a landing ina cove under a lianaed cliff. The beach was lined with palms and atree called the purao, something between the fig and mulberry ingrowth, and bearing a flower like a great yellow poppy with amaroon heart. In places rocks encroached upon the sand; the beachwould be all submerged; and the surf would bubble warmly as high asto my knees, and play with cocoa-nut husks as our more homely oceanplays with wreck and wrack and bottles. As the reflux drew down, marvels of colour and design streamed between my feet; which Iwould grasp at, miss, or seize: now to find them what theypromised, shells to grace a cabinet or be set in gold upon a lady'sfinger; now to catch only maya of coloured sand, pounded fragmentsand pebbles, that, as soon as they were dry, became as dull andhomely as the flints upon a garden path. I have toiled at thischildish pleasure for hours in the strong sun, conscious of myincurable ignorance; but too keenly pleased to be ashamed. Meanwhile, the blackbird (or his tropical understudy) would befluting in the thickets overhead. 

A little further, in the turn of the bay, a streamlet trickled inthe bottom of a den, thence spilling down a stair of rock into thesea. The draught of air drew down under the foliage in the verybottom of the den, which was a perfect arbour for coolness. Infront it stood open on the blue bay and the Casco lying there underher awning and her cheerful colours. Overhead was a thatch ofpuraos, and over these again palms brandished their bright fans, asI have seen a conjurer make himself a halo out of naked swords. For in this spot, over a neck of low land at the foot of themountains, the trade-wind streams into Anaho Bay in a flood ofalmost constant volume and velocity, and of a heavenly coolness. 

It chanced one day that I was ashore in the cove, with Mrs. Stevenson and the ship's cook. Except for the Casco lying outside, and a crane or two, and the ever-busy wind and sea, the face of theworld was of a prehistoric emptiness; life appeared to stand stock-still, and the sense of isolation was profound and refreshing. Ona sudden, the trade-wind, coming in a gust over the isthmus, struckand scattered the fans of the palms above the den; and, behold! intwo of the tops there sat a native, motionless as an idol andwatching us, you would have said, without a wink. The next momentthe tree closed, and the glimpse was gone. This discovery of humanpresences latent overhead in a place where we had supposedourselves alone, the immobility of our tree-top spies, and thethought that perhaps at all hours we were similarly supervised, struck us with a chill. Talk languished on the beach. As for thecook (whose conscience was not clear), he never afterwards set footon shore, and twice, when the Casco appeared to be driving on therocks, it was amusing to observe that man's alacrity; death, he waspersuaded, awaiting him upon the beach. It was more than a yearlater, in the Gilberts, that the explanation dawned upon myself. The natives were drawing palm-tree wine, a thing forbidden by law;and when the wind thus suddenly revealed them, they were doubtlessmore troubled than ourselves. 

At the top of the den there dwelt an old, melancholy, grizzled manof the name of Tari (Charlie) Coffin. He was a native of Oahu, inthe Sandwich Islands; and had gone to sea in his youth in theAmerican whalers; a circumstance to which he owed his name, hisEnglish, his down-east twang, and the misfortune of his innocentlife. For one captain, sailing out of New Bedford, carried him toNuka-hiva and marooned him there among the cannibals. The motivefor this act was inconceivably small; poor Tari's wages, which werethus economised, would scarce have shook the credit of the NewBedford owners. And the act itself was simply murder. Tari's lifemust have hung in the beginning by a hair. In the grief and terrorof that time, it is not unlikely he went mad, an infirmity to whichhe was still liable; or perhaps a child may have taken a fancy tohim and ordained him to be spared. He escaped at least alive, married in the island, and when I knew him was a widower with amarried son and a granddaughter. But the thought of Oahu hauntedhim; its praise was for ever on his lips; he beheld it, lookingback, as a place of ceaseless feasting, song, and dance; and in hisdreams I daresay he revisits it with joy. I wonder what he wouldthink if he could be carried there indeed, and see the modern townof Honolulu brisk with traffic, and the palace with its guards, andthe great hotel, and Mr. Berger's band with their uniforms andoutlandish instruments; or what he would think to see the brownfaces grown so few and the white so many; and his father's landsold, for planting sugar, and his father's house quite perished, orperhaps the last of them struck leprous and immured between thesurf and the cliffs on Molokai? So simply, even in South SeaIslands, and so sadly, the changes come. 

Tari was poor, and poorly lodged. His house was a wooden frame, run up by Europeans; it was indeed his official residence, for Tariwas the shepherd of the promontory sheep. I can give a perfectinventory of its contents: three kegs, a tin biscuit-box, an ironsaucepan, several cocoa-shell cups, a lantern, and three bottles, probably containing oil; while the clothes of the family and a fewmats were thrown across the open rafters. Upon my first meetingwith this exile he had conceived for me one of the baseless islandfriendships, had given me nuts to drink, and carried me up the den'to see my house'--the only entertainment that he had to offer. Heliked the 'Amelican, ' he said, and the 'Inglisman, ' but the'Flessman' was his abhorrence; and he was careful to explain thatif he had thought us 'Fless, ' we should have had none of his nuts, and never a sight of his house. His distaste for the French I canpartly understand, but not at all his toleration of the Anglo-Saxon. The next day he brought me a pig, and some days later oneof our party going ashore found him in act to bring a second. Wewere still strange to the islands; we were pained by the poor man'sgenerosity, which he could ill afford, and, by a natural enough butquite unpardonable blunder, we refused the pig. Had Tari been aMarquesan we should have seen him no more; being what he was, themost mild, long-suffering, melancholy man, he took a revenge ahundred times more painful. Scarce had the canoe with the ninevillagers put off from their farewell before the Casco was boardedfrom the other side. It was Tari; coming thus late because he hadno canoe of his own, and had found it hard to borrow one; comingthus solitary (as indeed we always saw him), because he was astranger in the land, and the dreariest of company. The rest of myfamily basely fled from the encounter. I must receive our injuredfriend alone; and the interview must have lasted hard upon an hour, for he was loath to tear himself away. 'You go 'way. I see you nomore--no, sir!' he lamented; and then looking about him with ruefuladmiration, 'This goodee ship--no, sir!--goodee ship!' he wouldexclaim: the 'no, sir, ' thrown out sharply through the nose upon arising inflection, an echo from New Bedford and the fallaciouswhaler. From these expressions of grief and praise, he wouldreturn continually to the case of the rejected pig. 'I like givepresent all 'e same you, ' he complained; 'only got pig: you notake him!' He was a poor man; he had no choice of gifts; he hadonly a pig, he repeated; and I had refused it. I have rarely beenmore wretched than to see him sitting there, so old, so grey, sopoor, so hardly fortuned, of so rueful a countenance, and toappreciate, with growing keenness, the affront which I had soinnocently dealt him; but it was one of those cases in which speechis vain. 

Tari's son was smiling and inert; his daughter-in-law, a girl ofsixteen, pretty, gentle, and grave, more intelligent than mostAnaho women, and with a fair share of French; his grandchild, amite of a creature at the breast. I went up the den one day whenTari was from home, and found the son making a cotton sack, andmadame suckling mademoiselle. When I had sat down with them on thefloor, the girl began to question me about England; which I triedto describe, piling the pan and the cocoa shells one upon anotherto represent the houses, and explaining, as best I was able, and byword and gesture, the over-population, the hunger, and theperpetual toil. 'Pas de cocotiers? pas do popoi?' she asked. Itold her it was too cold, and went through an elaborateperformance, shutting out draughts, and crouching over an imaginaryfire, to make sure she understood. But she understood right well;remarked it must be bad for the health, and sat a while gravelyreflecting on that picture of unwonted sorrows. I am sure itroused her pity, for it struck in her another thought alwaysuppermost in the Marquesan bosom; and she began with a smilingsadness, and looking on me out of melancholy eyes, to lament thedecease of her own people. 'Ici pas de Kanaques, ' said she; andtaking the baby from her breast, she held it out to me with bothher hands. 'Tenez--a little baby like this; then dead. All theKanaques die. Then no more. ' The smile, and this instancing bythe girl-mother of her own tiny flesh and blood, affected mestrangely; they spoke of so tranquil a despair. Meanwhile thehusband smilingly made his sack; and the unconscious babe struggledto reach a pot of raspberry jam, friendship's offering, which I hadjust brought up the den; and in a perspective of centuries I sawtheir case as ours, death coming in like a tide, and the dayalready numbered when there should be no more Beretani, and no moreof any race whatever, and (what oddly touched me) no more literaryworks and no more readers. 

CHAPTER IV--DEATH

The thought of death, I have said, is uppermost in the mind of theMarquesan. It would be strange if it were otherwise. The race isperhaps the handsomest extant. Six feet is about the middle heightof males; they are strongly muscled, free from fat, swift inaction, graceful in repose; and the women, though fatter andduller, are still comely animals. To judge by the eye, there is norace more viable; and yet death reaps them with both hands. WhenBishop Dordillon first came to Tai-o-hae, he reckoned theinhabitants at many thousands; he was but newly dead, and in thesame bay Stanislao Moanatini counted on his fingers eight residualnatives. Or take the valley of Hapaa, known to readers of HermanMelville under the grotesque misspelling of Hapar. There are buttwo writers who have touched the South Seas with any genius, bothAmericans: Melville and Charles Warren Stoddard; and at thechristening of the first and greatest, some influential fairy musthave been neglected: 'He shall be able to see, ' 'He shall be ableto tell, ' 'He shall be able to charm, ' said the friendlygodmothers; 'But he shall not be able to hear, ' exclaimed the last. The tribe of Hapaa is said to have numbered some four hundred, whenthe small-pox came and reduced them by one-fourth. Six monthslater a woman developed tubercular consumption; the disease spreadlike a fire about the valley, and in less than a year twosurvivors, a man and a woman, fled from that new-created solitude. A similar Adam and Eve may some day wither among new races, thetragic residue of Britain. When I first heard this story the datestaggered me; but I am now inclined to think it possible. Early inthe year of my visit, for example, or late the year before, a firstcase of phthisis appeared in a household of seventeen persons, andby the month of August, when the tale was told me, one soulsurvived, and that was a boy who had been absent at his schooling. And depopulation works both ways, the doors of death being set wideopen, and the door of birth almost closed. Thus, in the half-yearending July 1888 there were twelve deaths and but one birth in thedistrict of the Hatiheu. Seven or eight more deaths were to belooked for in the ordinary course; and M. Aussel, the observantgendarme, knew of but one likely birth. At this rate it is nomatter of surprise if the population in that part should havedeclined in forty years from six thousand to less than fourhundred; which are, once more on the authority of M. Aussel, theestimated figures. And the rate of decline must have evenaccelerated towards the end. 

A good way to appreciate the depopulation is to go by land fromAnaho to Hatiheu on the adjacent bay. The road is good travelling, but cruelly steep. We seemed scarce to have passed the desertedhouse which stands highest in Anaho before we were looking dizzilydown upon its roof; the Casco well out in the bay, and rolling fora wager, shrank visibly; and presently through the gap of Tari'sisthmus, Ua-huna was seen to hang cloudlike on the horizon. Overthe summit, where the wind blew really chill, and whistled in thereed-like grass, and tossed the grassy fell of the pandanus, westepped suddenly, as through a door, into the next vale and bay ofHatiheu. A bowl of mountains encloses it upon three sides. On thefourth this rampart has been bombarded into ruins, runs down toseaward in imminent and shattered crags, and presents the onepracticable breach of the blue bay. The interior of this vessel iscrowded with lovely and valuable trees, --orange, breadfruit, mummy-apple, cocoa, the island chestnut, and for weeds, the pine and thebanana. Four perennial streams water and keep it green; and alongthe dell, first of one, then of another, of these, the road, for aconsiderable distance, descends into this fortunate valley. Thesong of the waters and the familiar disarray of boulders gave us astrong sense of home, which the exotic foliage, the daft-likegrowth of the pandanus, the buttressed trunk of the banyan, theblack pigs galloping in the bush, and the architecture of thenative houses dissipated ere it could be enjoyed. 

The houses on the Hatiheu side begin high up; higher yet, the moremelancholy spectacle of empty paepaes. When a native habitation isdeserted, the superstructure--pandanus thatch, wattle, unstabletropical timber--speedily rots, and is speedily scattered by thewind. Only the stones of the terrace endure; nor can any ruin, cairn, or standing stone, or vitrified fort present a more sternappearance of antiquity. We must have passed from six to eight ofthese now houseless platforms. On the main road of the island, where it crosses the valley of Taipi, Mr. Osbourne tells me theyare to be reckoned by the dozen; and as the roads have been madelong posterior to their erection, perhaps to their desertion, andmust simply be regarded as lines drawn at random through the bush, the forest on either hand must be equally filled with thesesurvivals: the gravestones of whole families. Such ruins are tapuin the strictest sense; no native must approach them; they havebecome outposts of the kingdom of the grave. It might appear anatural and pious custom in the hundreds who are left, therearguard of perished thousands, that their feet should leaveuntrod these hearthstones of their fathers. I believe, in fact, the custom rests on different and more grim conceptions. But thehouse, the grave, and even the body of the dead, have been alwaysparticularly honoured by Marquesans. Until recently the corpse wassometimes kept in the family and daily oiled and sunned, until, bygradual and revolting stages, it dried into a kind of mummy. Offerings are still laid upon the grave. In Traitor's Bay, Mr. Osbourne saw a man buy a looking-glass to lay upon his son's. Andthe sentiment against the desecration of tombs, thoughtlesslyruffled in the laying down of the new roads, is a chief ingredientin the native hatred for the French. 

The Marquesan beholds with dismay the approaching extinction of hisrace. The thought of death sits down with him to meat, and riseswith him from his bed; he lives and breathes under a shadow ofmortality awful to support; and he is so inured to the apprehensionthat he greets the reality with relief. He does not even seek tosupport a disappointment; at an affront, at a breach of one of hisfleeting and communistic love-affairs, he seeks an instant refugein the grave. Hanging is now the fashion. I heard of three whohad hanged themselves in the west end of Hiva-oa during the firsthalf of 1888; but though this be a common form of suicide in otherparts of the South Seas, I cannot think it will continue popular inthe Marquesas. Far more suitable to Marquesan sentiment is the oldform of poisoning with the fruit of the eva, which offers to thenative suicide a cruel but deliberate death, and gives time forthose decencies of the last hour, to which he attaches suchremarkable importance. The coffin can thus be at hand, the pigskilled, the cry of the mourners sounding already through the house;and then it is, and not before, that the Marquesan is conscious ofachievement, his life all rounded in, his robes (like Caesar's)adjusted for the final act. Praise not any man till he is dead, said the ancients; envy not any man till you hear the mourners, might be the Marquesan parody. The coffin, though of lateintroduction, strangely engages their attention. It is to themature Marquesan what a watch is to the European schoolboy. Forten years Queen Vaekehu had dunned the fathers; at last, but theother day, they let her have her will, gave her her coffin, and thewoman's soul is at rest. I was told a droll instance of the forceof this preoccupation. The Polynesians are subject to a diseaseseemingly rather of the will than of the body. I was told theTahitians have a word for it, erimatua, but cannot find it in mydictionary. A gendarme, M. Nouveau, has seen men beginning tosuccumb to this insubstantial malady, has routed them from theirhouses, turned them on to do their trick upon the roads, and in twodays has seen them cured. But this other remedy is more original:a Marquesan, dying of this discouragement--perhaps I should rathersay this acquiescence--has been known, at the fulfilment of hiscrowning wish, on the mere sight of that desired hermitage, hiscoffin--to revive, recover, shake off the hand of death, and berestored for years to his occupations--carving tikis (idols), letus say, or braiding old men's beards. From all this it may beconceived how easily they meet death when it approaches naturally. I heard one example, grim and picturesque. In the time of thesmall-pox in Hapaa, an old man was seized with the disease; he hadno thought of recovery; had his grave dug by a wayside, and livedin it for near a fortnight, eating, drinking, and smoking with thepassers-by, talking mostly of his end, and equally unconcerned forhimself and careless of the friends whom he infected. 

This proneness to suicide, and loose seat in life, is not peculiarto the Marquesan. What is peculiar is the widespread depressionand acceptance of the national end. Pleasures are neglected, thedance languishes, the songs are forgotten. It is true that some, and perhaps too many, of them are proscribed; but many remain, ifthere were spirit to support or to revive them. At the last feastof the Bastille, Stanislao Moanatini shed tears when he beheld theinanimate performance of the dancers. When the people sang for usin Anaho, they must apologise for the smallness of their repertory. They were only young folk present, they said, and it was only theold that knew the songs. The whole body of Marquesan poetry andmusic was being suffered to die out with a single dispiritedgeneration. The full import is apparent only to one acquaintedwith other Polynesian races; who knows how the Samoan coins a freshsong for every trifling incident, or who has heard (on Penrhyn, forinstance) a band of little stripling maids from eight to twelvekeep up their minstrelsy for hours upon a stretch, one songfollowing another without pause. In like manner, the Marquesan, never industrious, begins now to cease altogether from production. The exports of the group decline out of all proportion even withthe death-rate of the islanders. 'The coral waxes, the palm grows, and man departs, ' says the Marquesan; and he folds his hands. Andsurely this is nature. Fond as it may appear, we labour andrefrain, not for the rewards of any single life, but with a timideye upon the lives and memories of our successors; and where no oneis to succeed, of his own family, or his own tongue, I doubtwhether Rothschilds would make money or Cato practise virtue. Itis natural, also, that a temporary stimulus should sometimes rousethe Marquesan from his lethargy. Over all the landward shore ofAnaho cotton runs like a wild weed; man or woman, whoever comes topick it, may earn a dollar in the day; yet when we arrived, thetrader's store-house was entirely empty; and before we left it wasnear full. So long as the circus was there, so long as the Cascowas yet anchored in the bay, it behoved every one to make hisvisit; and to this end every woman must have a new dress, and everyman a shirt and trousers. Never before, in Mr. Regler'sexperience, had they displayed so much activity. 

In their despondency there is an element of dread. The fear ofghosts and of the dark is very deeply written in the mind of thePolynesian; not least of the Marquesan. Poor Taipi, the chief ofAnaho, was condemned to ride to Hatiheu on a moonless night. Heborrowed a lantern, sat a long while nerving himself for theadventure, and when he at last departed, wrung the Cascos by thehand as for a final separation. Certain presences, calledVehinehae, frequent and make terrible the nocturnal roadside; I wastold by one they were like so much mist, and as the travellerwalked into them dispersed and dissipated; another described themas being shaped like men and having eyes like cats; from none couldI obtain the smallest clearness as to what they did, or whereforethey were dreaded. We may be sure at least they represent thedead; for the dead, in the minds of the islanders, are all-pervasive. 'When a native says that he is a man, ' writes Dr. Codrington, 'he means that he is a man and not a ghost; not that heis a man and not a beast. The intelligent agents of this world areto his mind the men who are alive, and the ghosts the men who aredead. ' Dr. Codrington speaks of Melanesia; from what I havelearned his words are equally true of the Polynesian. And yetmore. Among cannibal Polynesians a dreadful suspicion restsgenerally on the dead; and the Marquesans, the greatest cannibalsof all, are scarce likely to be free from similar beliefs. Ihazard the guess that the Vehinehae are the hungry spirits of thedead, continuing their life's business of the cannibal ambuscade, and lying everywhere unseen, and eager to devour the living. Another superstition I picked up through the troubled medium ofTari Coffin's English. The dead, he told me, came and danced bynight around the paepae of their former family; the family werethereupon overcome by some emotion (but whether of pious sorrow orof fear I could not gather), and must 'make a feast, ' of whichfish, pig, and popoi were indispensable ingredients. So far thisis clear enough. But here Tari went on to instance the new houseof Toma and the house-warming feast which was just then inpreparation as instances in point. Dare we indeed string themtogether, and add the case of the deserted ruin, as though the deadcontinually besieged the paepaes of the living: were kept atarm's-length, even from the first foundation, only by propitiatoryfeasts, and, so soon as the fire of life went out upon the hearth, swarmed back into possession of their ancient seat?

I speak by guess of these Marquesan superstitions. On the cannibalghost I shall return elsewhere with certainty. And it is enough, for the present purpose, to remark that the men of the Marquesas, from whatever reason, fear and shrink from the presence of ghosts. Conceive how this must tell upon the nerves in islands where thenumber of the dead already so far exceeds that of the living, andthe dead multiply and the living dwindle at so swift a rate. Conceive how the remnant huddles about the embers of the fire oflife; even as old Red Indians, deserted on the march and in thesnow, the kindly tribe all gone, the last flame expiring, and thenight around populous with wolves. 

CHAPTER V--DEPOPULATION

Over the whole extent of the South Seas, from one tropic toanother, we find traces of a bygone state of over-population, whenthe resources of even a tropical soil were taxed, and even theimprovident Polynesian trembled for the future. We may accept someof the ideas of Mr. Darwin's theory of coral islands, and suppose arise of the sea, or the subsidence of some former continental area, to have driven into the tops of the mountains multitudes ofrefugees. Or we may suppose, more soberly, a people of sea-rovers, emigrants from a crowded country, to strike upon and settle islandafter island, and as time went on to multiply exceedingly in theirnew seats. In either case the end must be the same; soon or lateit must grow apparent that the crew are too numerous, and thatfamine is at hand. The Polynesians met this emergent danger withvarious expedients of activity and prevention. A way was found topreserve breadfruit by packing it in artificial pits; pits fortyfeet in depth and of proportionate bore are still to be seen, I amtold, in the Marquesas; and yet even these were insufficient forthe teeming people, and the annals of the past are gloomy withfamine and cannibalism. Among the Hawaiians--a hardier people, ina more exacting climate--agriculture was carried far; the land wasirrigated with canals; and the fish-ponds of Molokai prove thenumber and diligence of the old inhabitants. Meanwhile, over allthe island world, abortion and infanticide prevailed. On coralatolls, where the danger was most plainly obvious, these wereenforced by law and sanctioned by punishment. On Vaitupu, in theEllices, only two children were allowed to a couple; on Nukufetau, but one. On the latter the punishment was by fine; and it isrelated that the fine was sometimes paid, and the child spared. 

This is characteristic. For no people in the world are so fond orso long-suffering with children--children make the mirth and theadornment of their homes, serving them for playthings and forpicture-galleries. 'Happy is the man that has his quiver full ofthem. ' The stray bastard is contended for by rival families; andthe natural and the adopted children play and grow up togetherundistinguished. The spoiling, and I may almost say thedeification, of the child, is nowhere carried so far as in theeastern islands; and furthest, according to my opportunities ofobservation, in the Paumotu group, the so-called Low or DangerousArchipelago. I have seen a Paumotuan native turn from me withembarrassment and disaffection because I suggested that a bratwould be the better for a beating. It is a daily matter in someeastern islands to see a child strike or even stone its mother, andthe mother, so far from punishing, scarce ventures to resist. Insome, when his child was born, a chief was superseded and resignedhis name; as though, like a drone, he had then fulfilled theoccasion of his being. And in some the lightest words of childrenhad the weight of oracles. Only the other day, in the Marquesas, if a child conceived a distaste to any stranger, I am assured thestranger would be slain. And I shall have to tell in another placean instance of the opposite: how a child in Manihiki having takena fancy to myself, her adoptive parents at once accepted thesituation and loaded me with gifts. 

With such sentiments the necessity for child-destruction would notfail to clash, and I believe we find the trace of divided feelingin the Tahitian brotherhood of Oro. At a certain date a new godwas added to the Society-Island Olympus, or an old one refurbishedand made popular. Oro was his name, and he may be compared withthe Bacchus of the ancients. His zealots sailed from bay to bay, and from island to island; they were everywhere received withfeasting; wore fine clothes; sang, danced, acted; gave exhibitionsof dexterity and strength; and were the artists, the acrobats, thebards, and the harlots of the group. Their life was public andepicurean; their initiation a mystery; and the highest in the landaspired to join the brotherhood. If a couple stood next in line toa high-chieftaincy, they were suffered, on grounds of policy, tospare one child; all other children, who had a father or a motherin the company of Oro, stood condemned from the moment ofconception. A freemasonry, an agnostic sect, a company of artists, its members all under oath to spread unchastity, and all forbiddento leave offspring--I do not know how it may appear to others, butto me the design seems obvious. Famine menacing the islands, andthe needful remedy repulsive, it was recommended to the native mindby these trappings of mystery, pleasure, and parade. This is themore probable, and the secret, serious purpose of the institutionappears the more plainly, if it be true that, after a certainperiod of life, the obligation of the votary was changed; at first, bound to be profligate: afterwards, expected to be chaste. 

Here, then, we have one side of the case. Man-eating among kindlymen, child-murder among child-lovers, industry in a race the mostidle, invention in a race the least progressive, this grim, pagansalvation-army of the brotherhood of Oro, the report of earlyvoyagers, the widespread vestiges of former habitation, and theuniversal tradition of the islands, all point to the same fact offormer crowding and alarm. And to-day we are face to face with thereverse. To-day in the Marquesas, in the Eight Islands of Hawaii, in Mangareva, in Easter Island, we find the same race perishinglike flies. Why this change? Or, grant that the coming of thewhites, the change of habits, and the introduction of new maladiesand vices, fully explain the depopulation, why is that depopulationnot universal? The population of Tahiti, after a period ofalarming decrease, has again become stationary. I hear of asimilar result among some Maori tribes; in many of the Paumotus aslight increase is to be observed; and the Samoans are to-day ashealthy and at least as fruitful as before the change. Grant thatthe Tahitians, the Maoris, and the Paumotuans have become inured tothe new conditions; and what are we to make of the Samoans, whohave never suffered?

Those who are acquainted only with a single group are apt to beready with solutions. Thus I have heard the mortality of theMaoris attributed to their change of residence--from fortifiedhill-tops to the low, marshy vicinity of their plantations. Howplausible! And yet the Marquesans are dying out in the same houseswhere their fathers multiplied. Or take opium. The Marquesas andHawaii are the two groups the most infected with this vice; thepopulation of the one is the most civilised, that of the other byfar the most barbarous, of Polynesians; and they are two of thosethat perish the most rapidly. Here is a strong case against opium. But let us take unchastity, and we shall find the Marquesas andHawaii figuring again upon another count. Thus, Samoans are themost chaste of Polynesians, and they are to this day entirelyfertile; Marquesans are the most debauched: we have seen how theyare perishing; Hawaiians are notoriously lax, and they begin to bedotted among deserts. So here is a case stronger still againstunchastity; and here also we have a correction to apply. Whateverthe virtues of the Tahitian, neither friend nor enemy dares callhim chaste; and yet he seems to have outlived the time of danger. One last example: syphilis has been plausibly credited with muchof the sterility. But the Samoans are, by all accounts, asfruitful as at first; by some accounts more so; and it is notseriously to be argued that the Samoans have escaped syphilis. 

These examples show how dangerous it is to reason from anyparticular cause, or even from many in a single group. I have inmy eye an able and amiable pamphlet by the Rev. S. E. Bishop: 'Whyare the Hawaiians Dying Out?' Any one interested in the subjectought to read this tract, which contains real information; and yetMr. Bishop's views would have been changed by an acquaintance withother groups. Samoa is, for the moment, the main and the mostinstructive exception to the rule. The people are the most chasteand one of the most temperate of island peoples. They have neverbeen tried and depressed with any grave pestilence. Their clothinghas scarce been tampered with; at the simple and becoming tabard ofthe girls, Tartuffe, in many another island, would have cried out;for the cool, healthy, and modest lava-lava or kilt, Tartuffe hasmanaged in many another island to substitute stifling andinconvenient trousers. Lastly, and perhaps chiefly, so far fromtheir amusements having been curtailed, I think they have been, upon the whole, extended. The Polynesian falls easily intodespondency: bereavement, disappointment, the fear of novelvisitations, the decay or proscription of ancient pleasures, easilyincline him to be sad; and sadness detaches him from life. Themelancholy of the Hawaiian and the emptiness of his new life arestriking; and the remark is yet more apposite to the Marquesas. InSamoa, on the other hand, perpetual song and dance, perpetualgames, journeys, and pleasures, make an animated and a smilingpicture of the island life. And the Samoans are to-day the gayestand the best entertained inhabitants of our planet. The importanceof this can scarcely be exaggerated. In a climate and upon a soilwhere a livelihood can be had for the stooping, entertainment is aprime necessity. It is otherwise with us, where life presents uswith a daily problem, and there is a serious interest, and some ofthe heat of conflict, in the mere continuing to be. So, in certainatolls, where there is no great gaiety, but man must bestir himselfwith some vigour for his daily bread, public health and thepopulation are maintained; but in the lotos islands, with the decayof pleasures, life itself decays. It is from this point of viewthat we may instance, among other causes of depression, the decayof war. We have been so long used in Europe to that drearybusiness of war on the great scale, trailing epidemics and leavingpestilential corpses in its train, that we have almost forgottenits original, the most healthful, if not the most humane, of allfield sports--hedge-warfare. From this, as well as from the restof his amusements and interests, the islander, upon a hundredislands, has been recently cut off. And to this, as well as to somany others, the Samoan still makes good a special title. 

Upon the whole, the problem seems to me to stand thus:- Where therehave been fewest changes, important or unimportant, salutary orhurtful, there the race survives. Where there have been most, important or unimportant, salutary or hurtful, there it perishes. Each change, however small, augments the sum of new conditions towhich the race has to become inured. There may seem, a priori, nocomparison between the change from 'sour toddy' to bad gin, andthat from the island kilt to a pair of European trousers. Yet I amfar from persuaded that the one is any more hurtful than the other;and the unaccustomed race will sometimes die of pin-pricks. We arehere face to face with one of the difficulties of the missionary. In Polynesian islands he easily obtains pre-eminent authority; theking becomes his mairedupalais; he can proscribe, he can command;and the temptation is ever towards too much. Thus (by allaccounts) the Catholics in Mangareva, and thus (to my ownknowledge) the Protestants in Hawaii, have rendered life in a moreor less degree unliveable to their converts. And the mild, uncomplaining creatures (like children in a prison) yawn and awaitdeath. It is easy to blame the missionary. But it is his businessto make changes. It is surely his business, for example, toprevent war; and yet I have instanced war itself as one of theelements of health. On the other hand, it were, perhaps, easy forthe missionary to proceed more gently, and to regard every changeas an affair of weight. I take the average missionary; I am sure Ido him no more than justice when I suppose that he would hesitateto bombard a village, even in order to convert an archipelago. Experience begins to show us (at least in Polynesian islands) thatchange of habit is bloodier than a bombardment. 

There is one point, ere I have done, where I may go to meetcriticism. I have said nothing of faulty hygiene, bathing duringfevers, mistaken treatment of children, native doctoring, orabortion--all causes frequently adduced. And I have said nothingof them because they are conditions common to both epochs, and evenmore efficient in the past than in the present. Was it not thesame with unchastity, it may be asked? Was not the Polynesianalways unchaste? Doubtless he was so always: doubtless he is moreso since the coming of his remarkably chaste visitors from Europe. Take the Hawaiian account of Cook: I have no doubt it is entirelyfair. Take Krusenstern's candid, almost innocent, description of aRussian man-of-war at the Marquesas; consider the disgracefulhistory of missions in Hawaii itself, where (in the war of lust)the American missionaries were once shelled by an Englishadventurer, and once raided and mishandled by the crew of anAmerican warship; add the practice of whaling fleets to call at theMarquesas, and carry off a complement of women for the cruise;consider, besides, how the whites were at first regarded in thelight of demi-gods, as appears plainly in the reception of Cookupon Hawaii; and again, in the story of the discovery of Tutuila, when the really decent women of Samoa prostituted themselves inpublic to the French; and bear in mind how it was the custom of theadventurers, and we may almost say the business of themissionaries, to deride and infract even the most salutary tapus. Here we see every engine of dissolution directed at once against avirtue never and nowhere very strong or popular; and the result, even in the most degraded islands, has been further degradation. Mr. Lawes, the missionary of Savage Island, told me the standard offemale chastity had declined there since the coming of the whites. In heathen time, if a girl gave birth to a bastard, her father orbrother would dash the infant down the cliffs; and to-day thescandal would be small. Or take the Marquesas. StanislaoMoanatini told me that in his own recollection, the young werestrictly guarded; they were not suffered so much as to look uponone another in the street, but passed (so my informant put it) likedogs; and the other day the whole school-children of Nuka-hiva andUa-pu escaped in a body to the woods, and lived there for afortnight in promiscuous liberty. Readers of travels may perhapsexclaim at my authority, and declare themselves better informed. Ishould prefer the statement of an intelligent native like Stanislao(even if it stood alone, which it is far from doing) to the reportof the most honest traveller. A ship of war comes to a haven, anchors, lands a party, receives and returns a visit, and thecaptain writes a chapter on the manners of the island. It is notconsidered what class is mostly seen. Yet we should not be pleasedif a Lascar foremast hand were to judge England by the ladies whoparade Ratcliffe Highway, and the gentlemen who share with themtheir hire. Stanislao's opinion of a decay of virtue even in theseunvirtuous islands has been supported to me by others; his veryexample, the progress of dissolution amongst the young, is adducedby Mr. Bishop in Hawaii. And so far as Marquesans are concerned, we might have hazarded a guess of some decline in manners. I donot think that any race could ever have prospered or multipliedwith such as now obtain; I am sure they would have been never atthe pains to count paternal kinship. It is not possible to givedetails; suffice it that their manners appear to be imitated fromthe dreams of ignorant and vicious children, and their debauchespersevered in until energy, reason, and almost life itself are inabeyance. 

CHAPTER VI--CHIEFS AND TAPUS

We used to admire exceedingly the bland and gallant manners of thechief called Taipi-Kikino. An elegant guest at table, skilled inthe use of knife and fork, a brave figure when he shouldered a gunand started for the woods after wild chickens, always serviceable, always ingratiating and gay, I would sometimes wonder where hefound his cheerfulness. He had enough to sober him, I thought, inhis official budget. His expenses--for he was always seen attiredin virgin white--must have by far exceeded his income of sixdollars in the year, or say two shillings a month. And he washimself a man of no substance; his house the poorest in thevillage. It was currently supposed that his elder brother, Kauanui, must have helped him out. But how comes it that the elderbrother should succeed to the family estate, and be a wealthycommoner, and the younger be a poor man, and yet rule as chief inAnaho? That the one should be wealthy, and the other almostindigent is probably to be explained by some adoption; forcomparatively few children are brought up in the house or succeedto the estates of their natural begetters. That the one should bechief instead of the other must be explained (in a very Irishfashion) on the ground that neither of them is a chief at all. 

Since the return and the wars of the French, many chiefs have beendeposed, and many so-called chiefs appointed. We have seen, in thesame house, one such upstart drinking in the company of two suchextruded island Bourbons, men, whose word a few years ago was lifeand death, now sunk to be peasants like their neighbours. So whenthe French overthrew hereditary tyrants, dubbed the commons of theMarquesas freeborn citizens of the republic, and endowed them witha vote for a conseiller-general at Tahiti, they probably conceivedthemselves upon the path to popularity; and so far from that, theywere revolting public sentiment. The deposition of the chiefs wasperhaps sometimes needful; the appointment of others may have beenneedful also; it was at least a delicate business. The Governmentof George II. Exiled many Highland magnates. It never occurred tothem to manufacture substitutes; and if the French have been morebold, we have yet to see with what success. 

Our chief at Anaho was always called, he always called himself, Taipi-Kikino; and yet that was not his name, but only the wand ofhis false position. As soon as he was appointed chief, his name--which signified, if I remember exactly, PRINCE BORN AMONG FLOWERS--fell in abeyance, and he was dubbed instead by the expressivebyword, Taipi-Kikino--HIGHWATER MAN-OF-NO-ACCOUNT--or, Englishingmore boldly, BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK--a witty and a wicked cut. Anickname in Polynesia destroys almost the memory of the originalname. To-day, if we were Polynesians, Gladstone would be no moreheard of. We should speak of and address our Nestor as the GrandOld Man, and it is so that himself would sign his correspondence. Not the prevalence, then, but the significancy of the nickname isto be noted here. The new authority began with small prestige. Taipi has now been some time in office; from all I saw he seemed aperson very fit. He is not the least unpopular, and yet his poweris nothing. He is a chief to the French, and goes to breakfastwith the Resident; but for any practical end of chieftaincy a ragdoll were equally efficient. 

We had been but three days in Anaho when we received the visit ofthe chief of Hatiheu, a man of weight and fame, late leader of awar upon the French, late prisoner in Tahiti, and the last eater oflong-pig in Nuka-hiva. Not many years have elapsed since he wasseen striding on the beach of Anaho, a dead man's arm across hisshoulder. 'So does Kooamua to his enemies!' he roared to thepassers-by, and took a bite from the raw flesh. And now beholdthis gentleman, very wisely replaced in office by the French, paying us a morning visit in European clothes. He was the man ofthe most character we had yet seen: his manners genial anddecisive, his person tall, his face rugged, astute, formidable, andwith a certain similarity to Mr. Gladstone's--only for thebrownness of the skin, and the high-chief's tattooing, all one sideand much of the other being of an even blue. Further acquaintanceincreased our opinion of his sense. He viewed the Casco in amanner then quite new to us, examining her lines and the running ofthe gear; to a piece of knitting on which one of the party wasengaged, he must have devoted ten minutes' patient study; nor didhe desist before he had divined the principles; and he wasinterested even to excitement by a type-writer, which he learned towork. When he departed he carried away with him a list of hisfamily, with his own name printed by his own hand at the bottom. Ishould add that he was plainly much of a humorist, and not a littleof a humbug. He told us, for instance, that he was a person ofexact sobriety; such being the obligation of his high estate: thecommons might be sots, but the chief could not stoop so low. Andnot many days after he was to be observed in a state of smiling andlop-sided imbecility, the Casco ribbon upside down on hisdishonoured hat. 

But his business that morning in Anaho is what concerns us here. The devil-fish, it seems, were growing scarce upon the reef; it wasjudged fit to interpose what we should call a close season; forthat end, in Polynesia, a tapu (vulgarly spelt 'taboo') has to bedeclared, and who was to declare it? Taipi might; he ought; it wasa chief part of his duty; but would any one regard the inhibitionof a Beggar on Horse-back? He might plant palm branches: it didnot in the least follow that the spot was sacred. He might recitethe spell: it was shrewdly supposed the spirits would not hearken. And so the old, legitimate cannibal must ride over the mountains todo it for him; and the respectable official in white clothes couldbut look on and envy. At about the same time, though in adifferent manner, Kooamua established a forest law. It wasobserved the cocoa-palms were suffering, for the plucking of greennuts impoverishes and at last endangers the tree. Now Kooamuacould tapu the reef, which was public property, but he could nottapu other people's palms; and the expedient adopted wasinteresting. He tapu'd his own trees, and his example was imitatedover all Hatiheu and Anaho. I fear Taipi might have tapu'd allthat he possessed and found none to follow him. So much for theesteem in which the dignity of an appointed chief is held byothers; a single circumstance will show what he thinks of ithimself. I never met one, but he took an early opportunity toexplain his situation. True, he was only an appointed chief when Ibeheld him; but somewhere else, perhaps upon some other isle, hewas a chieftain by descent: upon which ground, he asked me (so tosay it) to excuse his mushroom honours. 

It will be observed with surprise that both these tapus are forthoroughly sensible ends. With surprise, I say, because the natureof that institution is much misunderstood in Europe. It is takenusually in the sense of a meaningless or wanton prohibition, suchas that which to-day prevents women in some countries from smoking, or yesterday prevented any one in Scotland from taking a walk onSunday. The error is no less natural than it is unjust. ThePolynesians have not been trained in the bracing, practical thoughtof ancient Rome; with them the idea of law has not been disengagedfrom that of morals or propriety; so that tapu has to cover thewhole field, and implies indifferently that an act is criminal, immoral, against sound public policy, unbecoming or (as we say)'not in good form. ' Many tapus were in consequence absurd enough, such as those which deleted words out of the language, andparticularly those which related to women. Tapu encircled womenupon all hands. Many things were forbidden to men; to women we maysay that few were permitted. They must not sit on the paepae; theymust not go up to it by the stair; they must not eat pork; theymust not approach a boat; they must not cook at a fire which anymale had kindled. The other day, after the roads were made, it wasobserved the women plunged along margin through the bush, and whenthey came to a bridge waded through the water: roads and bridgeswere the work of men's hands, and tapu for the foot of women. Evena man's saddle, if the man be native, is a thing no self-respectinglady dares to use. Thus on the Anaho side of the island, only twowhite men, Mr. Regler and the gendarme, M. Aussel, possess saddles;and when a woman has a journey to make she must borrow from one orother. It will be noticed that these prohibitions tend, most ofthem, to an increased reserve between the sexes. Regard for femalechastity is the usual excuse for these disabilities that mendelight to lay upon their wives and mothers. Here the regard isabsent; and behold the women still bound hand and foot withmeaningless proprieties! The women themselves, who are survivorsof the old regimen, admit that in those days life was not worthliving. And yet even then there were exceptions. There werefemale chiefs and (I am assured) priestesses besides; nice customscurtseyed to great dames, and in the most sacred enclosure of aHigh Place, Father Simeon Delmar was shown a stone, and told it wasthe throne of some well-descended lady. How exactly parallel isthis with European practice, when princesses were suffered topenetrate the strictest cloister, and women could rule over a landin which they were denied the control of their own children. 

But the tapu is more often the instrument of wise and needfulrestrictions. We have seen it as the organ of paternal government. It serves besides to enforce, in the rare case of some one wishingto enforce them, rights of private property. Thus a man, weary ofthe coming and going of Marquesan visitors, tapus his door; and tothis day you may see the palm-branch signal, even as our great-grandfathers saw the peeled wand before a Highland inn. Or takeanother case. Anaho is known as 'the country without popoi. ' Theword popoi serves in different islands to indicate the main food ofthe people: thus, in Hawaii, it implies a preparation of taro; inthe Marquesas, of breadfruit. And a Marquesan does not readilyconceive life possible without his favourite diet. A few years agoa drought killed the breadfruit trees and the bananas in thedistrict of Anaho; and from this calamity, and the open-handedcustoms of the island, a singular state of things arose. Well-watered Hatiheu had escaped the drought; every householder of Anahoaccordingly crossed the pass, chose some one in Hatiheu, 'gave himhis name'--an onerous gift, but one not to be rejected--and fromthis improvised relative proceeded to draw his supplies, for allthe world as though he had paid for them. Hence a continuedtraffic on the road. Some stalwart fellow, in a loin-cloth, andglistening with sweat, may be seen at all hours of the day, a stickacross his bare shoulders, tripping nervously under a doubleburthen of green fruits. And on the far side of the gap a dozenstone posts on the wayside in the shadow of a grove mark thebreathing-space of the popoi-carriers. A little back from thebeach, and not half a mile from Anaho, I was the more amazed tofind a cluster of well-doing breadfruits heavy with their harvest. 'Why do you not take these?' I asked. 'Tapu, ' said Hoka; and Ithought to myself (after the manner of dull travellers) whatchildren and fools these people were to toil over the mountain anddespoil innocent neighbours when the staff of life was thus growingat their door. I was the more in error. In the generaldestruction these surviving trees were enough only for the familyof the proprietor, and by the simple expedient of declaring a tapuhe enforced his right. 

The sanction of the tapu is superstitious; and the punishment ofinfraction either a wasting or a deadly sickness. A slow diseasefollows on the eating of tapu fish, and can only be cured with thebones of the same fish burned with the due mysteries. The cocoa-nut and breadfruit tapu works more swiftly. Suppose you have eatentapu fruit at the evening meal, at night your sleep will be uneasy;in the morning, swelling and a dark discoloration will haveattacked your neck, whence they spread upward to the face; and intwo days, unless the cure be interjected, you must die. This cureis prepared from the rubbed leaves of the tree from which thepatient stole; so that he cannot be saved without confessing to theTahuku the person whom he wronged. In the experience of myinformant, almost no tapu had been put in use, except the twodescribed: he had thus no opportunity to learn the nature andoperation of the others; and, as the art of making them wasjealously guarded amongst the old men, he believed the mysterywould soon die out. I should add that he was no Marquesan, but aChinaman, a resident in the group from boyhood, and a reverentbeliever in the spells which he described. White men, amongst whomAh Fu included himself, were exempt; but he had a tale of aTahitian woman, who had come to the Marquesas, eaten tapu fish, and, although uninformed of her offence and danger, had beenafflicted and cured exactly like a native. 

Doubtless the belief is strong; doubtless, with this weakly andfanciful race, it is in many cases strong enough to kill; it shouldbe strong indeed in those who tapu their trees secretly, so thatthey may detect a depredator by his sickness. Or, perhaps, weshould understand the idea of the hidden tapu otherwise, as apolitic device to spread uneasiness and extort confessions: sothat, when a man is ailing, he shall ransack his brain for anypossible offence, and send at once for any proprietor whose rightshe has invaded. 'Had you hidden a tapu?' we may conceive himasking; and I cannot imagine the proprietor gainsaying it; and thisis perhaps the strangest feature of the system--that it should beregarded from without with such a mental and implicit awe, and, when examined from within, should present so many apparentevidences of design. 

We read in Dr. Campbell's Poenamo of a New Zealand girl, who wasfoolishly told that she had eaten a tapu yam, and who instantlysickened, and died in the two days of simple terror. The period isthe same as in the Marquesas; doubtless the symptoms were so too. How singular to consider that a superstition of such sway ispossibly a manufactured article; and that, even if it were notoriginally invented, its details have plainly been arranged by theauthorities of some Polynesian Scotland Yard. Fitly enough, thebelief is to-day--and was probably always--far from universal. Hell at home is a strong deterrent with some; a passing thoughtwith others; with others, again, a theme of public mockery, notalways well assured; and so in the Marquesas with the tapu. Mr. Regler has seen the two extremes of scepticism and implicit fear. In the tapu grove he found one fellow stealing breadfruit, cheerfuland impudent as a street arab; and it was only on a menace ofexposure that he showed himself the least discountenanced. Theother case was opposed in every point. Mr. Regler asked a nativeto accompany him upon a voyage; the man went gladly enough, butsuddenly perceiving a dead tapu fish in the bottom of the boat, leaped back with a scream; nor could the promise of a dollarprevail upon him to advance. 

The Marquesan, it will be observed, adheres to the old idea of thelocal circumscription of beliefs and duties. Not only are thewhites exempt from consequences; but their transgressions seem tobe viewed without horror. It was Mr. Regler who had killed thefish; yet the devout native was not shocked at Mr. Regler--onlyrefused to join him in his boat. A white is a white: the servant(so to speak) of other and more liberal gods; and not to be blamedif he profit by his liberty. The Jews were perhaps the first tointerrupt this ancient comity of faiths; and the Jewish virus isstill strong in Christianity. All the world must respect ourtapus, or we gnash our teeth. 

CHAPTER VII--HATIHEU

The bays of Anaho and Hatiheu are divided at their roots by theknife-edge of a single hill--the pass so often mentioned; but thisisthmus expands to the seaward in a considerable peninsula: verybare and grassy; haunted by sheep and, at night and morning, by thepiercing cries of the shepherds; wandered over by a few wild goats;and on its sea-front indented with long, clamorous caves, and facedwith cliffs of the colour and ruinous outline of an old peat-stack. In one of these echoing and sunless gullies we saw, clustered likesea-birds on a splashing ledge, shrill as sea-birds in theirsalutation to the passing boat, a group of fisherwomen, stripped totheir gaudy under-clothes. (The clash of the surf and the thinfemale voices echo in my memory. ) We had that day a native crewand steersman, Kauanui; it was our first experience of Polynesianseamanship, which consists in hugging every point of land. Thereis no thought in this of saving time, for they will pull a long wayin to skirt a point that is embayed. It seems that, as they cannever get their houses near enough the surf upon the one side, sothey can never get their boats near enough upon the other. Thepractice in bold water is not so dangerous as it looks--the reflexfrom the rocks sending the boat off. Near beaches with a heavy runof sea, I continue to think it very hazardous, and find thecomposure of the natives annoying to behold. We took unmingledpleasure, on the way out, to see so near at hand the beach and thewonderful colours of the surf. On the way back, when the sea hadrisen and was running strong against us, the fineness of thesteersman's aim grew more embarrassing. As we came abreast of thesea-front, where the surf broke highest, Kauanui embraced theoccasion to light his pipe, which then made the circuit of theboat--each man taking a whiff or two, and, ere he passed it on, filling his lungs and cheeks with smoke. Their faces were allpuffed out like apples as we came abreast of the cliff foot, andthe bursting surge fell back into the boat in showers. At the nextpoint 'cocanetti' was the word, and the stroke borrowed my knife, and desisted from his labours to open nuts. These untimelyindulgences may be compared to the tot of grog served out before aship goes into action. 

My purpose in this visit led me first to the boys' school, forHatiheu is the university of the north islands. The hum of thelesson came out to meet us. Close by the door, where the draughtblew coolest, sat the lay brother; around him, in a packed half-circle, some sixty high-coloured faces set with staring eyes; andin the background of the barn-like room benches were to be seen, and blackboards with sums on them in chalk. The brother rose togreet us, sensibly humble. Thirty years he had been there, hesaid, and fingered his white locks as a bashful child pulls out hispinafore. 'Et point de resultats, monsieur, presque pas deresultats. ' He pointed to the scholars: 'You see, sir, all theyouth of Nuka-hiva and Ua-pu. Between the ages of six and fifteenthis is all that remains; and it is but a few years since we had ahundred and twenty from Nuka-hiva alone. Oui, monsieur, cela sedeperit. ' Prayers, and reading and writing, prayers again andarithmetic, and more prayers to conclude: such appeared to be thedreary nature of the course. For arithmetic all island people havea natural taste. In Hawaii they make good progress in mathematics. In one of the villages on Majuro, and generally in the Marshallgroup, the whole population sit about the trader when he isweighing copra, and each on his own slate takes down the figuresand computes the total. The trader, finding them so apt, introduced fractions, for which they had been taught no rule. Atfirst they were quite gravelled but ultimately, by sheer hardthinking, reasoned out the result, and came one after another toassure the trader he was right. Not many people in Europe couldhave done the like. The course at Hatiheu is therefore lessdispiriting to Polynesians than a stranger might have guessed; andyet how bald it is at best! I asked the brother if he did not tellthem stories, and he stared at me; if he did not teach themhistory, and he said, 'O yes, they had a little Scripture history--from the New Testament'; and repeated his lamentations over thelack of results. I had not the heart to put more questions; Icould but say it must be very discouraging, and resist the impulseto add that it seemed also very natural. He looked up--'My daysare far spent, ' he said; 'heaven awaits me. ' May that heavenforgive me, but I was angry with the old man and his simpleconsolation. For think of his opportunity! The youth, from six tofifteen, are taken from their homes by Government, centralised atHatiheu, where they are supported by a weekly tax of food; and, with the exception of one month in every year, surrendered whollyto the direction of the priests. Since the escapade alreadymentioned the holiday occurs at a different period for the girlsand for the boys; so that a Marquesan brother and sister meetagain, after their education is complete, a pair of strangers. Itis a harsh law, and highly unpopular; but what a power it places inthe hands of the instructors, and how languidly and dully is thatpower employed by the mission! Too much concern to make thenatives pious, a design in which they all confess defeat, is, Isuppose, the explanation of their miserable system. But they mightsee in the girls' school at Tai-o-hae, under the brisk, housewifelysisters, a different picture of efficiency, and a scene ofneatness, airiness, and spirited and mirthful occupation thatshould shame them into cheerier methods. The sisters themselveslament their failure. They complain the annual holiday undoes thewhole year's work; they complain particularly of the heartlessindifference of the girls. Out of so many pretty and apparentlyaffectionate pupils whom they have taught and reared, only two haveever returned to pay a visit of remembrance to their teachers. These, indeed, come regularly, but the rest, so soon as theirschool-days are over, disappear into the woods like captiveinsects. It is hard to imagine anything more discouraging; and yetI do not believe these ladies need despair. For a certain intervalthey keep the girls alive and innocently busy; and if it be at allpossible to save the race, this would be the means. No such praisecan be given to the boys' school at Hatiheu. The day is numberedalready for them all; alike for the teacher and the scholars deathis girt; he is afoot upon the march; and in the frequent intervalthey sit and yawn. But in life there seems a thread of purposethrough the least significant; the drowsiest endeavour is not lost, and even the school at Hatiheu may be more useful than it seems. 

Hatiheu is a place of some pretensions. The end of the bay towardsAnaho may be called the civil compound, for it boasts the house ofKooamua, and close on the beach, under a great tree, that of thegendarme, M. Armand Aussel, with his garden, his pictures, hisbooks, and his excellent table, to which strangers are madewelcome. No more singular contrast is possible than between thegendarmerie and the priesthood, who are besides in smoulderingopposition and full of mutual complaints. A priest's kitchen inthe eastern islands is a depressing spot to see; and many, or mostof them, make no attempt to keep a garden, sparsely subsisting ontheir rations. But you will never dine with a gendarme withoutsmacking your lips; and M. Aussel's home-made sausage and the saladfrom his garden are unforgotten delicacies. Pierre Loti may liketo know that he is M. Aussel's favourite author, and that his booksare read in the fit scenery of Hatiheu bay. 

The other end is all religious. It is here that an overhanging andtip-tilted horn, a good sea-mark for Hatiheu, bursts naked from theverdure of the climbing forest, and breaks down shoreward in steeptaluses and cliffs. From the edge of one of the highest, perhapsseven hundred or a thousand feet above the beach, a Virgin looksinsignificantly down, like a poor lost doll, forgotten there by agiant child. This laborious symbol of the Catholics is alwaysstrange to Protestants; we conceive with wonder that men shouldthink it worth while to toil so many days, and clamber so muchabout the face of precipices, for an end that makes us smile; andyet I believe it was the wise Bishop Dordillon who chose the place, and I know that those who had a hand in the enterprise look backwith pride upon its vanquished dangers. The boys' school is arecent importation; it was at first in Tai-o-hae, beside thegirls'; and it was only of late, after their joint escapade, thatthe width of the island was interposed between the sexes. ButHatiheu must have been a place of missionary importance frombefore. About midway of the beach no less than three churchesstand grouped in a patch of bananas, intermingled with some pine-apples. Two are of wood: the original church, now in disuse; anda second that, for some mysterious reason, has never been used. The new church is of stone, with twin towers, walls flangeing intobuttresses, and sculptured front. The design itself is good, simple, and shapely; but the character is all in the detail, wherethe architect has bloomed into the sculptor. It is impossible totell in words of the angels (although they are more like wingedarchbishops) that stand guard upon the door, of the cherubs in thecorners, of the scapegoat gargoyles, or the quaint and spiritedrelief, where St. Michael (the artist's patron) makes short work ofa protesting Lucifer. We were never weary of viewing the imagery, so innocent, sometimes so funny, and yet in the best sense--in thesense of inventive gusto and expression--so artistic. I know notwhether it was more strange to find a building of such merit in acorner of a barbarous isle, or to see a building so antique stillbright with novelty. The architect, a French lay brother, stillalive and well, and meditating fresh foundations, must have surelydrawn his descent from a master-builder in the age of thecathedrals; and it was in looking on the church of Hatiheu that Iseemed to perceive the secret charm of mediaeval sculpture; thatcombination of the childish courage of the amateur, attempting allthings, like the schoolboy on his slate, with the manlyperseverance of the artist who does not know when he is conquered. 

I had always afterwards a strong wish to meet the architect, Brother Michel; and one day, when I was talking with the Residentin Tai-o-hae (the chief port of the island), there were shown in tous an old, worn, purblind, ascetic-looking priest, and a laybrother, a type of all that is most sound in France, with a broad, clever, honest, humorous countenance, an eye very large and bright, and a strong and healthy body inclining to obesity. But that hisblouse was black and his face shaven clean, you might pick such aman to-day, toiling cheerfully in his own patch of vines, from halfa dozen provinces of France; and yet he had always for me ahaunting resemblance to an old kind friend of my boyhood, whom Iname in case any of my readers should share with me that memory--Dr. Paul, of the West Kirk. Almost at the first word I was sure itwas my architect, and in a moment we were deep in a discussion ofHatiheu church. Brother Michel spoke always of his labours with atwinkle of humour, underlying which it was possible to spy aserious pride, and the change from one to another was often veryhuman and diverting. 'Et vos gargouilles moyen-age, ' cried I;'comme elles sont originates!' 'N'est-ce pas? Elles sont biendroles!' he said, smiling broadly; and the next moment, with asudden gravity: 'Cependant il y en a une qui a une patte de casse;il faut que je voie cela. ' I asked if he had any model--a point wemuch discussed. 'Non, ' said he simply; 'c'est une eglise ideale. 'The relievo was his favourite performance, and very justly so. Theangels at the door, he owned, he would like to destroy and replace. 'Ils n'ont pas de vie, ils manquent de vie. Vous devriez voir moneglise a la Dominique; j'ai la une Vierge qui est vraimentgentille. ' 'Ah, ' I cried, 'they told me you had said you wouldnever build another church, and I wrote in my journal I could notbelieve it. ' 'Oui, j'aimerais bien en fairs une autre, ' heconfessed, and smiled at the confession. An artist will understandhow much I was attracted by this conversation. There is no bond sonear as a community in that unaffected interest and slightly shame-faced pride which mark the intelligent man enamoured of an art. Hesees the limitations of his aim, the defects of his practice; hesmiles to be so employed upon the shores of death, yet sees in hisown devotion something worthy. Artists, if they had the same senseof humour with the Augurs, would smile like them on meeting, butthe smile would not be scornful. 

I had occasion to see much of this excellent man. He sailed withus from Tai-o-hae to Hiva-oa, a dead beat of ninety miles against aheavy sea. It was what is called a good passage, and a feather inthe Casco's cap; but among the most miserable forty hours that anyone of us had ever passed. We were swung and tossed together allthat time like shot in a stage thunder-box. The mate was throwndown and had his head cut open; the captain was sick on deck; thecook sick in the galley. Of all our party only two sat down todinner. I was one. I own that I felt wretchedly; and I can onlysay of the other, who professed to feel quite well, that she fledat an early moment from the table. It was in these circumstancesthat we skirted the windward shore of that indescribable island ofUa-pu; viewing with dizzy eyes the coves, the capes, the breakers, the climbing forests, and the inaccessible stone needles thatsurmount the mountains. The place persists, in a dark corner ofour memories, like a piece of the scenery of nightmares. The endof this distressful passage, where we were to land our passengers, was in a similar vein of roughness. The surf ran high on the beachat Taahauku; the boat broached-to and capsized; and all hands weresubmerged. Only the brother himself, who was well used to theexperience, skipped ashore, by some miracle of agility, with scarcea sprinkling. Thenceforward, during our stay at Hiva-oa, he wasour cicerone and patron; introducing us, taking us excursions, serving us in every way, and making himself daily more beloved. 

Michel Blanc had been a carpenter by trade; had made money andretired, supposing his active days quite over; and it was only whenhe found idleness dangerous that he placed his capital andacquirements at the service of the mission. He became theircarpenter, mason, architect, and engineer; added sculpture to hisaccomplishments, and was famous for his skill in gardening. Hewore an enviable air of having found a port from life's contentionsand lying there strongly anchored; went about his business with ajolly simplicity; complained of no lack of results--perhaps shylythinking his own statuary result enough; and was altogether apattern of the missionary layman. 

CHAPTER VIII--THE PORT OF ENTRY

The port--the mart, the civil and religious capital of these rudeislands--is called Tai-o-hae, and lies strung along the beach of aprecipitous green bay in Nuka-hiva. It was midwinter when we camethither, and the weather was sultry, boisterous, and inconstant. Now the wind blew squally from the land down gaps of splinteredprecipice; now, between the sentinel islets of the entry, it camein gusts from seaward. Heavy and dark clouds impended on thesummits; the rain roared and ceased; the scuppers of the mountaingushed; and the next day we would see the sides of the amphitheatrebearded with white falls. Along the beach the town shows a thinfile of houses, mostly white, and all ensconced in the foliage ofan avenue of green puraos; a pier gives access from the sea acrossthe belt of breakers; to the eastward there stands, on a projectingbushy hill, the old fort which is now the calaboose, or prison;eastward still, alone in a garden, the Residency flies the coloursof France. Just off Calaboose Hill, the tiny Government schoonerrides almost permanently at anchor, marks eight bells in themorning (there or thereabout) with the unfurling of her flag, andsalutes the setting sun with the report of a musket. 

Here dwell together, and share the comforts of a club (which may beenumerated as a billiard-board, absinthe, a map of the world onMercator's projection, and one of the most agreeable verandahs inthe tropics), a handful of whites of varying nationality, mostlyFrench officials, German and Scottish merchant clerks, and theagents of the opium monopoly. There are besides three tavern-keepers, the shrewd Scot who runs the cotton gin-mill, two whiteladies, and a sprinkling of people 'on the beach'--a South Seaexpression for which there is no exact equivalent. It is apleasant society, and a hospitable. But one man, who was often tobe seen seated on the logs at the pier-head, merits a word for thesingularity of his history and appearance. Long ago, it seems, hefell in love with a native lady, a High Chiefess in Ua-pu. She, onbeing approached, declared she could never marry a man who wasuntattooed; it looked so naked; whereupon, with some greatness ofsoul, our hero put himself in the hands of the Tahukus, and, withstill greater, persevered until the process was complete. He hadcertainly to bear a great expense, for the Tahuku will not workwithout reward; and certainly exquisite pain. Kooamua, high chiefas he was, and one of the old school, was only part tattooed; hecould not, he told us with lively pantomime, endure the torture toan end. Our enamoured countryman was more resolved; he wastattooed from head to foot in the most approved methods of the art;and at last presented himself before his mistress a new man. Thefickle fair one could never behold him from that day except withlaughter. For my part, I could never see the man without a kind ofadmiration; of him it might be said, if ever of any, that he hadloved not wisely, but too well. 

The Residency stands by itself, Calaboose Hill screening it fromthe fringe of town along the further bay. The house is commodious, with wide verandahs; all day it stands open, back and front, andthe trade blows copiously over its bare floors. On a week-day thegarden offers a scene of most untropical animation, half a dozenconvicts toiling there cheerfully with spade and barrow, andtouching hats and smiling to the visitor like old attached familyservants. On Sunday these are gone, and nothing to be seen butdogs of all ranks and sizes peacefully slumbering in the shadygrounds; for the dogs of Tai-o-hae are very courtly-minded, andmake the seat of Government their promenade and place of siesta. In front and beyond, a strip of green down loses itself in a lowwood of many species of acacia; and deep in the wood a ruinous wallencloses the cemetery of the Europeans. English and Scottish sleepthere, and Scandinavians, and French maitres de manoeuvres andmaitres ouvriers: mingling alien dust. Back in the woods, perhaps, the blackbird, or (as they call him there) the islandnightingale, will be singing home strains; and the ceaselessrequiem of the surf hangs on the ear. I have never seen a resting-place more quiet; but it was a long thought how far these sleepershad all travelled, and from what diverse homes they had set forth, to lie here in the end together. 

On the summit of its promontory hill, the calaboose stands all daywith doors and window-shutters open to the trade. On my firstvisit a dog was the only guardian visible. He, indeed, rose withan attitude so menacing that I was glad to lay hands on an oldbarrel-hoop; and I think the weapon must have been familiar, forthe champion instantly retreated, and as I wandered round the courtand through the building, I could see him, with a couple ofcompanions, humbly dodging me about the corners. The prisoners'dormitory was a spacious, airy room, devoid of any furniture; itswhitewashed walls covered with inscriptions in Marquesan and rudedrawings: one of the pier, not badly done; one of a murder;several of French soldiers in uniform. There was one legend inFrench: 'Je n'est' (sic) 'pas le sou. ' From this noontidequietude it must not be supposed the prison was untenanted; thecalaboose at Tai-o-hae does a good business. But some of itsoccupants were gardening at the Residency, and the rest wereprobably at work upon the streets, as free as our scavengers athome, although not so industrious. On the approach of evening theywould be called in like children from play; and the harbour-master(who is also the jailer) would go through the form of locking themup until six the next morning. Should a prisoner have any call intown, whether of pleasure or affairs, he has but to unhook thewindow-shutters; and if he is back again, and the shutter decentlyreplaced, by the hour of call on the morrow, he may have met theharbour-master in the avenue, and there will be no complaint, farless any punishment. But this is not all. The charming FrenchResident, M. Delaruelle, carried me one day to the calaboose on anofficial visit. In the green court, a very ragged gentleman, hislegs deformed with the island elephantiasis, saluted us smiling. 'One of our political prisoners--an insurgent from Raiatea, ' saidthe Resident; and then to the jailer: 'I thought I had ordered hima new pair of trousers. ' Meanwhile no other convict was to beseen--'Eh bien, ' said the Resident, 'ou sont vos prisonniers?''Monsieur le Resident, ' replied the jailer, saluting with soldierlyformality, 'comme c'est jour de fete, je les ai laisse aller a lachasse. ' They were all upon the mountains hunting goats!Presently we came to the quarters of the women, likewise deserted--'Ou sont vos bonnes femmes?' asked the Resident; and the jailercheerfully responded: 'Je crois, Monsieur le Resident, qu'ellessont allees quelquepart faire une visite. ' It had been the designof M. Delaruelle, who was much in love with the whimsicalities ofhis small realm, to elicit something comical; but not even heexpected anything so perfect as the last. To complete the pictureof convict life in Tai-o-hae, it remains to be added that thesecriminals draw a salary as regularly as the President of theRepublic. Ten sous a day is their hire. Thus they have money, food, shelter, clothing, and, I was about to write, their liberty. The French are certainly a good-natured people, and make easymasters. They are besides inclined to view the Marquesans with aneye of humorous indulgence. 'They are dying, poor devils!' said M. Delaruelle: 'the main thing is to let them die in peace. ' And itwas not only well said, but I believe expressed the generalthought. Yet there is another element to be considered; for theseconvicts are not merely useful, they are almost essential to theFrench existence. With a people incurably idle, dispirited by whatcan only be called endemic pestilence, and inflamed with ill-feeling against their new masters, crime and convict labour are agodsend to the Government. 

Theft is practically the sole crime. Originally petty pilferers, the men of Tai-o-hae now begin to force locks and attack strong-boxes. Hundreds of dollars have been taken at a time; though, withthat redeeming moderation so common in Polynesian theft, theMarquesan burglar will always take a part and leave a part, sharing(so to speak) with the proprietor. If it be Chilian coin--theisland currency--he will escape; if the sum is in gold, Frenchsilver, or bank-notes, the police wait until the money begins tocome in circulation, and then easily pick out their man. And nowcomes the shameful part. In plain English, the prisoner istortured until he confesses and (if that be possible) restores themoney. To keep him alone, day and night, in the black hole, is toinflict on the Marquesan torture inexpressible. Even his robberiesare carried on in the plain daylight, under the open sky, with thestimulus of enterprise, and the countenance of an accomplice; histerror of the dark is still insurmountable; conceive, then, what heendures in his solitary dungeon; conceive how he longs to confess, become a full-fledged convict, and be allowed to sleep beside hiscomrades. While we were in Tai-o-hae a thief was under prevention. He had entered a house about eight in the morning, forced a trunk, and stolen eleven hundred francs; and now, under the horrors ofdarkness, solitude, and a bedevilled cannibal imagination, he wasreluctantly confessing and giving up his spoil. From one cache, which he had already pointed out, three hundred francs had beenrecovered, and it was expected that he would presently disgorge therest. This would be ugly enough if it were all; but I am bound tosay, because it is a matter the French should set at rest, thatworse is continually hinted. I heard that one man was kept sixdays with his arms bound backward round a barrel; and it is theuniversal report that every gendarme in the South Seas is equippedwith something in the nature of a thumbscrew. I do not know this. I never had the face to ask any of the gendarmes--pleasant, intelligent, and kindly fellows--with whom I have been intimate, and whose hospitality I have enjoyed; and perhaps the tale reposes(as I hope it does) on a misconstruction of that ingenious cat's-cradle with which the French agent of police so readily secures aprisoner. But whether physical or moral, torture is certainlyemployed; and by a barbarous injustice, the state of accusation (inwhich a man may very well be innocently placed) is positivelypainful; the state of conviction (in which all are supposed guilty)is comparatively free, and positively pleasant. Perhaps worsestill, --not only the accused, but sometimes his wife, his mistress, or his friend, is subjected to the same hardships. I was admiring, in the tapu system, the ingenuity of native methods of detection;there is not much to admire in those of the French, and to lock upa timid child in a dark room, and, if he proved obstinate, lock uphis sister in the next, is neither novel nor humane. 

The main occasion of these thefts is the new vice of opium-eating. 'Here nobody ever works, and all eat opium, ' said a gendarme; andAh Fu knew a woman who ate a dollar's worth in a day. Thesuccessful thief will give a handful of money to each of hisfriends, a dress to a woman, pass an evening in one of the tavernsof Tai-o-hae, during which he treats all comers, produce a big lumpof opium, and retire to the bush to eat and sleep it off. Atrader, who did not sell opium, confessed to me that he was at hiswit's end. 'I do not sell it, but others do, ' said he. 'Thenatives only work to buy it; if they walk over to me to sell theircotton, they have just to walk over to some one else to buy theiropium with my money. And why should they be at the bother of twowalks? There is no use talking, ' he added--'opium is the currencyof this country. '

The man under prevention during my stay at Tai-o-hae lost patiencewhile the Chinese opium-seller was being examined in his presence. 'Of course he sold me opium!' he broke out; 'all the Chinese heresell opium. It was only to buy opium that I stole; it is only tobuy opium that anybody steals. And what you ought to do is to letno opium come here, and no Chinamen. ' This is precisely what isdone in Samoa by a native Government; but the French have boundtheir own hands, and for forty thousand francs sold native subjectsto crime and death. This horrid traffic may be said to have sprungup by accident. It was Captain Hart who had the misfortune to bethe means of beginning it, at a time when his plantationsflourished in the Marquesas, and he found a difficulty in keepingChinese coolies. To-day the plantations are practically desertedand the Chinese gone; but in the meanwhile the natives have learnedthe vice, the patent brings in a round sum, and the needyGovernment at Papeete shut their eyes and open their pockets. Ofcourse, the patentee is supposed to sell to Chinamen alone; equallyof course, no one could afford to pay forty thousand francs for theprivilege of supplying a scattered handful of Chinese; and everyone knows the truth, and all are ashamed of it. French officialsshake their heads when opium is mentioned; and the agents of thefarmer blush for their employment. Those that live in glass housesshould not throw stones; as a subject of the British crown, I am anunwilling shareholder in the largest opium business under heaven. But the British case is highly complicated; it implies thelivelihood of millions; and must be reformed, when it can bereformed at all, with prudence. This French business, on the otherhand, is a nostrum and a mere excrescence. No native industry wasto be encouraged: the poison is solemnly imported. No nativehabit was to be considered: the vice has been gratuitouslyintroduced. And no creature profits, save the Government atPapeete--the not very enviable gentlemen who pay them, and theChinese underlings who do the dirty work. 

CHAPTER IX--THE HOUSE OF TEMOANA

The history of the Marquesas is, of late years, much confused bythe coming and going of the French. At least twice they haveseized the archipelago, at least once deserted it; and in themeanwhile the natives pursued almost without interruption theirdesultory cannibal wars. Through these events and changingdynasties, a single considerable figure may be seen to move: thatof the high chief, a king, Temoana. Odds and ends of his historycame to my ears: how he was at first a convert to the Protestantmission; how he was kidnapped or exiled from his native land, served as cook aboard a whaler, and was shown, for small charge, inEnglish seaports; how he returned at last to the Marquesas, fellunder the strong and benign influence of the late bishop, extendedhis influence in the group, was for a while joint ruler with theprelate, and died at last the chief supporter of Catholicism andthe French. His widow remains in receipt of two pounds a monthfrom the French Government. Queen she is usually called, but inthe official almanac she figures as 'Madame Vaekehu, GrandeChefesse. ' His son (natural or adoptive, I know not which), Stanislao Moanatini, chief of Akaui, serves in Tai-o-hae as a kindof Minister of Public Works; and the daughter of Stanislao is HighChiefess of the southern island of Tauata. These, then, are thegreatest folk of the archipelago; we thought them also the mostestimable. This is the rule in Polynesia, with few exceptions; thehigher the family, the better the man--better in sense, better inmanners, and usually taller and stronger in body. A strangeradvances blindfold. He scrapes acquaintance as he can. Save thetattoo in the Marquesas, nothing indicates the difference of rank;and yet almost invariably we found, after we had made them, thatour friends were persons of station. I have said 'usually tallerand stronger. ' I might have been more absolute, --over allPolynesia, and a part of Micronesia, the rule holds good; the greatones of the isle, and even of the village, are greater of bone andmuscle, and often heavier of flesh, than any commoner. The usualexplanation--that the high-born child is more industriouslyshampooed, is probably the true one. In New Caledonia, at least, where the difference does not exist, has never been remarked, thepractice of shampooing seems to be itself unknown. Doctors wouldbe well employed in a study of the point. 

Vaekehu lives at the other end of the town from the Residency, beyond the buildings of the mission. Her house is on the Europeanplan: a table in the midst of the chief room; photographs andreligious pictures on the wall. It commands to either hand acharming vista: through the front door, a peep of green lawn, scurrying pigs, the pendent fans of the coco-palm and splendour ofthe bursting surf: through the back, mounting forest glades andcoronals of precipice. Here, in the strong thorough-draught, HerMajesty received us in a simple gown of print, and with no mark ofroyalty but the exquisite finish of her tattooed mittens, theelaboration of her manners, and the gentle falsetto in which allthe highly refined among Marquesan ladies (and Vaekehu above allothers) delight to sing their language. An adopted daughterinterpreted, while we gave the news, and rehearsed by name ourfriends of Anaho. As we talked, we could see, through the landwarddoor, another lady of the household at her toilet under the greentrees; who presently, when her hair was arranged, and her hatwreathed with flowers, appeared upon the back verandah withgracious salutations. 

Vaekehu is very deaf; 'merci' is her only word of French; and I donot know that she seemed clever. An exquisite, kind refinement, with a shade of quietism, gathered perhaps from the nuns, was whatchiefly struck us. Or rather, upon that first occasion, we wereconscious of a sense as of district-visiting on our part, andreduced evangelical gentility on the part of our hostess. Theother impression followed after she was more at ease, and came withStanislao and his little girl to dine on board the Casco. She haddressed for the occasion: wore white, which very well became herstrong brown face; and sat among us, eating or smoking hercigarette, quite cut off from all society, or only now and thenincluded through the intermediary of her son. It was a positionthat might have been ridiculous, and she made it ornamental; makingbelieve to hear and to be entertained; her face, whenever she metour eyes, lighting with the smile of good society; hercontributions to the talk, when she made any, and that was seldom, always complimentary and pleasing. No attention was paid to thechild, for instance, but what she remarked and thanked us for. Herparting with each, when she came to leave, was gracious and pretty, as had been every step of her behaviour. When Mrs. Stevenson heldout her hand to say good-bye, Vaekehu took it, held it, and amoment smiled upon her; dropped it, and then, as upon a kindlyafter-thought, and with a sort of warmth of condescension, held outboth hands and kissed my wife upon both cheeks. Given the samerelation of years and of rank, the thing would have been so done onthe boards of the Comedie Francaise; just so might Madame Brohanhave warmed and condescended to Madame Broisat in the Marquis deVillemer. It was my part to accompany our guests ashore: when Ikissed the little girl good-bye at the pier steps, Vaekehu gave acry of gratification, reached down her hand into the boat, tookmine, and pressed it with that flattering softness which seems thecoquetry of the old lady in every quarter of the earth. The nextmoment she had taken Stanislao's arm, and they moved off along thepier in the moonlight, leaving me bewildered. This was a queen ofcannibals; she was tattooed from hand to foot, and perhaps thegreatest masterpiece of that art now extant, so that a while ago, before she was grown prim, her leg was one of the sights of Tai-o-hae; she had been passed from chief to chief; she had been foughtfor and taken in war; perhaps, being so great a lady, she had saton the high place, and throned it there, alone of her sex, whilethe drums were going twenty strong and the priests carried up theblood-stained baskets of long-pig. And now behold her, out of thatpast of violence and sickening feasts, step forth, in her age, aquiet, smooth, elaborate old lady, such as you might find at home(mittened also, but not often so well-mannered) in a score ofcountry houses. Only Vaekehu's mittens were of dye, not of silk;and they had been paid for, not in money, but the cooked flesh ofmen. It came in my mind with a clap, what she could think of itherself, and whether at heart, perhaps, she might not regret andaspire after the barbarous and stirring past. But when I askedStanislao--'Ah!' said he, 'she is content; she is religious, shepasses all her days with the sisters. '

Stanislao (Stanislaos, with the final consonant evaded after thePolynesian habit) was sent by Bishop Dordillon to South America, and there educated by the fathers. His French is fluent, his talksensible and spirited, and in his capacity of ganger-in-chief, heis of excellent service to the French. With the prestige of hisname and family, and with the stick when needful, he keeps thenatives working and the roads passable. Without Stanislao and theconvicts, I am in doubt what would become of the present regimen inNuka-hiva; whether the highways might not be suffered to close up, the pier to wash away, and the Residency to fall piecemeal aboutthe ears of impotent officials. And yet though the hereditaryfavourer, and one of the chief props of French authority, he hasalways an eye upon the past. He showed me where the old publicplace had stood, still to be traced by random piles of stone; toldme how great and fine it was, and surrounded on all sides bypopulous houses, whence, at the beating of the drums, the folkcrowded to make holiday. The drum-beat of the Polynesian has astrange and gloomy stimulation for the nerves of all. Whitepersons feel it--at these precipitate sounds their hearts beatfaster; and, according to old residents, its effect on the nativeswas extreme. Bishop Dordillon might entreat; Temoana himselfcommand and threaten; at the note of the drum wild instinctstriumphed. And now it might beat upon these ruins, and who shouldassemble? The houses are down, the people dead, their lineageextinct; and the sweepings and fugitives of distant bays andislands encamp upon their graves. The decline of the danceStanislao especially laments. 'Chaque pays a ses coutumes, ' saidhe; but in the report of any gendarme, perhaps corruptly eager toincrease the number of delits and the instruments of his own power, custom after custom is placed on the expurgatorial index. 'Tenez, une danse qui n'est pas permise, ' said Stanislao: 'je ne sais paspourquoi, elle est tres jolie, elle va comme ca, ' and sticking hisumbrella upright in the road, he sketched the steps and gestures. All his criticisms of the present, all his regrets for the past, struck me as temperate and sensible. The short term of office ofthe Resident he thought the chief defect of the administration;that officer having scarce begun to be efficient ere he wasrecalled. I thought I gathered, too, that he regarded with somefear the coming change from a naval to a civil governor. I am sureat least that I regard it so myself; for the civil servants ofFrance have never appeared to any foreigner as at all the flower oftheir country, while her naval officers may challenge competitionwith the world. In all his talk, Stanislao was particular to speakof his own country as a land of savages; and when he stated anopinion of his own, it was with some apologetic preface, allegingthat he was 'a savage who had travelled. ' There was a deal, inthis elaborate modesty, of honest pride. Yet there was somethingin the precaution that saddened me; and I could not but fear he wasonly forestalling a taunt that he had heard too often. 

I recall with interest two interviews with Stanislao. The firstwas a certain afternoon of tropic rain, which we passed together inthe verandah of the club; talking at times with heightened voicesas the showers redoubled overhead, passing at times into thebilliard-room, to consult, in the dim, cloudy daylight, that map ofthe world which forms its chief adornment. He was naturallyignorant of English history, so that I had much of news tocommunicate. The story of Gordon I told him in full, and manyepisodes of the Indian Mutiny, Lucknow, the second battle of Cawn-pore, the relief of Arrah, the death of poor Spottis-woode, and SirHugh Rose's hotspur, midland campaign. He was intent to hear; hisbrown face, strongly marked with small-pox, kindled and changedwith each vicissitude. His eyes glowed with the reflected light ofbattle; his questions were many and intelligent, and it was chieflythese that sent us so often to the map. But it is of our partingthat I keep the strongest sense. We were to sail on the morrow, and the night had fallen, dark, gusty, and rainy, when we stumbledup the hill to bid farewell to Stanislao. He had already loaded uswith gifts; but more were waiting. We sat about the table overcigars and green cocoa-nuts; claps of wind blew through the houseand extinguished the lamp, which was always instantly relightedwith a single match; and these recurrent intervals of darkness werefelt as a relief. For there was something painful and embarrassingin the kindness of that separation. 'Ah, vous devriez rester ici, mon cher ami!' cried Stanislao. 'Vous etes les gens qu'il fautpour les Kanaques; vous etes doux, vous et votre famille; vousseriez obeis dans toutes les iles. ' We had been civil; not alwaysthat, my conscience told me, and never anything beyond; and allthis to-do is a measure, not of our considerateness, but of thewant of it in others. The rest of the evening, on to Vaekehu's andback as far as to the pier, Stanislao walked with my arm andsheltered me with his umbrella; and after the boat had put off, wecould still distinguish, in the murky darkness, his gestures offarewell. His words, if there were any, were drowned by the rainand the loud surf. 

I have mentioned presents, a vexed question in the South Seas; andone which well illustrates the common, ignorant habit of regardingraces in a lump. In many quarters the Polynesian gives only toreceive. I have visited islands where the population mobbed me forall the world like dogs after the waggon of cat's-meat; and wherethe frequent proposition, 'You my pleni (friend), ' or (with more ofpathos) 'You all 'e same my father, ' must be received with heartylaughter and a shout. And perhaps everywhere, among the greedy andrapacious, a gift is regarded as a sprat to catch a whale. It isthe habit to give gifts and to receive returns, and suchcharacters, complying with the custom, will look to it nearly thatthey do not lose. But for persons of a different stamp thestatement must be reversed. The shabby Polynesian is anxious tillhe has received the return gift; the generous is uneasy until hehas made it. The first is disappointed if you have not given morethan he; the second is miserable if he thinks he has given lessthan you. This is my experience; if it clash with that of others, I pity their fortune, and praise mine: the circumstances cannotchange what I have seen, nor lessen what I have received. Andindeed I find that those who oppose me often argue from a ground ofsingular presumptions; comparing Polynesians with an ideal person, compact of generosity and gratitude, whom I never had the pleasureof encountering; and forgetting that what is almost poverty to usis wealth almost unthinkable to them. I will give one instance: Ichanced to speak with consideration of these gifts of Stanislao'swith a certain clever man, a great hater and contemner of Kanakas. 'Well! what were they?' he cried. 'A pack of old men's beards. Trash!' And the same gentleman, some half an hour later, beingupon a different train of thought, dwelt at length on the esteem inwhich the Marquesans held that sort of property, how they preferredit to all others except land, and what fancy prices it would fetch. Using his own figures, I computed that, in this commodity alone, the gifts of Vaekehu and Stanislao represented between two andthree hundred dollars; and the queen's official salary is of twohundred and forty in the year. 

But generosity on the one hand, and conspicuous meanness on theother, are in the South Seas, as at home, the exception. It isneither with any hope of gain, nor with any lively wish to please, that the ordinary Polynesian chooses and presents his gifts. Aplain social duty lies before him, which he performs correctly, butwithout the least enthusiasm. And we shall best understand hisattitude of mind, if we examine our own to the cognate absurdity ofmarriage presents. There we give without any special thought of areturn; yet if the circumstance arise, and the return be withheld, we shall judge ourselves insulted. We give them usually withoutaffection, and almost never with a genuine desire to please; andour gift is rather a mark of our own status than a measure of ourlove to the recipients. So in a great measure and with the commonrun of the Polynesians; their gifts are formal; they imply no morethan social recognition; and they are made and reciprocated, as wepay and return our morning visits. And the practice of marking andmeasuring events and sentiments by presents is universal in theisland world. A gift plays with them the part of stamp and seal;and has entered profoundly into the mind of islanders. Peace andwar, marriage, adoption and naturalisation, are celebrated ordeclared by the acceptance or the refusal of gifts; and it is asnatural for the islander to bring a gift as for us to carry a card-case. 

CHAPTER X--A PORTRAIT AND A STORY

I have had occasion several times to name the late bishop, FatherDordillon, 'Monseigneur, ' as he is still almost universally called, Vicar-Apostolic of the Marquesas and Bishop of Cambysopolis inpartibus. Everywhere in the islands, among all classes and races, this fine, old, kindly, cheerful fellow is remembered withaffection and respect. His influence with the natives wasparamount. They reckoned him the highest of men--higher than anadmiral; brought him their money to keep; took his advice upontheir purchases; nor would they plant trees upon their own landtill they had the approval of the father of the islands. Duringthe time of the French exodus he singly represented Europe, livingin the Residency, and ruling by the hand of Temoana. The firstroads were made under his auspices and by his persuasion. The oldroad between Hatiheu and Anaho was got under way from either sideon the ground that it would be pleasant for an evening promenade, and brought to completion by working on the rivalry of the twovillages. The priest would boast in Hatiheu of the progress madein Anaho, and he would tell the folk of Anaho, 'If you don't takecare, your neighbours will be over the hill before you are at thetop. ' It could not be so done to-day; it could then; death, opium, and depopulation had not gone so far; and the people of Hatiheu, Iwas told, still vied with each other in fine attire, and used to goout by families, in the cool of the evening, boat-sailing andracing in the bay. There seems some truth at least in the commonview, that this joint reign of Temoana and the bishop was the lastand brief golden age of the Marquesas. But the civil powerreturned, the mission was packed out of the Residency at twenty-four hours' notice, new methods supervened, and the golden age(whatever it quite was) came to an end. It is the strongest proofof Father Dordillon's prestige that it survived, seemingly withoutloss, this hasty deposition. 

His method with the natives was extremely mild. Among thesebarbarous children he still played the part of the smiling father;and he was careful to observe, in all indifferent matters, theMarquesan etiquette. Thus, in the singular system of artificialkinship, the bishop had been adopted by Vaekehu as a grandson; MissFisher, of Hatiheu, as a daughter. From that day, Monseigneurnever addressed the young lady except as his mother, and closed hisletters with the formalities of a dutiful son. With Europeans hecould be strict, even to the extent of harshness. He made nodistinction against heretics, with whom he was on friendly terms;but the rules of his own Church he would see observed; and once atleast he had a white man clapped in jail for the desecration of asaint's day. But even this rigour, so intolerable to laymen, soirritating to Protestants, could not shake his popularity. Weshall best conceive him by examples nearer home; we may all haveknown some divine of the old school in Scotland, a literalSabbatarian, a stickler for the letter of the law, who was yet inprivate modest, innocent, genial and mirthful. Much such a man, itseems, was Father Dordillon. And his popularity bore a test yetstronger. He had the name, and probably deserved it, of a shrewdman in business and one that made the mission pay. Nothing so muchstirs up resentment as the inmixture in commerce of religiousbodies; but even rival traders spoke well of Monseigneur. 

His character is best portrayed in the story of the days of hisdecline. A time came when, from the failure of sight, he mustdesist from his literary labours: his Marquesan hymns, grammars, and dictionaries; his scientific papers, lives of saints, anddevotional poetry. He cast about for a new interest: pitched ongardening, and was to be seen all day, with spade and water-pot, inhis childlike eagerness, actually running between the borders. Another step of decay, and he must leave his garden also. Instantly a new occupation was devised, and he sat in the missioncutting paper flowers and wreaths. His diocese was not greatenough for his activity; the churches of the Marquesas were paperedwith his handiwork, and still he must be making more. 'Ah, ' saidhe, smiling, 'when I am dead what a fine time you will haveclearing out my trash!' He had been dead about six months; but Iwas pleased to see some of his trophies still exposed, and lookedupon them with a smile: the tribute (if I have read his cheerfulcharacter aright) which he would have preferred to any uselesstears. Disease continued progressively to disable him; he who hadclambered so stalwartly over the rude rocks of the Marquesas, bringing peace to warfaring clans, was for some time carried in achair between the mission and the church, and at last confined tobed, impotent with dropsy, and tormented with bed-sores andsciatica. Here he lay two months without complaint; and on the11th January 1888, in the seventy-ninth year of his life, and thethirty-fourth of his labours in the Marquesas, passed away. 

Those who have a taste for hearing missions, Protestant orCatholic, decried, must seek their pleasure elsewhere than in mypages. Whether Catholic or Protestant, with all their gross blots, with all their deficiency of candour, of humour, and of commonsense, the missionaries are the best and the most useful whites inthe Pacific. This is a subject which will follow us throughout;but there is one part of it that may conveniently be treated here. The married and the celibate missionary, each has his particularadvantage and defect. The married missionary, taking him at thebest, may offer to the native what he is much in want of--a higherpicture of domestic life; but the woman at his elbow tends to keephim in touch with Europe and out of touch with Polynesia, and toperpetuate, and even to ingrain, parochial decencies far bestforgotten. The mind of the female missionary tends, for instance, to be continually busied about dress. She can be taught withextreme difficulty to think any costume decent but that to whichshe grew accustomed on Clapham Common; and to gratify thisprejudice, the native is put to useless expense, his mind istainted with the morbidities of Europe, and his health is set indanger. The celibate missionary, on the other hand, and whether atbest or worst, falls readily into native ways of life; to which headds too commonly what is either a mark of celibate man at large, or an inheritance from mediaeval saints--I mean slovenly habits andan unclean person. There are, of course, degrees in this; and thesister (of course, and all honour to her) is as fresh as a lady ata ball. For the diet there is nothing to be said--it must amazeand shock the Polynesian--but for the adoption of native habitsthere is much. 'Chaque pays a ses coutumes, ' said Stanislao; theseit is the missionary's delicate task to modify; and the more he cando so from within, and from a native standpoint, the better he willdo his work; and here I think the Catholics have sometimes theadvantage; in the Vicariate of Dordillon, I am sure they had it. Ihave heard the bishop blamed for his indulgence to the natives, andabove all because he did not rage with sufficient energy againstcannibalism. It was a part of his policy to live among the nativeslike an elder brother; to follow where he could; to lead where itwas necessary; never to drive; and to encourage the growth of newhabits, instead of violently rooting up the old. And it might bebetter, in the long-run, if this policy were always followed. 

It might be supposed that native missionaries would prove moreindulgent, but the reverse is found to be the case. The new broomsweeps clean; and the white missionary of to-day is oftenembarrassed by the bigotry of his native coadjutor. What elseshould we expect? On some islands, sorcery, polygamy, humansacrifice, and tobacco-smoking have been prohibited, the dress ofthe native has been modified, and himself warned in strong termsagainst rival sects of Christianity; all by the same man, at thesame period of time, and with the like authority. By whatcriterion is the convert to distinguish the essential from theunessential? He swallows the nostrum whole; there has been no playof mind, no instruction, and, except for some brute utility in theprohibitions, no advance. To call things by their proper names, this is teaching superstition. It is unfortunate to use the word;so few people have read history, and so many have dipped intolittle atheistic manuals, that the majority will rush to aconclusion, and suppose the labour lost. And far from that: Thesesemi-spontaneous superstitions, varying with the sect of theoriginal evangelist and the customs of the island, are found inpractice to be highly fructifying; and in particular those who havelearned and who go forth again to teach them offer an example tothe world. The best specimen of the Christian hero that I ever metwas one of these native missionaries. He had saved two lives atthe risk of his own; like Nathan, he had bearded a tyrant in hishour of blood; when a whole white population fled, he alone stoodto his duty; and his behaviour under domestic sorrow with which thepublic has no concern filled the beholder with sympathy andadmiration. A poor little smiling laborious man he looked; and youwould have thought he had nothing in him but that of which indeedhe had too much--facile good-nature. 

It chances that the only rivals of Monseigneur and his mission inthe Marquesas were certain of these brown-skinned evangelists, natives from Hawaii. I know not what they thought of FatherDordillon: they are the only class I did not question; but Isuspect the prelate to have regarded them askance, for he waseminently human. During my stay at Tai-o-hae, the time of theyearly holiday came round at the girls' school; and a whole fleetof whale-boats came from Ua-pu to take the daughters of that islandhome. On board of these was Kauwealoha, one of the pastors, afine, rugged old gentleman, of that leonine type so common inHawaii. He paid me a visit in the Casco, and there entertained mewith a tale of one of his colleagues, Kekela, a missionary in thegreat cannibal isle of Hiva-oa. It appears that shortly after akidnapping visit from a Peruvian slaver, the boats of an Americanwhaler put into a bay upon that island, were attacked, and madetheir escape with difficulty, leaving their mate, a Mr. Whalon, inthe hands of the natives. The captive, with his arms bound behindhis back, was cast into a house; and the chief announced thecapture to Kekela. And here I begin to follow the version ofKauwealoha; it is a good specimen of Kanaka English; and the readeris to conceive it delivered with violent emphasis and speakingpantomime. 

'"I got 'Melican mate, " the chief he say. "What you go do 'Melicanmate?" Kekela he say. "I go make fire, I go kill, I go eat him, "he say; "you come to-mollow eat piece. " "I no WANT eat 'Melicanmate!" Kekela he say; "why you want?" "This bad shippee, thisslave shippee, " the chief he say. "One time a shippee he come fromPelu, he take away plenty Kanaka, he take away my son. 'Melicanmate he bad man. I go eat him; you eat piece. " "I no WANT eat'Melican mate!" Kekela he say; and he CLY--all night he cly! To-mollow Kekela he get up, he put on blackee coat, he go see chief;he see Missa Whela, him hand tie' like this. (Pantomime. ) Kekelahe cly. He say chief:- "Chief, you like things of mine? you likewhale-boat?" "Yes, " he say. "You like file-a'm?" (fire-arms). "Yes, " he say. "You like blackee coat?" "Yes, " he say. Kekela hetake Missa Whela by he shoul'a' (shoulder), he take him light outhouse; he give chief he whale-boat, he file-a'm, he blackee coat. He take Missa Whela he house, make him sit down with he wife andchil'en. Missa Whela all-the-same pelison (prison); he wife, hechil'en in Amelica; he cly--O, he cly. Kekela he solly. One dayKekela he see ship. (Pantomime. ) He say Missa Whela, "Ma' Whala?"Missa Whela he say, "Yes. " Kanaka they begin go down beach. Kekela he get eleven Kanaka, get oa' (oars), get evely thing. Hesay Missa Whela, "Now you go quick. " They jump in whale-boat. "Now you low!" Kekela he say: "you low quick, quick!" (Violentpantomime, and a change indicating that the narrator has left theboat and returned to the beach. ) All the Kanaka they say, "How!'Melican mate he go away?"--jump in boat; low afta. (Violentpantomime, and change again to boat. ) Kekela he say, "Low quick!"'

Here I think Kauwealoha's pantomime had confused me; I have no moreof his ipsissima verba; and can but add, in my own less spiritedmanner, that the ship was reached, Mr. Whalon taken aboard, andKekela returned to his charge among the cannibals. But how unjustit is to repeat the stumblings of a foreigner in a language onlypartly acquired! A thoughtless reader might conceive Kauwealohaand his colleague to be a species of amicable baboon; but I havehere the anti-dote. In return for his act of gallant charity, Kekela was presented by the American Government with a sum ofmoney, and by President Lincoln personally with a gold watch. Fromhis letter of thanks, written in his own tongue, I give thefollowing extract. I do not envy the man who can read it withoutemotion. 

'When I saw one of your countrymen, a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten, Iran to save him, full of pity and grief at the evil deed of thesebenighted people. I gave my boat for the stranger's life. Thisboat came from James Hunnewell, a gift of friendship. It becamethe ransom of this countryman of yours, that he might not be eatenby the savages who knew not Jehovah. This was Mr. Whalon, and thedate, Jan. 14, 1864. 

As to this friendly deed of mine in saving Mr. Whalon, its seedcame from your great land, and was brought by certain of yourcountrymen, who had received the love of God. It was planted inHawaii, and I brought it to plant in this land and in these darkregions, that they might receive the root of all that is good andtrue, which is LOVE. 

'1. Love to Jehovah. 

'2. Love to self. 

'3. Love to our neighbour. 

'If a man have a sufficiency of these three, he is good and holy, like his God, Jehovah, in his triune character (Father, Son, andHoly Ghost), one-three, three-one. If he have two and wants one, it is not well; and if he have one and wants two, indeed, is notwell; but if he cherishes all three, then is he holy, indeed, afterthe manner of the Bible. 

'This is a great thing for your great nation to boast of, beforeall the nations of the earth. From your great land a most preciousseed was brought to the land of darkness. It was planted here, notby means of guns and men-of-war and threatening. It was planted bymeans of the ignorant, the neglected, the despised. Such was theintroduction of the word of the Almighty God into this group ofNuuhiwa. Great is my debt to Americans, who have taught me allthings pertaining to this life and to that which is to come. 

'How shall I repay your great kindness to me? Thus David asked ofJehovah, and thus I ask of you, the President of the United States. This is my only payment--that which I have received of the Lord, love--(aloha). '

CHAPTER XI--LONG-PIG--A CANNIBAL HIGH PLACE

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, nothingso surely unmortars a society; nothing, we might plausibly argue, will so harden and degrade the minds of those that practise it. And yet we ourselves make much the same appearance in the eyes ofthe Buddhist and the vegetarian. We consume the carcasses ofcreatures of like appetites, passions, and organs with ourselves;we feed on babes, though not our own; and the slaughter-houseresounds daily with screams of pain and fear. We distinguish, indeed; but the unwillingness of many nations to eat the dog, ananimal with whom we live on terms of the next intimacy, shows howprecariously the distinction is grounded. The pig is the mainelement of animal food among the islands; and I had many occasions, my mind being quickened by my cannibal surroundings, to observe hischaracter and the manner of his death. Many islanders live withtheir pigs as we do with our dogs; both crowd around the hearthwith equal freedom; and the island pig is a fellow of activity, enterprise, and sense. He husks his own cocoa-nuts, and (I amtold) rolls them into the sun to burst; he is the terror of theshepherd. Mrs. Stevenson, senior, has seen one fleeing to thewoods with a lamb in his mouth; and I saw another come rapidly (anderroneously) to the conclusion that the Casco was going down, andswim through the flush water to the rail in search of an escape. It was told us in childhood that pigs cannot swim; I have known oneto leap overboard, swim five hundred yards to shore, and return tothe house of his original owner. I was once, at Tautira, a pig-master on a considerable scale; at first, in my pen, the utmostgood feeling prevailed; a little sow with a belly-ache came andappealed to us for help in the manner of a child; and there was oneshapely black boar, whom we called Catholicus, for he was aparticular present from the Catholics of the village, and who earlydisplayed the marks of courage and friendliness; no other animal, whether dog or pig, was suffered to approach him at his food, andfor human beings he showed a full measure of that toadying fondnessso common in the lower animals, and possibly their chief title tothe name. One day, on visiting my piggery, I was amazed to seeCatholicus draw back from my approach with cries of terror; and ifI was amazed at the change, I was truly embarrassed when I learntits reason. One of the pigs had been that morning killed;Catholicus had seen the murder, he had discovered he was dwellingin the shambles, and from that time his confidence and his delightin life were ended. We still reserved him a long while, but hecould not endure the sight of any two-legged creature, nor couldwe, under the circumstances, encounter his eye without confusion. I have assisted besides, by the ear, at the act of butchery itself;the victim's cries of pain I think I could have borne, but theexecution was mismanaged, and his expression of terror wascontagious: that small heart moved to the same tune with ours. Upon such 'dread foundations' the life of the European reposes, andyet the European is among the less cruel of races. Theparaphernalia of murder, the preparatory brutalities of hisexistence, are all hid away; an extreme sensibility reigns upon thesurface; and ladies will faint at the recital of one tithe of whatthey daily expect of their butchers. Some will be even crying outupon me in their hearts for the coarseness of this paragraph. Andso with the island cannibals. They were not cruel; apart from thiscustom, they are a race of the most kindly; rightly speaking, tocut a man's flesh after he is dead is far less hateful than tooppress him whilst he lives; and even the victims of their appetitewere gently used in life and suddenly and painlessly despatched atlast. In island circles of refinement it was doubtless thought badtaste to expatiate on what was ugly in the practice. 

Cannibalism is traced from end to end of the Pacific, from theMarquesas to New Guinea, from New Zealand to Hawaii, here in thelively haunt of its exercise, there by scanty but significantsurvivals. Hawaii is the most doubtful. We find cannibalismchronicled in Hawaii, only in the history of a single war, where itseems to have been thought exception, as in the case of mountainoutlaws, such as fell by the hand of Theseus. In Tahiti, a singlecircumstance survived, but that appears conclusive. In historictimes, when human oblation was made in the marae, the eyes of thevictim were formally offered to the chief: a delicacy to theleading guest. All Melanesia appears tainted. In Micronesia, inthe Marshalls, with which my acquaintance is no more than that of atourist, I could find no trace at all; and even in the Gilbert zoneI long looked and asked in vain. I was told tales indeed of menwho had been eaten in a famine; but these were nothing to mypurpose, for the same thing is done under the same stress by allkindreds and generations of men. At last, in some manuscript notesof Dr. Turner's, which I was allowed to consult at Malua, I came onone damning evidence: on the island of Onoatoa the punishment fortheft was to be killed and eaten. How shall we account for theuniversality of the practice over so vast an area, among people ofsuch varying civilisation, and, with whatever intermixture, of suchdifferent blood? What circumstance is common to them all, but thatthey lived on islands destitute, or very nearly so, of animal food?I can never find it in my appetite that man was meant to live onvegetables only. When our stores ran low among the islands, I grewto weary for the recurrent day when economy allowed us to openanother tin of miserable mutton. And in at least one oceanlanguage, a particular word denotes that a man is 'hungry forfish, ' having reached that stage when vegetables can no longersatisfy, and his soul, like those of the Hebrews in the desert, begins to lust after flesh-pots. Add to this the evidences ofover-population and imminent famine already adduced, and I think wesee some ground of indulgence for the island cannibal. 

It is right to look at both sides of any question; but I am farfrom making the apology of this worse than bestial vice. Thehigher Polynesian races, such as the Tahitians, Hawaiians, andSamoans, had one and all outgrown, and some of them had in partforgot, the practice, before Cook or Bougainville had shown a top-sail in their waters. It lingered only in some low islands wherelife was difficult to maintain, and among inveterate savages likethe New-Zealanders or the Marquesans. The Marquesans intertwinedman-eating with the whole texture of their lives; long-pig was in asense their currency and sacrament; it formed the hire of theartist, illustrated public events, and was the occasion andattraction of a feast. To-day they are paying the penalty of thisbloody commixture. The civil power, in its crusade against man-eating, has had to examine one after another all Marquesan arts andpleasures, has found them one after another tainted with a cannibalelement, and one after another has placed them on the proscriptlist. Their art of tattooing stood by itself, the executionexquisite, the designs most beautiful and intricate; nothing morehandsomely sets off a handsome man; it may cost some pain in thebeginning, but I doubt if it be near so painful in the long-run, and I am sure it is far more becoming than the ignoble Europeanpractice of tight-lacing among women. And now it has been foundneedful to forbid the art. Their songs and dances were numerous(and the law has had to abolish them by the dozen). They now faceempty-handed the tedium of their uneventful days; and who shallpity them? The least rigorous will say that they were justlyserved. 

Death alone could not satisfy Marquesan vengeance: the flesh mustbe eaten. The chief who seized Mr. Whalon preferred to eat him;and he thought he had justified the wish when he explained it was avengeance. Two or three years ago, the people of a valley seizedand slew a wretch who had offended them. His offence, it is to besupposed, was dire; they could not bear to leave their vengeanceincomplete, and, under the eyes of the French, they did not dare tohold a public festival. The body was accordingly divided; andevery man retired to his own house to consummate the rite insecret, carrying his proportion of the dreadful meat in a Swedishmatch-box. The barbarous substance of the drama and the Europeanproperties employed offer a seizing contrast to the imagination. Yet more striking is another incident of the very year when I wasthere myself, 1888. In the spring, a man and woman skulked aboutthe school-house in Hiva-oa till they found a particular childalone. Him they approached with honeyed words and carneyingmanners--'You are So-and-so, son of So-and-so?' they asked; andcaressed and beguiled him deeper in the woods. Some instinct wokein the child's bosom, or some look betrayed the horrid purpose ofhis deceivers. He sought to break from them; he screamed; andthey, casting off the mask, seized him the more strongly and beganto run. His cries were heard; his schoolmates, playing not faroff, came running to the rescue; and the sinister couple fled andvanished in the woods. They were never identified; no prosecutionfollowed; but it was currently supposed they had some grudgeagainst the boy's father, and designed to eat him in revenge. Allover the islands, as at home among our own ancestors, it will beobserved that the avenger takes no particular heed to strike anindividual. A family, a class, a village, a whole valley orisland, a whole race of mankind, share equally the guilt of anymember. So, in the above story, the son was to pay the penalty forhis father; so Mr. Whalon, the mate of an American whaler, was tobleed and be eaten for the misdeeds of a Peruvian slaver. I amreminded of an incident in Jaluit in the Marshall group, which wastold me by an eye-witness, and which I tell here again for thestrangeness of the scene. Two men had awakened the animosity ofthe Jaluit chiefs; and it was their wives who were selected to bepunished. A single native served as executioner. Early in themorning, in the face of a large concourse of spectators, he wadedout upon the reef between his victims. These neither complainednor resisted; accompanied their destroyer patiently; stooped down, when they had waded deep enough, at his command; and he (laying onehand upon the shoulders of each) held them under water till theydrowned. Doubtless, although my informant did not tell me so, their families would be lamenting aloud upon the beach. 

It was from Hatiheu that I paid my first visit to a cannibal highplace. 

The day was sultry and clouded. Drenching tropical showerssucceeded bursts of sweltering sunshine. The green pathway of theroad wound steeply upward. As we went, our little schoolboy guidea little ahead of us, Father Simeon had his portfolio in his hand, and named the trees for me, and read aloud from his notes theabstract of their virtues. Presently the road, mounting, showed usthe vale of Hatiheu, on a larger scale; and the priest, withoccasional reference to our guide, pointed out the boundaries andtold me the names of the larger tribes that lived at perpetual warin the old days: one on the north-east, one along the beach, onebehind upon the mountain. With a survivor of this latter clanFather Simeon had spoken; until the pacification he had never beento the sea's edge, nor, if I remember exactly, eaten of sea-fish. Each in its own district, the septs lived cantoned and beleaguered. One step without the boundaries was to affront death. If faminecame, the men must out to the woods to gather chestnuts and smallfruits; even as to this day, if the parents are backward in theirweekly doles, school must be broken up and the scholars sentforaging. But in the old days, when there was trouble in one clan, there would be activity in all its neighbours; the woods would belaid full of ambushes; and he who went after vegetables for himselfmight remain to be a joint for his hereditary foes. Nor was thepointed occasion needful. A dozen different natural signs andsocial junctures called this people to the war-path and thecannibal hunt. Let one of chiefly rank have finished histattooing, the wife of one be near upon her time, two of thedebauching streams have deviated nearer on the beach of Hatiheu, acertain bird have been heard to sing, a certain ominous formationof cloud observed above the northern sea; and instantly the armswere oiled, and the man-hunters swarmed into the wood to lay theirfratricidal ambuscades. It appears besides that occasionally, perhaps in famine, the priest would shut himself in his house, where he lay for a stated period like a person dead. When he cameforth it was to run for three days through the territory of theclan, naked and starving, and to sleep at night alone in the highplace. It was now the turn of the others to keep the house, for toencounter the priest upon his rounds was death. On the eve of thefourth day the time of the running was over; the priest returned tohis roof, the laymen came forth, and in the morning the number ofthe victims was announced. I have this tale of the priest on oneauthority--I think a good one, --but I set it down with diffidence. The particulars are so striking that, had they been true, I almostthink I must have heard them oftener referred to. Upon one pointthere seems to be no question: that the feast was sometimesfurnished from within the clan. In times of scarcity, all who werenot protected by their family connections--in the Highlandexpression, all the commons of the clan--had cause to tremble. Itwas vain to resist, it was useless to flee. They were begirt uponall hands by cannibals; and the oven was ready to smoke for themabroad in the country of their foes, or at home in the valley oftheir fathers. 

At a certain corner of the road our scholar-guide struck off to hisleft into the twilight of the forest. We were now on one of theancient native roads, plunged in a high vault of wood, andclambering, it seemed, at random over boulders and dead trees; butthe lad wound in and out and up and down without a check, for thesepaths are to the natives as marked as the king's highway is to us;insomuch that, in the days of the man-hunt, it was their labourrather to block and deface than to improve them. In the crypt ofthe wood the air was clammy and hot and cold; overhead, upon theleaves, the tropical rain uproariously poured, but only here andthere, as through holes in a leaky roof, a single drop would fall, and make a spot upon my mackintosh. Presently the huge trunk of abanyan hove in sight, standing upon what seemed the ruins of anancient fort; and our guide, halting and holding forth his arm, announced that we had reached the paepae tapu. 

Paepae signifies a floor or platform such as a native house isbuilt on; and even such a paepae--a paepae hae--may be called apaepae tapu in a lesser sense when it is deserted and becomes thehaunt of spirits; but the public high place, such as I was nowtreading, was a thing on a great scale. As far as my eyes couldpierce through the dark undergrowth, the floor of the forest wasall paved. Three tiers of terrace ran on the slope of the hill; infront, a crumbling parapet contained the main arena; and thepavement of that was pierced and parcelled out with several wellsand small enclosures. No trace remained of any superstructure, andthe scheme of the amphitheatre was difficult to seize. I visitedanother in Hiva-oa, smaller but more perfect, where it was easy tofollow rows of benches, and to distinguish isolated seats of honourfor eminent persons; and where, on the upper platform, a singlejoist of the temple or dead-house still remained, its uprightsrichly carved. In the old days the high place was sedulouslytended. No tree except the sacred banyan was suffered to encroachupon its grades, no dead leaf to rot upon the pavement. The stoneswere smoothly set, and I am told they were kept bright with oil. On all sides the guardians lay encamped in their subsidiary huts towatch and cleanse it. No other foot of man was suffered to drawnear; only the priest, in the days of his running, came there tosleep--perhaps to dream of his ungodly errand; but, in the time ofthe feast, the clan trooped to the high place in a body, and eachhad his appointed seat. There were places for the chiefs, thedrummers, the dancers, the women, and the priests. The drums--perhaps twenty strong, and some of them twelve feet high--continuously throbbed in time. In time the singers kept up theirlong-drawn, lugubrious, ululating song; in time, too, the dancers, tricked out in singular finery, stepped, leaped, swayed, andgesticulated--their plumed fingers fluttering in the air likebutterflies. The sense of time, in all these ocean races, isextremely perfect; and I conceive in such a festival that almostevery sound and movement fell in one. So much the more unanimouslymust have grown the agitation of the feasters; so much the morewild must have been the scene to any European who could have beheldthem there, in the strong sun and the strong shadow of the banyan, rubbed with saffron to throw in a more high relief the arabesque ofthe tattoo; the women bleached by days of confinement to acomplexion almost European; the chiefs crowned with silver plumesof old men's beards and girt with kirtles of the hair of deadwomen. All manner of island food was meanwhile spread for thewomen and the commons; and, for those who were privileged to eat ofit, there were carried up to the dead-house the baskets of long-pig. It is told that the feasts were long kept up; the people camefrom them brutishly exhausted with debauchery, and the chiefs heavywith their beastly food. There are certain sentiments which wecall emphatically human--denying the honour of that name to thosewho lack them. In such feasts--particularly where the victim hasbeen slain at home, and men banqueted on the poor clay of a comradewith whom they had played in infancy, or a woman whose favours theyhad shared--the whole body of these sentiments is outraged. Toconsider it too closely is to understand, if not to excuse, thefervours of self-righteous old ship-captains, who would man theirguns, and open fire in passing, on a cannibal island. 

And yet it was strange. There, upon the spot, as I stood under thehigh, dripping vault of the forest, with the young priest on theone hand, in his kilted gown, and the bright-eyed Marquesanschoolboy on the other, the whole business appeared infinitelydistant, and fallen in the cold perspective and dry light ofhistory. The bearing of the priest, perhaps, affected me. Hesmiled; he jested with the boy, the heir both of these feasters andtheir meat; he clapped his hands, and gave me a stave of one of theold, ill-omened choruses. Centuries might have come and gone sincethis slimy theatre was last in operation; and I beheld the placewith no more emotion than I might have felt in visiting Stonehenge. In Hiva-oa, as I began to appreciate that the thing was stillliving and latent about my footsteps, and that it was still withinthe bounds of possibility that I might hear the cry of the trappedvictim, my historic attitude entirely failed, and I was sensible ofsome repugnance for the natives. But here, too, the priestsmaintained their jocular attitude: rallying the cannibals as uponan eccentricity rather absurd than horrible; seeking, I should say, to shame them from the practice by good-natured ridicule, as weshame a child from stealing sugar. We may here recognise thetemperate and sagacious mind of Bishop Dordillon. 

CHAPTER XII--THE STORY OF A PLANTATION

Taahauku, on the south-westerly coast of the island of Hiva-oa--Tahuku, say the slovenly whites--may be called the port of Atuona. It is a narrow and small anchorage, set between low cliffy points, and opening above upon a woody valley: a little French fort, nowdisused and deserted, overhangs the valley and the inlet. Atuonaitself, at the head of the next bay, is framed in a theatre ofmountains, which dominate the more immediate settling of Taahaukuand give the salient character of the scene. They are reckoned atno higher than four thousand feet; but Tahiti with eight thousand, and Hawaii with fifteen, can offer no such picture of abrupt, melancholy alps. In the morning, when the sun falls directly ontheir front, they stand like a vast wall: green to the summit, ifby any chance the summit should be clear--water-courses here andthere delineated on their face, as narrow as cracks. Towardsafternoon, the light falls more obliquely, and the sculpture of therange comes in relief, huge gorges sinking into shadow, huge, tortuous buttresses standing edged with sun. At all hours of theday they strike the eye with some new beauty, and the mind with thesame menacing gloom. 

The mountains, dividing and deflecting the endless airy deluge ofthe Trade, are doubtless answerable for the climate. A strongdraught of wind blew day and night over the anchorage. Day andnight the same fantastic and attenuated clouds fled across theheavens, the same dusky cap of rain and vapour fell and rose on themountain. The land-breezes came very strong and chill, and thesea, like the air, was in perpetual bustle. The swell crowded intothe narrow anchorage like sheep into a fold; broke all along bothsides, high on the one, low on the other; kept a certain blowholesounding and smoking like a cannon; and spent itself at last uponthe beach. 

On the side away from Atuona, the sheltering promontory was anursery of coco-trees. Some were mere infants, none had attainedto any size, none had yet begun to shoot skyward with that whip-like shaft of the mature palm. In the young trees the colouralters with the age and growth. Now all is of a grass-like hue, infinitely dainty; next the rib grows golden, the fronds remaininggreen as ferns; and then, as the trunk continues to mount and toassume its final hue of grey, the fans put on manlier and moredecided depths of verdure, stand out dark upon the distance, glisten against the sun, and flash like silver fountains in theassault of the wind. In this young wood of Taahauku, all thesehues and combinations were exampled and repeated by the score. Thetrees grew pleasantly spaced upon a hilly sward, here and thereinterspersed with a rack for drying copra, or a tumble-down hut forstoring it. Every here and there the stroller had a glimpse of theCasco tossing in the narrow anchorage below; and beyond he had everbefore him the dark amphitheatre of the Atuona mountains and thecliffy bluff that closes it to seaward. The trade-wind moving inthe fans made a ceaseless noise of summer rain; and from time totime, with the sound of a sudden and distant drum-beat, the surfwould burst in a sea-cave. 

At the upper end of the inlet, its low, cliffy lining sinks, atboth sides, into a beach. A copra warehouse stands in the shadowof the shoreside trees, flitted about for ever by a clan ofdwarfish swallows; and a line of rails on a high wooden stagingbends back into the mouth of the valley. Walking on this, the new-landed traveller becomes aware of a broad fresh-water lagoon (onearm of which he crosses), and beyond, of a grove of noble palms, sheltering the house of the trader, Mr. Keane. Overhead, the cocosjoin in a continuous and lofty roof; blackbirds are heard lustilysinging; the island cock springs his jubilant rattle and airs hisgolden plumage; cow-bells sound far and near in the grove; and whenyou sit in the broad verandah, lulled by this symphony, you may sayto yourself, if you are able: 'Better fifty years of Europe . . . 'Farther on, the floor of the valley is flat and green, and dottedhere and there with stripling coco-palms. Through the midst, withmany changes of music, the river trots and brawls; and along itscourse, where we should look for willows, puraos grow in clusters, and make shadowy pools after an angler's heart. A vale more richand peaceful, sweeter air, a sweeter voice of rural sounds, I havefound nowhere. One circumstance alone might strike theexperienced: here is a convenient beach, deep soil, good water, and yet nowhere any paepaes, nowhere any trace of islandhabitation. 

It is but a few years since this valley was a place choked withjungle, the debatable land and battle-ground of cannibals. Twoclans laid claim to it--neither could substantiate the claim, andthe roads lay desert, or were only visited by men in arms. It isfor this very reason that it wears now so smiling an appearance:cleared, planted, built upon, supplied with railways, boat-houses, and bath-houses. For, being no man's land, it was the more readilyceded to a stranger. The stranger was Captain John Hart: ImaHati, 'Broken-arm, ' the natives call him, because when he firstvisited the islands his arm was in a sling. Captain Hart, a man ofEnglish birth, but an American subject, had conceived the idea ofcotton culture in the Marquesas during the American War, and was atfirst rewarded with success. His plantation at Anaho was highlyproductive; island cotton fetched a high price, and the nativesused to debate which was the stronger power, Ima Hati or theFrench: deciding in favour of the captain, because, though theFrench had the most ships, he had the more money. 

He marked Taahauku for a suitable site, acquired it, and offeredthe superintendence to Mr. Robert Stewart, a Fifeshire man, alreadysome time in the islands, who had just been ruined by a war onTauata. Mr. Stewart was somewhat averse to the adventure, havingsome acquaintance with Atuona and its notorious chieftain, Moipu. He had once landed there, he told me, about dusk, and found theremains of a man and woman partly eaten. On his starting andsickening at the sight, one of Moipu's young men picked up a humanfoot, and provocatively staring at the stranger, grinned andnibbled at the heel. None need be surprised if Mr. Stewart fledincontinently to the bush, lay there all night in a great horror ofmind, and got off to sea again by daylight on the morrow. 'It wasalways a bad place, Atuona, ' commented Mr. Stewart, in his homelyFifeshire voice. In spite of this dire introduction, he acceptedthe captain's offer, was landed at Taahauku with three Chinamen, and proceeded to clear the jungle. 

War was pursued at that time, almost without interval, between themen of Atuona and the men of Haamau; and one day, from the oppositesides of the valley, battle--or I should rather say the noise ofbattle--raged all the afternoon: the shots and insults of theopposing clans passing from hill to hill over the heads of Mr. Stewart and his Chinamen. There was no genuine fighting; it waslike a bicker of schoolboys, only some fool had given the childrenguns. One man died of his exertions in running, the only casualty. With night the shots and insults ceased; the men of Haamauwithdrew; and victory, on some occult principle, was scored toMoipu. Perhaps, in consequence, there came a day when Moipu made afeast, and a party from Haamau came under safe-conduct to eat ofit. These passed early by Taahauku, and some of Moipu's young menwere there to be a guard of honour. They were not long gone beforethere came down from Haamau, a man, his wife, and a girl of twelve, their daughter, bringing fungus. Several Atuona lads were hanginground the store; but the day being one of truce none apprehendeddanger. The fungus was weighed and paid for; the man of Haamauproposed he should have his axe ground in the bargain; and Mr. Stewart demurring at the trouble, some of the Atuona lads offeredto grind it for him, and set it on the wheel. While the axe wasgrinding, a friendly native whispered Mr. Stewart to have a care ofhimself, for there was trouble in hand; and, all at once, the manof Haamau was seized, and his head and arm stricken from his body, the head at one sweep of his own newly sharpened axe. In the firstalert, the girl escaped among the cotton; and Mr. Stewart, havingthrust the wife into the house and locked her in from the outside, supposed the affair was over. But the business had not passedwithout noise, and it reached the ears of an older girl who hadloitered by the way, and who now came hastily down the valley, crying as she came for her father. Her, too, they seized andbeheaded; I know not what they had done with the axe, it was ablunt knife that served their butcherly turn upon the girl; and theblood spurted in fountains and painted them from head to foot. Thus horrible from crime, the party returned to Atuona, carryingthe heads to Moipu. It may be fancied how the feast broke up; butit is notable that the guests were honourably suffered to retire. These passed back through Taahauku in extreme disorder; a littleafter the valley began to be overrun with shouting and triumphingbraves; and a letter of warning coming at the same time to Mr. Stewart, he and his Chinamen took refuge with the Protestantmissionary in Atuona. That night the store was gutted, and thebodies cast in a pit and covered with leaves. Three days later theschooner had come in; and things appearing quieter, Mr. Stewart andthe captain landed in Taahauku to compute the damage and to viewthe grave, which was already indicated by the stench. While theywere so employed, a party of Moipu's young men, decked with redflannel to indicate martial sentiments, came over the hills fromAtuona, dug up the bodies, washed them in the river, and carriedthem away on sticks. That night the feast began. 

Those who knew Mr. Stewart before this experience declare the manto be quite altered. He stuck, however, to his post; and somewhatlater, when the plantation was already well established, and gaveemployment to sixty Chinamen and seventy natives, he found himselfonce more in dangerous times. The men of Haamau, it was reported, had sworn to plunder and erase the settlement; letters camecontinually from the Hawaiian missionary, who acted as intelligencedepartment; and for six weeks Mr. Stewart and three other whitesslept in the cotton-house at night in a rampart of bales, and (whatwas their best defence) ostentatiously practised rifle-shooting byday upon the beach. Natives were often there to watch them; thepractice was excellent; and the assault was never delivered--if itever was intended, which I doubt, for the natives are more famousfor false rumours than for deeds of energy. I was told the lateFrench war was a case in point; the tribes on the beach accusingthose in the mountains of designs which they had never thehardihood to entertain. And the same testimony to theirbackwardness in open battle reached me from all sides. CaptainHart once landed after an engagement in a certain bay; one man hadhis hand hurt, an old woman and two children had been slain; andthe captain improved the occasion by poulticing the hand, andtaunting both sides upon so wretched an affair. It is true thesewars were often merely formal--comparable with duels to the firstblood. Captain Hart visited a bay where such a war was beingcarried on between two brothers, one of whom had been thoughtwanting in civility to the guests of the other. About one-half ofthe population served day about on alternate sides, so as to bewell with each when the inevitable peace should follow. The fortsof the belligerents were over against each other, and close by. Pigs were cooking. Well-oiled braves, with well-oiled muskets, strutted on the paepae or sat down to feast. No business, howeverneedful, could be done, and all thoughts were supposed to becentred in this mockery of war. A few days later, by a regrettableaccident, a man was killed; it was felt at once the thing had gonetoo far, and the quarrel was instantly patched up. But the moreserious wars were prosecuted in a similar spirit; a gift of pigsand a feast made their inevitable end; the killing of a single manwas a great victory, and the murder of defenceless solitariescounted a heroic deed. 

The foot of the cliffs, about all these islands, is the place offishing. Between Taahauku and Atuona we saw men, but chieflywomen, some nearly naked, some in thin white or crimson dresses, perched in little surf-beat promontories--the brown precipiceoverhanging them, and the convolvulus overhanging that, as if tocut them off the more completely from assistance. There they wouldangle much of the morning; and as fast as they caught any fish, eatthem, raw and living, where they stood. It was such helpless onesthat the warriors from the opposite island of Tauata slew, andcarried home and ate, and were thereupon accounted mighty men ofvalour. Of one such exploit I can give the account of an eye-witness. 'Portuguese Joe, ' Mr. Keane's cook, was once pulling anoar in an Atuona boat, when they spied a stranger in a canoe withsome fish and a piece of tapu. The Atuona men cried upon him todraw near and have a smoke. He complied, because, I suppose, hehad no choice; but he knew, poor devil, what he was coming to, and(as Joe said) 'he didn't seem to care about the smoke. ' A fewquestions followed, as to where he came from, and what was hisbusiness. These he must needs answer, as he must needs draw at theunwelcome pipe, his heart the while drying in his bosom. And then, of a sudden, a big fellow in Joe's boat leaned over, plucked thestranger from his canoe, struck him with a knife in the neck--inward and downward, as Joe showed in pantomime more expressivethan his words--and held him under water, like a fowl, until hisstruggles ceased. Whereupon the long-pig was hauled on board, theboat's head turned about for Atuona, and these Marquesan bravespulled home rejoicing. Moipu was on the beach and rejoiced withthem on their arrival. Poor Joe toiled at his oar that day with awhite face, yet he had no fear for himself. 'They were very goodto me--gave me plenty grub: never wished to eat white man, ' saidhe. 

If the most horrible experience was Mr. Stewart's, it was CaptainHart himself who ran the nearest danger. He had bought a piece ofland from Timau, chief of a neighbouring bay, and put some Chinesethere to work. Visiting the station with one of the Godeffroys, hefound his Chinamen trooping to the beach in terror: Timau haddriven them out, seized their effects, and was in war attire withhis young men. A boat was despatched to Taahauku forreinforcement; as they awaited her return, they could see, from thedeck of the schooner, Timau and his young men dancing the war-danceon the hill-top till past twelve at night; and so soon as the boatcame (bringing three gendarmes, armed with chassepots, two whitemen from Taahauku station, and some native warriors) the party setout to seize the chief before he should awake. Day was not come, and it was a very bright moonlight morning, when they reached thehill-top where (in a house of palm-leaves) Timau was sleeping offhis debauch. The assailants were fully exposed, the interior ofthe hut quite dark; the position far from sound. The gendarmesknelt with their pieces ready, and Captain Hart advanced alone. Ashe drew near the door he heard the snap of a gun cocking fromwithin, and in sheer self-defence--there being no other escape--sprang into the house and grappled Timau. 'Timau, come with me!'he cried. But Timau--a great fellow, his eyes blood-red with theabuse of kava, six foot three in stature--cast him on one side; andthe captain, instantly expecting to be either shot or brained, discharged his pistol in the dark. When they carried Timau out atthe door into the moonlight, he was already dead, and, upon thisunlooked-for termination of their sally, the whites appeared tohave lost all conduct, and retreated to the boats, fired upon bythe natives as they went. Captain Hart, who almost rivals BishopDordillon in popularity, shared with him the policy of extremeindulgence to the natives, regarding them as children, making lightof their defects, and constantly in favour of mild measures. Thedeath of Timau has thus somewhat weighed upon his mind; the moreso, as the chieftain's musket was found in the house unloaded. Toa less delicate conscience the matter will seem light. If adrunken savage elects to cock a fire-arm, a gentleman advancingtowards him in the open cannot wait to make sure if it be charged. 

I have touched on the captain's popularity. It is one of thethings that most strikes a stranger in the Marquesas. He comesinstantly on two names, both new to him, both locally famous, bothmentioned by all with affection and respect--the bishop's and thecaptain's. It gave me a strong desire to meet with the survivor, which was subsequently gratified--to the enrichment of these pages. Long after that again, in the Place Dolorous--Molokai--I came oncemore on the traces of that affectionate popularity. There was ablind white leper there, an old sailor--'an old tough, ' he calledhimself--who had long sailed among the eastern islands. Him I usedto visit, and, being fresh from the scenes of his activity, gavehim the news. This (in the true island style) was largely achronicle of wrecks; and it chanced I mentioned the case of one notvery successful captain, and how he had lost a vessel for Mr. Hart;thereupon the blind leper broke forth in lamentation. 'Did he losea ship of John Hart's?' he cried; 'poor John Hart! Well, I'm sorryit was Hart's, ' with needless force of epithet, which I neglect toreproduce. 

Perhaps, if Captain Hart's affairs had continued to prosper, hispopularity might have been different. Success wins glory, but itkills affection, which misfortune fosters. And the misfortunewhich overtook the captain's enterprise was truly singular. He wasat the top of his career. Ile Masse belonged to him, given by theFrench as an indemnity for the robberies at Taahauku. But the IleMasse was only suitable for cattle; and his two chief stations wereAnaho, in Nuka-hiva, facing the north-east, and Taahauku in Hiva-oa, some hundred miles to the southward, and facing the south-west. Both these were on the same day swept by a tidal wave, which wasnot felt in any other bay or island of the group. The south coastof Hiva-oa was bestrewn with building timber and camphor-woodchests, containing goods; which, on the promise of a reasonablesalvage, the natives very honestly brought back, the chestsapparently not opened, and some of the wood after it had been builtinto their houses. But the recovery of such jetsam could notaffect the result. It was impossible the captain should withstandthis partiality of fortune; and with his fall the prosperity of theMarquesas ended. Anaho is truly extinct, Taahauku but a shadow ofitself; nor has any new plantation arisen in their stead. 

CHAPTER XIII--CHARACTERS

There was a certain traffic in our anchorage at Atuona; differentindeed from the dead inertia and quiescence of the sister island, Nuka-hiva. Sails were seen steering from its mouth; now it wouldbe a whale-boat manned with native rowdies, and heavy with coprafor sale; now perhaps a single canoe come after commodities to buy. The anchorage was besides frequented by fishers; not only the lonefemales perched in niches of the cliff, but whole parties, whowould sometimes camp and build a fire upon the beach, and sometimeslie in their canoes in the midst of the haven and jump by turns inthe water; which they would cast eight or nine feet high, to drive, as we supposed, the fish into their nets. The goods the purchaserscame to buy were sometimes quaint. I remarked one outriggerreturning with a single ham swung from a pole in the stern. Andone day there came into Mr. Keane's store a charming lad, excellently mannered, speaking French correctly though with ababyish accent; very handsome too, and much of a dandy, as wasshown not only in his shining raiment, but by the nature of hispurchases. These were five ship-biscuits, a bottle of scent, andtwo balls of washing blue. He was from Tauata, whither he returnedthe same night in an outrigger, daring the deep with these young-ladyish treasures. The gross of the native passengers were moreill-favoured: tall, powerful fellows, well tattooed, and withdisquieting manners. Something coarse and jeering distinguishedthem, and I was often reminded of the slums of some great city. One night, as dusk was falling, a whale-boat put in on that part ofthe beach where I chanced to be alone. Six or seven ruffianlyfellows scrambled out; all had enough English to give me 'good-bye, ' which was the ordinary salutation; or 'good-morning, ' whichthey seemed to regard as an intensitive; jests followed, theysurrounded me with harsh laughter and rude looks, and I was glad tomove away. I had not yet encountered Mr. Stewart, or I should havebeen reminded of his first landing at Atuona and the humorist whonibbled at the heel. But their neighbourhood depressed me; and Ifelt, if I had been there a castaway and out of reach of help, myheart would have been sick. 

Nor was the traffic altogether native. While we lay in theanchorage there befell a strange coincidence. A schooner wasobserved at sea and aiming to enter. We knew all the schooners inthe group, but this appeared larger than any; she was rigged, besides, after the English manner; and, coming to an anchor someway outside the Casco, showed at last the blue ensign. There wereat that time, according to rumour, no fewer than four yachts in thePacific; but it was strange that any two of them should thus lieside by side in that outlandish inlet: stranger still that in theowner of the Nyanza, Captain Dewar, I should find a man of the samecountry and the same county with myself, and one whom I had seenwalking as a boy on the shores of the Alpes Maritimes. 

We had besides a white visitor from shore, who came and departed ina crowded whale-boat manned by natives; having read of yachts inthe Sunday papers, and being fired with the desire to see one. Captain Chase, they called him, an old whaler-man, thickset andwhite-bearded, with a strong Indiana drawl; years old in thecountry, a good backer in battle, and one of those dead shots whosepractice at the target struck terror in the braves of Haamau. Captain Chase dwelt farther east in a bay called Hanamate, with aMr. M'Callum; or rather they had dwelt together once, and were nowamicably separated. The captain is to be found near one end of thebay, in a wreck of a house, and waited on by a Chinese. At thepoint of the opposing corner another habitation stands on a tallpaepae. The surf runs there exceeding heavy, seas of seven andeight feet high bursting under the walls of the house, which isthus continually filled with their clamour, and rendered fit onlyfor solitary, or at least for silent, inmates. Here it is that Mr. M'Callum, with a Shakespeare and a Burns, enjoys the society of thebreakers. His name and his Burns testify to Scottish blood; but heis an American born, somewhere far east; followed the trade of aship-carpenter; and was long employed, the captain of a hundredIndians, breaking up wrecks about Cape Flattery. Many of thewhites who are to be found scattered in the South Seas representthe more artistic portion of their class; and not only enjoy thepoetry of that new life, but came there on purpose to enjoy it. Ihave been shipmates with a man, no longer young, who sailed uponthat voyage, his first time to sea, for the mere love of Samoa; andit was a few letters in a newspaper that sent him on thatpilgrimage. Mr. M'Callum was another instance of the same. He hadread of the South Seas; loved to read of them; and let their imagefasten in his heart: till at length he could refrain no longer--must set forth, a new Rudel, for that unseen homeland--and has nowdwelt for years in Hiva-oa, and will lay his bones there in the endwith full content; having no desire to behold again the places ofhis boyhood, only, perhaps--once, before he dies--the rude andwintry landscape of Cape Flattery. Yet he is an active man, fullof schemes; has bought land of the natives; has planted fivethousand coco-palms; has a desert island in his eye, which hedesires to lease, and a schooner in the stocks, which he has laidand built himself, and even hopes to finish. Mr. M'Callum and Idid not meet, but, like gallant troubadours, corresponded in verse. I hope he will not consider it a breach of copyright if I give herea specimen of his muse. He and Bishop Dordillon are the twoEuropean bards of the Marquesas. 

'Sail, ho! Ahoy! Casco, First among the pleasure fleetThat came around to greetThese isles from San Francisco, And first, too; only oneAmong the literary menThat this way has ever been -Welcome, then, to Stevenson. 

Please not offended beAt this little noticeOf the Casco, Captain Otis, With the novelist's family. 

Avoir une voyage magnificalIs our wish sincere, That you'll have from hereAllant sur la Grande Pacifical. '

But our chief visitor was one Mapiao, a great Tahuku--which seemsto mean priest, wizard, tattooer, practiser of any art, or, in aword, esoteric person--and a man famed for his eloquence on publicoccasions and witty talk in private. His first appearance wastypical of the man. He came down clamorous to the eastern landing, where the surf was running very high; scorned all our signals to goround the bay; carried his point, was brought aboard at some hazardto our skiff, and set down in one corner of the cockpit to hisappointed task. He had been hired, as one cunning in the art, tomake my old men's beards into a wreath: what a wreath for Celia'sarbour! His own beard (which he carried, for greater safety, in asailor's knot) was not merely the adornment of his age, but asubstantial piece of property. One hundred dollars was theestimated value; and as Brother Michel never knew a native todeposit a greater sum with Bishop Dordillon, our friend was a richman in virtue of his chin. He had something of an East Indiancast, but taller and stronger: his nose hooked, his face narrow, his forehead very high, the whole elaborately tattooed. I may sayI have never entertained a guest so trying. In the leastparticular he must be waited on; he would not go to the scuttle-butt for water; he would not even reach to get the glass, it mustbe given him in his hand; if aid were denied him, he would fold hisarms, bow his head, and go without: only the work would suffer. Early the first forenoon he called aloud for biscuit and salmon;biscuit and ham were brought; he looked on them inscrutably, andsigned they should be set aside. A number of considerationscrowded on my mind; how the sort of work on which he was engagedwas probably tapu in a high degree; should by rights, perhaps, betransacted on a tapu platform which no female might approach; andit was possible that fish might be the essential diet. Some saltedfish I therefore brought him, and along with that a glass of rum:at sight of which Mapiao displayed extraordinary animation, pointedto the zenith, made a long speech in which I picked up umati--theword for the sun--and signed to me once more to place thesedainties out of reach. At last I had understood, and every day theprogramme was the same. At an early period of the morning hisdinner must be set forth on the roof of the house and at a properdistance, full in view but just out of reach; and not until the fithour, which was the point of noon, would the artificer partake. This solemnity was the cause of an absurd misadventure. He wasseated plaiting, as usual, at the beards, his dinner arrayed on theroof, and not far off a glass of water standing. It appears hedesired to drink; was of course far too great a gentleman to riseand get the water for himself; and spying Mrs. Stevenson, imperiously signed to her to hand it. The signal wasmisunderstood; Mrs. Stevenson was, by this time, prepared for anyeccentricity on the part of our guest; and instead of passing himthe water, flung his dinner overboard. I must do Mapiao justice:all laughed, but his laughter rang the loudest. 

These troubles of service were at worst occasional; theembarrassment of the man's talk incessant. He was plainly apractised conversationalist; the nicety of his inflections, theelegance of his gestures, and the fine play of his expression, toldus that. We, meanwhile, sat like aliens in a playhouse; we couldsee the actors were upon some material business and performingwell, but the plot of the drama remained undiscoverable. Names ofplaces, the name of Captain Hart, occasional disconnected words, tantalised without enlightening us; and the less we understood, themore gallantly, the more copiously, and with still the moreexplanatory gestures, Mapiao returned to the assault. We could seehis vanity was on the rack; being come to a place where that finejewel of his conversational talent could earn him no respect; andhe had times of despair when he desisted from the endeavour, andinstants of irritation when he regarded us with unconcealedcontempt. Yet for me, as the practitioner of some kindred mysteryto his own, he manifested to the last a measure of respect. As wesat under the awning in opposite corners of the cockpit, hebraiding hairs from dead men's chins, I forming runes upon a sheetof folio paper, he would nod across to me as one Tahuku to another, or, crossing the cockpit, study for a while my shapeless scrawl andencourage me with a heartfelt 'mitai!--good!' So might a deafpainter sympathise far off with a musician, as the slave and masterof some uncomprehended and yet kindred art. A silly trade, hedoubtless considered it; but a man must make allowance forbarbarians--chaque pays a ses coutumes--and he felt the principlewas there. 

The time came at last when his labours, which resembled thoserather of Penelope than Hercules, could be no more spun out, andnothing remained but to pay him and say farewell. After a long, learned argument in Marquesan, I gathered that his mind was set onfish-hooks; with three of which, and a brace of dollars, I thoughthe was not ill rewarded for passing his forenoons in our cockpit, eating, drinking, delivering his opinions, and pressing the ship'scompany into his menial service. For all that, he was a man of sohigh a bearing, and so like an uncle of my own who should have gonemad and got tattooed, that I applied to him, when we were both onshore, to know if he were satisfied. 'Mitai ehipe?' I asked. Andhe, with rich unction, offering at the same time his hand--'Mitaiehipe, mitai kaehae; kaoha nui!'--or, to translate freely: 'Theship is good, the victuals are up to the mark, and we part infriendship. ' Which testimonial uttered, he set off along the beachwith his head bowed and the air of one deeply injured. 

I saw him go, on my side, with relief. It would be moreinteresting to learn how our relation seemed to Mapiao. Hisexigence, we may suppose, was merely loyal. He had been hired bythe ignorant to do a piece of work; and he was bound that he woulddo it the right way. Countless obstacles, continual ignorantridicule, availed not to dissuade him. He had his dinner laid out;watched it, as was fit, the while he worked; ate it at the fithour; was in all things served and waited on; and could take hishire in the end with a clear conscience, telling himself themystery was performed duly, the beards rightfully braided, and we(in spite of ourselves) correctly served. His view of ourstupidity, even he, the mighty talker, must have lacked language toexpress. He never interfered with my Tahuku work; civilly praisedit, idle as it seemed; civilly supposed that I was competent in myown mystery: such being the attitude of the intelligent and thepolite. And we, on the other hand--who had yet the most to gain orlose, since the product was to be ours--who had professed ourdisability by the very act of hiring him to do it--were never wearyof impeding his own more important labours, and sometimes lackedthe sense and the civility to refrain from laughter. 

CHAPTER XIV--IN A CANNIBAL VALLEY

The road from Taahauku to Atuona skirted the north-westerly side ofthe anchorage, somewhat high up, edged, and sometimes shaded, bythe splendid flowers of the flamboyant--its English name I do notknow. At the turn of the hand, Atuona came in view: a long beach, a heavy and loud breach of surf, a shore-side village scatteredamong trees, and the guttered mountains drawing near on both sidesabove a narrow and rich ravine. Its infamous repute perhapsaffected me; but I thought it the loveliest, and by far the mostominous and gloomy, spot on earth. Beautiful it surely was; andeven more salubrious. The healthfulness of the whole group isamazing; that of Atuona almost in the nature of a miracle. InAtuona, a village planted in a shore-side marsh, the housesstanding everywhere intermingled with the pools of a taro-garden, we find every condition of tropical danger and discomfort; and yetthere are not even mosquitoes--not even the hateful day-fly ofNuka-hiva--and fever, and its concomitant, the island fe'efe'e, areunknown. 

This is the chief station of the French on the man-eating isle ofHiva-oa. The sergeant of gendarmerie enjoys the style of the vice-resident, and hoists the French colours over a quite extensivecompound. A Chinaman, a waif from the plantation, keeps arestaurant in the rear quarters of the village; and the mission iswell represented by the sister's school and Brother Michel'schurch. Father Orens, a wonderful octogenarian, his frame scarcebowed, the fire of his eye undimmed, has lived, and trembled, andsuffered in this place since 1843. Again and again, when Moipu hadmade coco-brandy, he has been driven from his house into the woods. 'A mouse that dwelt in a cat's ear' had a more easy resting-place;and yet I have never seen a man that bore less mark of years. Hemust show us the church, still decorated with the bishop's artlessornaments of paper--the last work of industrious old hands, and thelast earthly amusement of a man that was much of a hero. In thesacristy we must see his sacred vessels, and, in particular, avestment which was a 'vraie curiosite, ' because it had been givenby a gendarme. To the Protestant there is always somethingembarrassing in the eagerness with which grown and holy men regardthese trifles; but it was touching and pretty to see Orens, hisaged eyes shining in his head, display his sacred treasures. 

August 26. --The vale behind the village, narrowing swiftly to amere ravine, was choked with profitable trees. A river gushed inthe midst. Overhead, the tall coco-palms made a primary covering;above that, from one wall of the mountain to another, the ravinewas roofed with cloud; so that we moved below, amid teemingvegetation, in a covered house of heat. On either hand, at everyhundred yards, instead of the houseless, disembowelling paepaes ofNuka-hiva, populous houses turned out their inhabitants to cry'Kaoha!' to the passers-by. The road, too, was busy: strings ofgirls, fair and foul, as in less favoured countries; men bearingbreadfruit; the sisters, with a little guard of pupils; a fellowbestriding a horse--passed and greeted us continually; and now itwas a Chinaman who came to the gate of his flower-yard, and gave us'Good-day' in excellent English; and a little farther on it wouldbe some natives who set us down by the wayside, made us a feast ofmummy-apple, and entertained us as we ate with drumming on a tincase. With all this fine plenty of men and fruit, death is at workhere also. The population, according to the highest estimate, doesnot exceed six hundred in the whole vale of Atuona; and yet, when Ionce chanced to put the question, Brother Michel counted up tenwhom he knew to be sick beyond recovery. It was here, too, that Icould at last gratify my curiosity with the sight of a native housein the very article of dissolution. It had fallen flat along thepaepae, its poles sprawling ungainly; the rains and the mitescontended against it; what remained seemed sound enough, but muchwas gone already; and it was easy to see how the insects consumedthe walls as if they had been bread, and the air and the rain ateinto them like vitriol. 

A little ahead of us, a young gentleman, very well tattooed, anddressed in a pair of white trousers and a flannel shirt, had beenmarching unconcernedly. Of a sudden, without apparent cause, heturned back, took us in possession, and led us undissuadably alonga by-path to the river's edge. There, in a nook of the mostattractive amenity, he bade us to sit down: the stream splashingat our elbow, a shock of nondescript greenery enshrining us fromabove; and thither, after a brief absence, he brought us a cocoa-nut, a lump of sandal-wood, and a stick he had begun to carve: thenut for present refreshment, the sandal-wood for a precious gift, and the stick--in the simplicity of his vanity--to harvestpremature praise. Only one section was yet carved, although thewhole was pencil-marked in lengths; and when I proposed to buy it, Poni (for that was the artist's name) recoiled in horror. But Iwas not to be moved, and simply refused restitution, for I had longwondered why a people who displayed, in their tattooing, so great agift of arabesque invention, should display it nowhere else. Here, at last, I had found something of the same talent in anothermedium; and I held the incompleteness, in these days of world-widebrummagem, for a happy mark of authenticity. Neither my reasonsnor my purpose had I the means of making clear to Poni; I couldonly hold on to the stick, and bid the artist follow me to thegendarmerie, where I should find interpreters and money; but wegave him, in the meanwhile, a boat-call in return for his sandal-wood. As he came behind us down the vale he sounded upon thiscontinually. And continually, from the wayside houses, therepoured forth little groups of girls in crimson, or of men in white. And to these must Poni pass the news of who the strangers were, ofwhat they had been doing, of why it was that Poni had a boat-whistle; and of why he was now being haled to the vice-residency, uncertain whether to be punished or rewarded, uncertain whether hehad lost a stick or made a bargain, but hopeful on the whole, andin the meanwhile highly consoled by the boat-whistle. Whereupon hewould tear himself away from this particular group of inquirers, and once more we would hear the shrill call in our wake. 

August 27. --I made a more extended circuit in the vale with BrotherMichel. We were mounted on a pair of sober nags, suitable to theserude paths; the weather was exquisite, and the company in which Ifound myself no less agreeable than the scenes through which Ipassed. We mounted at first by a steep grade along the summit ofone of those twisted spurs that, from a distance, mark outprovinces of sun and shade upon the mountain-side. The ground fellaway on either hand with an extreme declivity. From either hand, out of profound ravines, mounted the song of falling water and thesmoke of household fires. Here and there the hills of foliagewould divide, and our eye would plunge down upon one of these deep-nested habitations. And still, high in front, arose theprecipitous barrier of the mountain, greened over where it seemedthat scarce a harebell could find root, barred with the zigzags ofa human road where it seemed that not a goat could scramble. Andin truth, for all the labour that it cost, the road is regardedeven by the Marquesans as impassable; they will not risk a horse onthat ascent; and those who lie to the westward come and go in theircanoes. I never knew a hill to lose so little on a near approach:a consequence, I must suppose, of its surprising steepness. Whenwe turned about, I was amazed to behold so deep a view behind, andso high a shoulder of blue sea, crowned by the whale-like island ofMotane. And yet the wall of mountain had not visibly dwindled, andI could even have fancied, as I raised my eyes to measure it, thatit loomed higher than before. 

We struck now into covert paths, crossed and heard more near athand the bickering of the streams, and tasted the coolness of thoserecesses where the houses stood. The birds sang about us as wedescended. All along our path my guide was being hailed by voices:'Mikael--Kaoha, Mikael!' From the doorstep, from the cotton-patch, or out of the deep grove of island-chestnuts, these friendly criesarose, and were cheerily answered as we passed. In a sharp angleof a glen, on a rushing brook and under fathoms of cool foliage, westruck a house upon a well-built paepae, the fire brightly burningunder the popoi-shed against the evening meal; and here the criesbecame a chorus, and the house folk, running out, obliged us todismount and breathe. It seemed a numerous family: we saw eightat least; and one of these honoured me with a particular attention. This was the mother, a woman naked to the waist, of an agedcountenance, but with hair still copious and black, and breastsstill erect and youthful. On our arrival I could see she remarkedme, but instead of offering any greeting, disappeared at once intothe bush. Thence she returned with two crimson flowers. 'Good-bye!' was her salutation, uttered not without coquetry; and as shesaid it she pressed the flowers into my hand--'Good-bye! I speakInglis. ' It was from a whaler-man, who (she informed me) was 'aplenty good chap, ' that she had learned my language; and I couldnot but think how handsome she must have been in these times of heryouth, and could not but guess that some memories of the dandywhaler-man prompted her attentions to myself. Nor could I refrainfrom wondering what had befallen her lover; in the rain and mire ofwhat sea-ports he had tramped since then; in what close and garishdrinking-dens had found his pleasure; and in the ward of whatinfirmary dreamed his last of the Marquesas. But she, the morefortunate, lived on in her green island. The talk, in this losthouse upon the mountains, ran chiefly upon Mapiao and his visits tothe Casco: the news of which had probably gone abroad by then toall the island, so that there was no paepae in Hiva-oa where theydid not make the subject of excited comment. 

Not much beyond we came upon a high place in the foot of theravine. Two roads divided it, and met in the midst. Save for thisintersection the amphitheatre was strangely perfect, and had acertain ruder air of things Roman. Depths of foliage and the bulkof the mountain kept it in a grateful shadow. On the benchesseveral young folk sat clustered or apart. One of these, a girlperhaps fourteen years of age, buxom and comely, caught the eye ofBrother Michel. Why was she not at school?--she was done withschool now. What was she doing here?--she lived here now. Whyso?--no answer but a deepening blush. There was no severity inBrother Michel's manner; the girl's own confusion told her story. 'Elle a honte, ' was the missionary's comment, as we rode away. Near by in the stream, a grown girl was bathing naked in a goylebetween two stepping-stones; and it amused me to see with whatalacrity and real alarm she bounded on her many-coloured under-clothes. Even in these daughters of cannibals shame was eloquent. 

It is in Hiva-oa, owing to the inveterate cannibalism of thenatives, that local beliefs have been most rudely troddenunderfoot. It was here that three religious chiefs were set undera bridge, and the women of the valley made to defile over theirheads upon the road-way: the poor, dishonoured fellows sittingthere (all observers agree) with streaming tears. Not only was oneroad driven across the high place, but two roads intersected in itsmidst. There is no reason to suppose that the last was done ofpurpose, and perhaps it was impossible entirely to avoid thenumerous sacred places of the islands. But these things are notdone without result. I have spoken already of the regard ofMarquesans for the dead, making (as it does) so strange a contrastwith their unconcern for death. Early on this day's ride, forinstance, we encountered a petty chief, who inquired (of course)where we were going, and suggested by way of amendment. 'Why doyou not rather show him the cemetery?' I saw it; it was but newlyopened, the third within eight years. They are great builders herein Hiva-oa; I saw in my ride paepaes that no European dry-stonemason could have equalled, the black volcanic stones were laid sojustly, the corners were so precise, the levels so true; but theretaining-wall of the new graveyard stood apart, and seemed to be awork of love. The sentiment of honour for the dead is thereforenot extinct. And yet observe the consequence of violentlycountering men's opinions. Of the four prisoners in Atuona gaol, three were of course thieves; the fourth was there for sacrilege. He had levelled up a piece of the graveyard--to give a feast upon, as he informed the court--and declared he had no thought of doingwrong. Why should he? He had been forced at the point of thebayonet to destroy the sacred places of his own piety; when he hadrecoiled from the task, he had been jeered at for a superstitiousfool. And now it is supposed he will respect our Europeansuperstitions as by second nature. 

CHAPTER XV--THE TWO CHIEFS OF ATUONA

It had chanced (as the Casco beat through the Bordelais Straits forTaahauku) she approached on one board very near the land in theopposite isle of Tauata, where houses were to be seen in a grove oftall coco-palms. Brother Michel pointed out the spot. 'I am athome now, ' said he. 'I believe I have a large share in thesecocoa-nuts; and in that house madame my mother lives with her twohusbands!' 'With two husbands?' somebody inquired. 'C'est mahonte, ' replied the brother drily. 

A word in passing on the two husbands. I conceive the brother tohave expressed himself loosely. It seems common enough to find anative lady with two consorts; but these are not two husbands. Thefirst is still the husband; the wife continues to be referred to byhis name; and the position of the coadjutor, or pikio, althoughquite regular, appears undoubtedly subordinate. We hadopportunities to observe one household of the sort. The pikio wasrecognised; appeared openly along with the husband when the ladywas thought to be insulted, and the pair made common cause likebrothers. At home the inequality was more apparent. The husbandsat to receive and entertain visitors; the pikio was running thewhile to fetch cocoa-nuts like a hired servant, and I remarked hewas sent on these errands in preference even to the son. Plainlywe have here no second husband; plainly we have the toleratedlover. Only, in the Marquesas, instead of carrying his lady's fanand mantle, he must turn his hand to do the husband's housework. 

The sight of Brother Michel's family estate led the conversationfor some while upon the method and consequence of artificialkinship. Our curiosity became extremely whetted; the brotheroffered to have the whole of us adopted, and some two days later webecame accordingly the children of Paaaeua, appointed chief ofAtuona. I was unable to be present at the ceremony, which wasprimitively simple. The two Mrs. Stevensons and Mr. Osbourne, along with Paaaeua, his wife, and an adopted child of theirs, sonof a shipwrecked Austrian, sat down to an excellent island meal, ofwhich the principal and the only necessary dish was pig. Aconcourse watched them through the apertures of the house; butnone, not even Brother Michel, might partake; for the meal wassacramental, and either creative or declaratory of the newrelationship. In Tahiti things are not so strictly ordered; whenOri and I 'made brothers, ' both our families sat with us at table, yet only he and I, who had eaten with intention were supposed to beaffected by the ceremony. For the adoption of an infant I believeno formality to be required; the child is handed over by thenatural parents, and grows up to inherit the estates of theadoptive. Presents are doubtless exchanged, as at all junctures ofisland life, social or international; but I never heard of anybanquet--the child's presence at the daily board perhaps sufficing. We may find the rationale in the ancient Arabian idea that a commondiet makes a common blood, with its derivative axiom that 'he isthe father who gives the child its morning draught. ' In theMarquesan practice, the sense would thus be evanescent; from theTahitian, a mere survival, it will have entirely fled. Aninteresting parallel will probably occur to many of my readers. 

What is the nature of the obligation assumed at such a festival?It will vary with the characters of those engaged, and with thecircumstances of the case. Thus it would be absurd to take tooseriously our adoption at Atuona. On the part of Paaaeua it was anaffair of social ambition; when he agreed to receive us in hisfamily the man had not so much as seen us, and knew only that wewere inestimably rich and travelled in a floating palace. We, uponour side, ate of his baked meats with no true animus affiliandi, but moved by the single sentiment of curiosity. The affair wasformal, and a matter of parade, as when in Europe sovereigns calleach other cousin. Yet, had we stayed at Atuona, Paaaeua wouldhave held himself bound to establish us upon his land, and to setapart young men for our service, and trees for our support. I havementioned the Austrian. He sailed in one of two sister ships, which left the Clyde in coal; both rounded the Horn, and both, atseveral hundred miles of distance, though close on the same pointof time, took fire at sea on the Pacific. One was destroyed; thederelict iron frame of the second, after long, aimless cruising, was at length recovered, refitted, and hails to-day from SanFrancisco. A boat's crew from one of these disasters reached, after great hardships, the isle of Hiva-oa. Some of these menvowed they would never again confront the chances of the sea; butalone of them all the Austrian has been exactly true to hisengagement, remains where he landed, and designs to die where hehas lived. Now, with such a man, falling and taking root amongislanders, the processes described may be compared to a gardener'sgraft. He passes bodily into the native stock; ceases wholly to bealien; has entered the commune of the blood, shares the prosperityand consideration of his new family, and is expected to impart withthe same generosity the fruits of his European skill and knowledge. It is this implied engagement that so frequently offends theingrafted white. To snatch an immediate advantage--to get (let ussay) a station for his store--he will play upon the native customand become a son or a brother for the day, promising himself tocast down the ladder by which he shall have ascended, and repudiatethe kinship so soon as it shall grow burdensome. And he findsthere are two parties to the bargain. Perhaps his Polynesianrelative is simple, and conceived the blood-bond literally; perhapshe is shrewd, and himself entered the covenant with a view to gain. And either way the store is ravaged, the house littered with lazynatives; and the richer the man grows, the more numerous, the moreidle, and the more affectionate he finds his native relatives. Most men thus circumstanced contrive to buy or brutally manage toenforce their independence; but many vegetate without hope, strangled by parasites. 

We had no cause to blush with Brother Michel. Our new parents werekind, gentle, well-mannered, and generous in gifts; the wife was amost motherly woman, the husband a man who stood justly high withhis employers. Enough has been said to show why Moipu should bedeposed; and in Paaaeua the French had found a reputablesubstitute. He went always scrupulously dressed, and looked thepicture of propriety, like a dark, handsome, stupid, and probablyreligious young man hot from a European funeral. In character heseemed the ideal of what is known as the good citizen. He woregravity like an ornament. None could more nicely represent thedesired character as an appointed chief, the outpost ofcivilisation and reform. And yet, were the French to go and nativemanners to revive, fancy beholds him crowned with old men's beardsand crowding with the first to a man-eating festival. But I mustnot seem to be unjust to Paaaeua. His respectability went deeperthan the skin; his sense of the becoming sometimes nerved him forunexpected rigours. 

One evening Captain Otis and Mr. Osbourne were on shore in thevillage. All was agog; dancing had begun; it was plain it was tobe a night of festival, and our adventurers were overjoyed at theirgood fortune. A strong fall of rain drove them for shelter to thehouse of Paaaeua, where they were made welcome, wiled into achamber, and shut in. Presently the rain took off, the fun was tobegin in earnest, and the young bloods of Atuona came round thehouse and called to my fellow-travellers through the interstices ofthe wall. Late into the night the calls were continued andresumed, and sometimes mingled with taunts; late into the night theprisoners, tantalised by the noises of the festival, renewed theirefforts to escape. But all was vain; right across the door laythat god-fearing householder, Paaaeua, feigning sleep; and myfriends had to forego their junketing. In this incident, sodelightfully European, we thought we could detect three strands ofsentiment. In the first place, Paaaeua had a charge of souls:these were young men, and he judged it right to withhold them fromthe primrose path. Secondly, he was a public character, and it wasnot fitting that his guests should countenance a festival of whichhe disapproved. So might some strict clergyman at home address aworldly visitor: 'Go to the theatre if you like, but, by yourleave, not from my house!' Thirdly, Paaaeua was a man jealous, andwith some cause (as shall be shown) for jealousy; and the feasterswere the satellites of his immediate rival, Moipu. 

For the adoption had caused much excitement in the village; it madethe strangers popular. Paaaeua, in his difficult posture ofappointed chief, drew strength and dignity from their alliance, andonly Moipu and his followers were malcontent. For some reasonnobody (except myself) appears to dislike Moipu. Captain Hart, whohas been robbed and threatened by him; Father Orens, whom he hasfired at, and repeatedly driven to the woods; my own family, andeven the French officials--all seemed smitten with an irrepressibleaffection for the man. His fall had been made soft; his son, uponhis death, was to succeed Paaaeua in the chieftaincy; and he lived, at the time of our visit, in the shoreward part of the village in agood house, and with a strong following of young men, his latebraves and pot-hunters. In this society, the coming of the Casco, the adoption, the return feast on board, and the presents exchangedbetween the whites and their new parents, were doubtless eagerlyand bitterly canvassed. It was felt that a few years ago thehonours would have gone elsewhere. In this unwonted business, inthis reception of some hitherto undreamed-of and outlandishpotentate--some Prester John or old Assaracus--a few years back itwould have been the part of Moipu to play the hero and the host, and his young men would have accompanied and adorned the variouscelebrations as the acknowledged leaders of society. And now, by amalign vicissitude of fortune, Moipu must sit in his house quiteunobserved; and his young men could but look in at the door whiletheir rivals feasted. Perhaps M. Grevy felt a touch of bitternesstowards his successor when he beheld him figure on the broad stageof the centenary of eighty-nine; the visit of the Casco which Moipuhad missed by so few years was a more unusual occasion in Atuonathan a centenary in France; and the dethroned chief determined toreassert himself in the public eye. 

Mr. Osbourne had gone into Atuona photographing; the population ofthe village had gathered together for the occasion on the placebefore the church, and Paaaeua, highly delighted with this newappearance of his family, played the master of ceremonies. Thechurch had been taken, with its jolly architect before the door;the nuns with their pupils; sundry damsels in the ancient andsingularly unbecoming robes of tapa; and Father Orens in the midstof a group of his parishioners. I know not what else was in hand, when the photographer became aware of a sensation in the crowd, and, looking around, beheld a very noble figure of a man appearupon the margin of a thicket and stroll nonchalantly near. Thenonchalance was visibly affected; it was plain he came there toarouse attention, and his success was instant. He was introduced;he was civil, he was obliging, he was always ineffably superior andcertain of himself; a well-graced actor. It was presentlysuggested that he should appear in his war costume; he gracefullyconsented; and returned in that strange, inappropriate and ill-omened array (which very well became his handsome person) to strutin a circle of admirers, and be thenceforth the centre ofphotography. Thus had Moipu effected his introduction, as byaccident, to the white strangers, made it a favour to display hisfinery, and reduced his rival to a secondary role on the theatre ofthe disputed village. Paaaeua felt the blow; and, with a spiritwhich we never dreamed he could possess, asserted his priority. Itwas found impossible that day to get a photograph of Moipu alone;for whenever he stood up before the camera his successor placedhimself unbidden by his side, and gently but firmly held to hisposition. The portraits of the pair, Jacob and Esau, standingshoulder to shoulder, one in his careful European dress, one in hisbarbaric trappings, figure the past and present of their island. Agraveyard with its humble crosses would be the aptest symbol of thefuture. 

We are all impressed with the belief that Moipu had planned hiscampaign from the beginning to the end. It is certain that he lostno time in pushing his advantage. Mr. Osbourne was inveigled tohis house; various gifts were fished out of an old sea-chest;Father Orens was called into service as interpreter, and Moipuformally proposed to 'make brothers' with Mata-Galahi--Glass-Eyes, --the not very euphonious name under which Mr. Osbourne passed inthe Marquesas. The feast of brotherhood took place on board theCasco. Paaaeua had arrived with his family, like a plain man; andhis presents, which had been numerous, had followed one another, atintervals through several days. Moipu, as if to mark at everypoint the opposition, came with a certain feudal pomp, attended byretainers bearing gifts of all descriptions, from plumes of oldmen's beard to little, pious, Catholic engravings. 

I had met the man before this in the village, and detested him onsight; there was something indescribably raffish in his looks andways that raised my gorge; and when man-eating was referred to, andhe laughed a low, cruel laugh, part boastful, part bashful, likeone reminded of some dashing peccadillo, my repugnance was mingledwith nausea. This is no very human attitude, nor one at allbecoming in a traveller. And, seen more privately, the manimproved. Something negroid in character and face was stilldispleasing; but his ugly mouth became attractive when he smiled, his figure and bearing were certainly noble, and his eyes superb. In his appreciation of jams and pickles, in is delight in thereverberating mirrors of the dining cabin, and consequent endlessrepetition of Moipus and Mata-Galahis, he showed himself engaginglya child. And yet I am not sure; and what seemed childishness mayhave been rather courtly art. His manners struck me as beyond themark; they were refined and caressing to the point of grossness, and when I think of the serene absent-mindedness with which hefirst strolled in upon our party, and then recall him running onhands and knees along the cabin sofas, pawing the velvet, dippinginto the beds, and bleating commendatory 'mitais' with exaggeratedemphasis, like some enormous over-mannered ape, I feel the moresure that both must have been calculated. And I sometimes wondernext, if Moipu were quite alone in this polite duplicity, and askmyself whether the Casco were quite so much admired in theMarquesas as our visitors desired us to suppose. 

I will complete this sketch of an incurable cannibal grandee withtwo incongruous traits. His favourite morsel was the human hand, of which he speaks to-day with an ill-favoured lustfulness. Andwhen he said good-bye to Mrs. Stevenson, holding her hand, viewingher with tearful eyes, and chanting his farewell improvisation inthe falsetto of Marquesan high society, he wrote upon her mind asentimental impression which I try in vain to share. 

PART II: THE PAUMOTUS

CHAPTER I--THE DANGEROUS ARCHIPELAGO--ATOLLS AT A DISTANCE

In the early morning of 4th September a whale-boat manned bynatives dragged us down the green lane of the anchorage and roundthe spouting promontory. On the shore level it was a hot, breathless, and yet crystal morning; but high overhead the hills ofAtuona were all cowled in cloud, and the ocean-river of the tradesstreamed without pause. As we crawled from under the immediateshelter of the land, we reached at last the limit of theirinfluence. The wind fell upon our sails in puffs, whichstrengthened and grew more continuous; presently the Casco heeleddown to her day's work; the whale-boat, quite outstripped, clungfor a noisy moment to her quarter; the stipulated bread, rum, andtobacco were passed in; a moment more and the boat was in our wake, and our late pilots were cheering our departure. 

This was the more inspiriting as we were bound for scenes sodifferent, and though on a brief voyage, yet for a new province ofcreation. That wide field of ocean, called loosely the South Seas, extends from tropic to tropic, and from perhaps 123 degrees W. To150 degrees E. , a parallelogram of one hundred degrees by forty-seven, where degrees are the most spacious. Much of it liesvacant, much is closely sown with isles, and the isles are of twosorts. No distinction is so continually dwelt upon in South Seatalk as that between the 'low' and the 'high' island, and there isnone more broadly marked in nature. The Himalayas are not moredifferent from the Sahara. On the one hand, and chiefly in groupsof from eight to a dozen, volcanic islands rise above the sea; fewreach an altitude of less than 4000 feet; one exceeds 13, 000; theirtops are often obscured in cloud, they are all clothed with variousforests, all abound in food, and are all remarkable for picturesqueand solemn scenery. On the other hand, we have the atoll; a thingof problematic origin and history, the reputed creature of aninsect apparently unidentified; rudely annular in shape; enclosinga lagoon; rarely extending beyond a quarter of a mile at its chiefwidth; often rising at its highest point to less than the statureof a man--man himself, the rat and the land crab, its chiefinhabitants; not more variously supplied with plants; and offeringto the eye, even when perfect, only a ring of glittering beach andverdant foliage, enclosing and enclosed by the blue sea. 

In no quarter are the atolls so thickly congregated, in none arethey so varied in size from the greatest to the least, and in noneis navigation so beset with perils, as in that archipelago that wewere now to thread. The huge system of the trades is, for somereason, quite confounded by this multiplicity of reefs, the windintermits, squalls are frequent from the west and south-west, hurricanes are known. The currents are, besides, inextricablyintermixed; dead reckoning becomes a farce; the charts are not tobe trusted; and such is the number and similarity of these islandsthat, even when you have picked one up, you may be none the wiser. The reputation of the place is consequently infamous; insuranceoffices exclude it from their field, and it was not withoutmisgiving that my captain risked the Casco in such waters. Ibelieve, indeed, it is almost understood that yachts are to avoidthis baffling archipelago; and it required all my instances--andall Mr. Otis's private taste for adventure--to deflect our courseacross its midst. 

For a few days we sailed with a steady trade, and a steady westerlycurrent setting us to leeward; and toward sundown of the seventh itwas supposed we should have sighted Takaroa, one of Cook's so-called King George Islands. The sun set; yet a while longer theold moon--semi-brilliant herself, and with a silver belly, whichwas her successor--sailed among gathering clouds; she, too, deserted us; stars of every degree of sheen, and clouds of everyvariety of form disputed the sub-lustrous night; and still we gazedin vain for Takaroa. The mate stood on the bowsprit, his tall greyfigure slashing up and down against the stars, and still

'nihil astra praeterVidit et undas. 

The rest of us were grouped at the port anchor davit, staring withno less assiduity, but with far less hope on the obscure horizon. Islands we beheld in plenty, but they were of 'such stuff as dreamsare made on, ' and vanished at a wink, only to appear in otherplaces; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolvinglights began to stud the darkness; lighthouses of the mind or ofthe wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again fromhis unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed ourdestination. He was the only man of practice in these waters, oursole pilot, shipped for that end at Tai-o-hae. If he declared wehad missed Takaroa, it was not for us to quarrel with the fact, but, if we could, to explain it. We had certainly run down oursouthing. Our canted wake upon the sea and our somewhat drunken-looking course upon the chart both testified with no less certaintyto an impetuous westward current. We had no choice but to concludewe were again set down to leeward; and the best we could do was tobring the Casco to the wind, keep a good watch, and expect morning. 

I slept that night, as was then my somewhat dangerous practice, ondeck upon the cockpit bench. A stir at last awoke me, to see allthe eastern heaven dyed with faint orange, the binnacle lampalready dulled against the brightness of the day, and the steersmanleaning eagerly across the wheel. 'There it is, sir!' he cried, and pointed in the very eyeball of the dawn. For awhile I couldsee nothing but the bluish ruins of the morning bank, which lay faralong the horizon, like melting icebergs. Then the sun rose, pierced a gap in these debris of vapours, and displayed aninconsiderable islet, flat as a plate upon the sea, and spiked withpalms of disproportioned altitude. 

So far, so good. Here was certainly an atoll; and we werecertainly got among the archipelago. But which? And where? Theisle was too small for either Takaroa: in all our neighbourhood, indeed, there was none so inconsiderable, save only Tikei; andTikei, one of Roggewein's so-called Pernicious Islands, seemedbeside the question. At that rate, instead of drifting to thewest, we must have fetched up thirty miles to windward. And howabout the current? It had been setting us down, by observation, all these days: by the deflection of our wake, it should besetting us down that moment. When had it stopped? When had itbegun again? and what kind of torrent was that which had swept useastward in the interval? To these questions, so typical ofnavigation in that range of isles, I have no answer. Such were atleast the facts; Tikei our island turned out to be; and it was ourfirst experience of the dangerous archipelago, to make our landfallthirty miles out. 

The sight of Tikei, thrown direct against the splendour of themorning, robbed of all its colour, and deformed withdisproportioned trees like bristles on a broom, had scarce preparedus to be much in love with atolls. Later the same day we saw undermore fit conditions the island of Taiaro. Lost in the Sea ispossibly the meaning of the name. And it was so we saw it; lost inblue sea and sky: a ring of white beach, green underwood, andtossing palms, gem-like in colour; of a fairy, of a heavenlyprettiness. The surf ran all around it, white as snow, and brokeat one point, far to seaward, on what seems an uncharted reef. There was no smoke, no sign of man; indeed, the isle is notinhabited, only visited at intervals. And yet a trader (Mr. NariiSalmon) was watching from the shore and wondering at the unexpectedship. I have spent since then long months upon low islands; I knowthe tedium of their undistinguished days; I know the burden oftheir diet. With whatever envy we may have looked from the deck onthese green coverts, it was with a tenfold greater that Mr. Salmonand his comrades saw us steer, in our trim ship, to seaward. 

The night fell lovely in the extreme. After the moon went down, the heaven was a thing to wonder at for stars. And as I lay in thecockpit and looked upon the steersman I was haunted by Emerson'sverses:

'And the lone seaman all the nightSails astonished among stars. '

By this glittering and imperfect brightness, about four bells inthe first watch we made our third atoll, Raraka. The low line ofthe isle lay straight along the sky; so that I was at firstreminded of a towpath, and we seemed to be mounting some engineeredand navigable stream. Presently a red star appeared, about theheight and brightness of a danger signal, and with that my similewas changed; we seemed rather to skirt the embankment of a railway, and the eye began to look instinctively for the telegraph-posts, and the ear to expect the coming of a train. Here and there, butrarely, faint tree-tops broke the level. And the sound of the surfaccompanied us, now in a drowsy monotone, now with a menacingswing. 

The isle lay nearly east and west, barring our advance on Fakarava. We must, therefore, hug the coast until we gained the western end, where, through a passage eight miles wide, we might sail southwardbetween Raraka and the next isle, Kauehi. We had the wind free, alightish air; but clouds of an inky blackness were beginning toarise, and at times it lightened--without thunder. Something, Iknow not what, continually set us up upon the island. We lay moreand more to the nor'ard; and you would have thought the shorecopied our manoeuvre and outsailed us. Once and twice Raraka headedus again--again, in the sea fashion, the quite innocent steersmanwas abused--and again the Casco kept away. Had I been called on, with no more light than that of our experience, to draw theconfiguration of that island, I should have shown a series of bow-window promontories, each overlapping the other to the nor'ard, andthe trend of the land from the south-east to the north-west, andbehold, on the chart it lay near east and west in a straight line. 

We had but just repeated our manoeuvre and kept away--for not morethan five minutes the railway embankment had been lost to view andthe surf to hearing--when I was aware of land again, not only onthe weather bow, but dead ahead. I played the part of thejudicious landsman, holding my peace till the last moment; andpresently my mariners perceived it for themselves. 

'Land ahead!' said the steersman. 

'By God, it's Kauehi!' cried the mate. 

And so it was. And with that I began to be sorry forcartographers. We were scarce doing three and a half; and theyasked me to believe that (in five minutes) we had dropped anisland, passed eight miles of open water, and run almost high anddry upon the next. But my captain was more sorry for himself to beafloat in such a labyrinth; laid the Casco to, with the log line upand down, and sat on the stern rail and watched it till themorning. He had enough of night in the Paumotus. 

By daylight on the 9th we began to skirt Kauehi, and had now anopportunity to see near at hand the geography of atolls. Here andthere, where it was high, the farther side loomed up; here andthere the near side dipped entirely and showed a broad path ofwater into the lagoon; here and there both sides were equallyabased, and we could look right through the discontinuous ring tothe sea horizon on the south. Conceive, on a vast scale, thesubmerged hoop of the duck-hunter, trimmed with green rushes toconceal his head--water within, water without--you have the imageof the perfect atoll. Conceive one that has been partly plucked ofits rush fringe; you have the atoll of Kauehi. And for eithershore of it at closer quarters, conceive the line of some old Romanhighway traversing a wet morass, and here sunk out of view andthere re-arising, crowned with a green tuft of thicket; onlyinstead of the stagnant waters of a marsh, the live ocean nowboiled against, now buried the frail barrier. Last night'simpression in the dark was thus confirmed by day, and notcorrected. We sailed indeed by a mere causeway in the sea, ofnature's handiwork, yet of no greater magnitude than many of theworks of man. 

The isle was uninhabited; it was all green brush and white sand, set in transcendently blue water; even the coco-palms were rare, though some of these completed the bright harmony of colour byhanging out a fan of golden yellow. For long there was no sign oflife beyond the vegetable, and no sound but the continuous grumbleof the surf. In silence and desertion these fair shores slippedpast, and were submerged and rose again with clumps of thicket fromthe sea. And then a bird or two appeared, hovering and crying;swiftly these became more numerous, and presently, looking ahead, we were aware of a vast effervescence of winged life. In thisplace the annular isle was mostly under water, carrying here andthere on its submerged line a wooded islet. Over one of these thebirds hung and flew with an incredible density like that of gnatsor hiving bees; the mass flashed white and black, and heaved andquivered, and the screaming of the creatures rose over the voice ofthe surf in a shrill clattering whirr. As you descend some inlandvalley a not dissimilar sound announces the nearness of a mill andpouring river. Some stragglers, as I said, came to meet ourapproach; a few still hung about the ship as we departed. Thecrying died away, the last pair of wings was left behind, and oncemore the low shores of Kauehi streamed past our eyes in silencelike a picture. I supposed at the time that the birds lived, likeants or citizens, concentred where we saw them. I have been toldsince (I know not if correctly) that the whole isle, or much of it, is similarly peopled; and that the effervescence at a single spotwould be the mark of a boat's crew of egg-hunters from one of theneighbouring inhabited atolls. So that here at Kauehi, as the daybefore at Taiaro, the Casco sailed by under the fire of unsuspectedeyes. And one thing is surely true, that even on these ribbons ofland an army might lie hid and no passing mariner divine itspresence. 

CHAPTER II--FAKARAVA: AN ATOLL AT HAND

By a little before noon we were running down the coast of ourdestination, Fakarava: the air very light, the sea near smooth;though still we were accompanied by a continuous murmur from thebeach, like the sound of a distant train. The isle is of a hugelongitude, the enclosed lagoon thirty miles by ten or twelve, andthe coral tow-path, which they call the land, some eighty or ninetymiles by (possibly) one furlong. That part by which we sailed wasall raised; the underwood excellently green, the topping wood ofcoco-palms continuous--a mark, if I had known it, of man'sintervention. For once more, and once more unconsciously, we werewithin hail of fellow-creatures, and that vacant beach was but apistol-shot from the capital city of the archipelago. But the lifeof an atoll, unless it be enclosed, passes wholly on the shores ofthe lagoon; it is there the villages are seated, there the canoesply and are drawn up; and the beach of the ocean is a placeaccursed and deserted, the fit scene only for wizardry andshipwreck, and in the native belief a haunting ground of murderousspectres. 

By and by we might perceive a breach in the low barrier; the woodsceased; a glittering point ran into the sea, tipped with an emeraldshoal the mark of entrance. As we drew near we met a little run ofsea--the private sea of the lagoon having there its origin and end, and here, in the jaws of the gateway, trying vain conclusions withthe more majestic heave of the Pacific. The Casco scarce avowed ashock; but there are times and circumstances when these harbourmouths of inland basins vomit floods, deflecting, burying, anddismasting ships. For, conceive a lagoon perfectly sealed but inthe one point, and that of merely navigable width; conceive thetide and wind to have heaped for hours together in that coral folda superfluity of waters, and the tide to change and the wind fall--the open sluice of some great reservoirs at home will give an imageof the unstemmable effluxion. 

We were scarce well headed for the pass before all heads werecraned over the rail. For the water, shoaling under our board, became changed in a moment to surprising hues of blue and grey; andin its transparency the coral branched and blossomed, and the fishof the inland sea cruised visibly below us, stained and striped, and even beaked like parrots. I have paid in my time to view manycuriosities; never one so curious as that first sight over theship's rail in the lagoon of Fakarava. But let not the reader bedeceived with hope. I have since entered, I suppose, some dozenatolls in different parts of the Pacific, and the experience hasnever been repeated. That exquisite hue and transparency ofsubmarine day, and these shoals of rainbow fish, have notenraptured me again. 

Before we could raise our eyes from that engaging spectacle theschooner had slipped betwixt the pierheads of the reef, and wasalready quite committed to the sea within. The containing shoresare so little erected, and the lagoon itself is so great, that, forthe more part, it seemed to extend without a check to the horizon. Here and there, indeed, where the reef carried an inlet, like asignet-ring upon a finger, there would be a pencilling of palms;here and there, the green wall of wood ran solid for a length ofmiles; and on the port hand, under the highest grove of trees, afew houses sparkled white--Rotoava, the metropolitan settlement ofthe Paumotus. Hither we beat in three tacks, and came to an anchorclose in shore, in the first smooth water since we had left SanFrancisco, five fathoms deep, where a man might look overboard allday at the vanishing cable, the coral patches, and the many-coloured fish. 

Fakarava was chosen to be the seat of Government from nauticalconsiderations only. It is eccentrically situate; the productions, even for a low island, poor; the population neither many nor--forLow Islanders--industrious. But the lagoon has two good passages, one to leeward, one to windward, so that in all states of the windit can be left and entered, and this advantage, for a government ofscattered islands, was decisive. A pier of coral, landing-stairs, a harbour light upon a staff and pillar, and two spaciousGovernment bungalows in a handsome fence, give to the northern endof Rotoava a great air of consequence. This is confirmed on theone hand by an empty prison, on the other by a gendarmerie pastedover with hand-bills in Tahitian, land-law notices from Papeete, and republican sentiments from Paris, signed (a little after date)'Jules Grevy, Perihidente. ' Quite at the far end a belfriedCatholic chapel concludes the town; and between, on a smooth floorof white coral sand and under the breezy canopy of coco-palms, thehouses of the natives stand irregularly scattered, now close on thelagoon for the sake of the breeze, now back under the palms forlove of shadow. 

Not a soul was to be seen. But for the thunder of the surf on thefar side, it seemed you might have heard a pin drop anywhere aboutthat capital city. There was something thrilling in the unexpectedsilence, something yet more so in the unexpected sound. Herebefore us a sea reached to the horizon, rippling like an inlandmere; and behold! close at our back another sea assaulted withassiduous fury the reverse of the position. At night the lanternwas run up and lit a vacant pier. In one house lights were seenand voices heard, where the population (I was told) sat playingcards. A little beyond, from deep in the darkness of the palm-grove, we saw the glow and smelt the aromatic odour of a coal ofcocoa-nut husk, a relic of the evening kitchen. Crickets sang;some shrill thing whistled in a tuft of weeds; and the mosquitohummed and stung. There was no other trace that night of man, bird, or insect in the isle. The moon, now three days old, and asyet but a silver crescent on a still visible sphere, shone throughthe palm canopy with vigorous and scattered lights. The alleyswhere we walked were smoothed and weeded like a boulevard; here andthere were plants set out; here and there dusky cottages clusteredin the shadow, some with verandahs. A public garden by night, arich and fashionable watering-place in a by-season, offer sightsand vistas not dissimilar. And still, on the one side, stretchedthe lapping mere, and from the other the deep sea still growled inthe night. But it was most of all on board, in the dead hours, when I had been better sleeping, that the spell of Fakarava seizedand held me. The moon was down. The harbour lantern and two ofthe greater planets drew vari-coloured wakes on the lagoon. Fromshore the cheerful watch-cry of cocks rang out at intervals abovethe organ-point of surf. And the thought of this depopulatedcapital, this protracted thread of annular island with its crest ofcoco-palms and fringe of breakers, and that tranquil inland seathat stretched before me till it touched the stars, ran in my headfor hours with delight. 

So long as I stayed upon that isle these thoughts were constant. Ilay down to sleep, and woke again with an unblunted sense of mysurroundings. I was never weary of calling up the image of thatnarrow causeway, on which I had my dwelling, lying coiled like aserpent, tail to mouth, in the outrageous ocean, and I was neverweary of passing--a mere quarter-deck parade--from the one side tothe other, from the shady, habitable shores of the lagoon to theblinding desert and uproarious breakers of the opposite beach. Thesense of insecurity in such a thread of residence is more thanfanciful. Hurricanes and tidal waves over-leap these humbleobstacles; Oceanus remembers his strength, and, where houses stoodand palms flourished, shakes his white beard again over the barrencoral. Fakarava itself has suffered; the trees immediately beyondmy house were all of recent replantation; and Anaa is only nowrecovered from a heavier stroke. I knew one who was then dwellingin the isle. He told me that he and two ship captains walked tothe sea beach. There for a while they viewed the oncomingbreakers, till one of the captains clapped suddenly his hand beforehis eyes and cried aloud that he could endure no longer to beholdthem. This was in the afternoon; in the dark hours of the nightthe sea burst upon the island like a flood; the settlement wasrazed all but the church and presbytery; and, when day returned, the survivors saw themselves clinging in an abattis of uprootedcoco-palms and ruined houses. 

Danger is but a small consideration. But men are more nicelysensible of a discomfort; and the atoll is a discomfortable home. There are some, and these probably ancient, where a deep soil hasformed and the most valuable fruit-trees prosper. I have walked inone, with equal admiration and surprise, through a forest of hugebreadfruits, eating bananas and stumbling among taro as I went. This was in the atoll of Namorik in the Marshall group, and standsalone in my experience. To give the opposite extreme, which is yetfar more near the average, I will describe the soil and productionsof Fakarava. The surface of that narrow strip is for the more partof broken coral lime-stone, like volcanic clinkers, andexcruciating to the naked foot; in some atolls, I believe, not inFakarava, it gives a fine metallic ring when struck. Here andthere you come upon a bank of sand, exceeding fine and white, andthese parts are the least productive. The plants (such as theyare) spring from and love the broken coral, whence they grow withthat wonderful verdancy that makes the beauty of the atoll from thesea. The coco-palm in particular luxuriates in that stern solum, striking down his roots to the brackish, percolated water, andbearing his green head in the wind with every evidence of healthand pleasure. And yet even the coco-palm must be helped in infancywith some extraneous nutriment, and through much of the lowarchipelago there is planted with each nut a piece of ship'sbiscuit and a rusty nail. The pandanus comes next in importance, being also a food tree; and he, too, does bravely. A green bushcalled miki runs everywhere; occasionally a purao is seen; andthere are several useless weeds. According to M. Cuzent, the wholenumber of plants on an atoll such as Fakarava will scarce exceed, even if it reaches to, one score. Not a blade of grass appears;not a grain of humus, save when a sack or two has been imported tomake the semblance of a garden; such gardens as bloom in cities onthe window-sill. Insect life is sometimes dense; a cloud o'mosquitoes, and, what is far worse, a plague of flies blackeningour food, has sometimes driven us from a meal on Apemama; and evenin Fakarava the mosquitoes were a pest. The land crab may be seenscuttling to his hole, and at night the rats besiege the houses andthe artificial gardens. The crab is good eating; possibly so isthe rat; I have not tried. Pandanus fruit is made, in theGilberts, into an agreeable sweetmeat, such as a man may triflewith at the end of a long dinner; for a substantial meal I have nouse for it. The rest of the food-supply, in a destitute atoll suchas Fakarava, can be summed up in the favourite jest of thearchipelago--cocoa-nut beefsteak. Cocoa-nut green, cocoa-nut ripe, cocoa-nut germinated; cocoa-nut to eat and cocoa-nut to drink;cocoa-nut raw and cooked, cocoa-nut hot and cold--such is the billof fare. And some of the entrees are no doubt delicious. Thegerminated nut, cooked in the shell and eaten with a spoon, forms agood pudding; cocoa-nut milk--the expressed juice of a ripe nut, not the water of a green one--goes well in coffee, and is avaluable adjunct in cookery through the South Seas; and cocoa-nutsalad, if you be a millionaire, and can afford to eat the value ofa field of corn for your dessert, is a dish to be remembered withaffection. But when all is done there is a sameness, and theIsraelites of the low islands murmur at their manna. 

The reader may think I have forgot the sea. The two beaches docertainly abound in life, and they are strangely different. In thelagoon the water shallows slowly on a bottom of the fine slimysand, dotted with clumps of growing coral. Then comes a strip oftidal beach on which the ripples lap. In the coral clumps thegreat holy-water clam (Tridacna) grows plentifully; a little deeperlie the beds of the pearl-oyster and sail the resplendent fish thatcharmed us at our entrance; and these are all more or lessvigorously coloured. But the other shells are white like lime, orfaintly tinted with a little pink, the palest possible display;many of them dead besides, and badly rolled. On the ocean side, onthe mounds of the steep beach, over all the width of the reef rightout to where the surf is bursting, in every cranny, under everyscattered fragment of the coral, an incredible plenty of marinelife displays the most wonderful variety and brilliancy of hues. The reef itself has no passage of colour but is imitated by someshell. Purple and red and white, and green and yellow, pied andstriped and clouded, the living shells wear in every combinationthe livery of the dead reef--if the reef be dead--so that the eyeis continually baffled and the collector continually deceived. Ihave taken shells for stones and stones for shells, the one asoften as the other. A prevailing character of the coral is to bedotted with small spots of red, and it is wonderful how manyvarieties of shell have adopted the same fashion and donned thedisguise of the red spot. A shell I had found in plenty in theMarquesas I found here also unchanged in all things else, but therewere the red spots. A lively little crab wore the same markings. The case of the hermit or soldier crab was more conclusive, beingthe result of conscious choice. This nasty little wrecker, scavenger, and squatter has learned the value of a spotted house;so it be of the right colour he will choose the smallest shard, tuck himself in a mere corner of a broken whorl, and go about theworld half naked; but I never found him in this imperfect armourunless it was marked with the red spot. 

Some two hundred yards distant is the beach of the lagoon. Collectthe shells from each, set them side by side, and you would supposethey came from different hemispheres; the one so pale, the other sobrilliant; the one prevalently white, the other of a score of hues, and infected with the scarlet spot like a disease. This seems themore strange, since the hermit crabs pass and repass the island, and I have met them by the Residency well, which is about central, journeying either way. Without doubt many of the shells in thelagoon are dead. But why are they dead? Without doubt the livingshells have a very different background set for imitation. But whyare these so different? We are only on the threshold of themysteries. 

Either beach, I have said, abounds with life. On the sea-side andin certain atolls this profusion of vitality is even shocking: therock under foot is mined with it. I have broken off--notably inFunafuti and Arorai--great lumps of ancient weathered rock thatrang under my blows like iron, and the fracture has been full ofpendent worms as long as my hand, as thick as a child's finger, ofa slightly pinkish white, and set as close as three or even four tothe square inch. Even in the lagoon, where certain shell-fish seemto sicken, others (it is notorious) prosper exceedingly and makethe riches of these islands. Fish, too, abound; the lagoon is aclosed fish-pond, such as might rejoice the fancy of an abbot;sharks swarm there, and chiefly round the passages, to feast uponthis plenty, and you would suppose that man had only to prepare hisangle. Alas! it is not so. Of these painted fish that came inhordes about the entering Casco, some bore poisonous spines, andothers were poisonous if eaten. The stranger must refrain, or takehis chance of painful and dangerous sickness. The native, on hisown isle, is a safe guide; transplant him to the next, and he ishelpless as yourself. For it is a question both of time and place. A fish caught in a lagoon may be deadly; the same fish caught thesame day at sea, and only a few hundred yards without the passage, will be wholesome eating: in a neighbouring isle perhaps the casewill be reversed; and perhaps a fortnight later you shall be ableto eat of them indifferently from within and from without. According to the natives, these bewildering vicissitudes are ruledby the movement of the heavenly bodies. The beautiful planet Venusplays a great part in all island tales and customs; and among otherfunctions, some of them more awful, she regulates the season ofgood fish. With Venus in one phase, as we had her, certain fishwere poisonous in the lagoon: with Venus in another, the same fishwas harmless and a valued article of diet. White men explain thesechanges by the phases of the coral. 

It adds a last touch of horror to the thought of this precariousannular gangway in the sea, that even what there is of it is not ofhonest rock, but organic, part alive, part putrescent; even theclean sea and the bright fish about it poisoned, the most stubbornboulder burrowed in by worms, the lightest dust venomous as anapothecary's drugs. 

CHAPTER III--A HOUSE TO LET IN A LOW ISLAND

Never populous, it was yet by a chapter of accidents that I foundthe island so deserted that no sound of human life diversified thehours; that we walked in that trim public garden of a town, amongclosed houses, without even a lodging-bill in a window to provesome tenancy in the back quarters; and, when we visited theGovernment bungalow, that Mr. Donat, acting Vice-Resident, greetedus alone, and entertained us with cocoa-nut punches in the SessionsHall and seat of judgment of that widespread archipelago, ourglasses standing arrayed with summonses and census returns. Theunpopularity of a late Vice-Resident had begun the movement ofexodus, his native employes resigning court appointments andretiring each to his own coco-patch in the remoter districts of theisle. Upon the back of that, the Governor in Papeete issued adecree: All land in the Paumotus must be defined and registered bya certain date. Now, the folk of the archipelago are half nomadic;a man can scarce be said to belong to a particular atoll; hebelongs to several, perhaps holds a stake and counts cousinship inhalf a score; and the inhabitants of Rotoava in particular, man, woman, and child, and from the gendarme to the Mormon prophet andthe schoolmaster, owned--I was going to say land--owned at leastcoral blocks and growing coco-palms in some adjacent isle. Thither--from the gendarme to the babe in arms, the pastor followedby his flock, the schoolmaster carrying along with him hisscholars, and the scholars with their books and slates--they hadtaken ship some two days previous to our arrival, and were all nowengaged disputing boundaries. Fancy overhears the shrillness oftheir disputation mingle with the surf and scatter sea-fowl. Itwas admirable to observe the completeness of their flight, likethat of hibernating birds; nothing left but empty houses, like oldnests to be reoccupied in spring; and even the harmless necessarydominie borne with them in their transmigration. Fifty odd setout, and only seven, I was informed, remained. But when I made afeast on board the Casco, more than seven, and nearer seven timesseven, appeared to be my guests. Whence they appeared, how theywere summoned, whither they vanished when the feast was eaten, Ihave no guess. In view of Low Island tales, and that awfulfrequentation which makes men avoid the seaward beaches of anatoll, some two score of those that ate with us may have returned, for the occasion, from the kingdom of the dead. 

It was this solitude that put it in our minds to hire a house, andbecome, for the time being, indwellers of the isle--a practice Ihave ever since, when it was possible, adhered to. Mr. Donatplaced us, with that intent, under the convoy of one TanieraMahinui, who combined the incongruous characters of catechist andconvict. The reader may smile, but I affirm he was well qualifiedfor either part. For that of convict, first of all, by a goodsubstantial felony, such as in all lands casts the perpetrator inchains and dungeons. Taniera was a man of birth--the chief a whileago, as he loved to tell, of a district in Anaa of 800 souls. Inan evil hour it occurred to the authorities in Papeete to chargethe chiefs with the collection of the taxes. It is a question ifmuch were collected; it is certain that nothing was handed on; andTaniera, who had distinguished himself by a visit to Papeete andsome high living in restaurants, was chosen for the scapegoat. Thereader must understand that not Taniera but the authorities inPapeete were first in fault. The charge imposed wasdisproportioned. I have not yet heard of any Polynesian capable ofsuch a burden; honest and upright Hawaiians--one in particular, whowas admired even by the whites as an inflexible magistrate--havestumbled in the narrow path of the trustee. And Taniera, when thepinch came, scorned to denounce accomplices; others had shared thespoil, he bore the penalty alone. He was condemned in five years. The period, when I had the pleasure of his friendship, was not yetexpired; he still drew prison rations, the sole and not unwelcomereminder of his chains, and, I believe, looked forward to the dateof his enfranchisement with mere alarm. For he had no sense ofshame in the position; complained of nothing but the defectivetable of his place of exile; regretted nothing but the fowls andeggs and fish of his own more favoured island. And as for hisparishioners, they did not think one hair the less of him. Aschoolboy, mulcted in ten thousand lines of Greek and dwellingsequestered in the dormitories, enjoys unabated consideration fromhis fellows. So with Taniera: a marked man, not a dishonoured;having fallen under the lash of the unthinkable gods; a Job, perhaps, or say a Taniera in the den of lions. Songs are likelymade and sung about this saintly Robin Hood. On the other hand, hewas even highly qualified for his office in the Church; being bynature a grave, considerate, and kindly man; his face rugged andserious, his smile bright; the master of several trades, a builderboth of boats and houses; endowed with a fine pulpit voice; endowedbesides with such a gift of eloquence that at the grave of the latechief of Fakarava he set all the assistants weeping. I never met aman of a mind more ecclesiastical; he loved to dispute and toinform himself of doctrine and the history of sects; and when Ishowed him the cuts in a volume of Chambers's Encyclopaedia--exceptfor one of an ape--reserved his whole enthusiasm for cardinals'hats, censers, candlesticks, and cathedrals. Methought when helooked upon the cardinal's hat a voice said low in his ear: 'Yourfoot is on the ladder. '

Under the guidance of Taniera we were soon installed in what Ibelieve to have been the best-appointed private house in Fakarava. It stood just beyond the church in an oblong patch of cultivation. More than three hundred sacks of soil were imported from Tahiti forthe Residency garden; and this must shortly be renewed, for theearth blows away, sinks in crevices of the coral, and is sought forat last in vain. I know not how much earth had gone to the gardenof my villa; some at least, for an alley of prosperous bananas ranto the gate, and over the rest of the enclosure, which was coveredwith the usual clinker-like fragments of smashed coral, not onlycoco-palms and mikis but also fig-trees flourished, all of adelicious greenness. Of course there was no blade of grass. Infront a picket fence divided us from the white road, the palm-fringed margin of the lagoon, and the lagoon itself, reflectingclouds by day and stars by night. At the back, a bulwark ofuncemented coral enclosed us from the narrow belt of bush and thenigh ocean beach where the seas thundered, the roar and wash ofthem still humming in the chambers of the house. 

This itself was of one story, verandahed front and back. Itcontained three rooms, three sewing-machines, three sea-chests, chairs, tables, a pair of beds, a cradle, a double-barrelled gun, apair of enlarged coloured photographs, a pair of coloured printsafter Wilkie and Mulready, and a French lithograph with the legend:'Le brigade du General Lepasset brulant son drapeau devant Metz. 'Under the stilts of the house a stove was rusting, till we drew itforth and put it in commission. Not far off was the burrow in thecoral whence we supplied ourselves with brackish water. There waslive stock, besides, on the estate--cocks and hens and a brace ofill-regulated cats, whom Taniera came every morning with the sun tofeed on grated cocoa-nut. His voice was our regular reveille, ringing pleasantly about the garden: 'Pooty--pooty--poo--poo--poo!'

Far as we were from the public offices, the nearness of the chapelmade our situation what is called eligible in advertisements, andgave us a side look on some native life. Every morning, as soon ashe had fed the fowls, Taniera set the bell agoing in the smallbelfry; and the faithful, who were not very numerous, gathered toprayers. I was once present: it was the Lord's day, and sevenfemales and eight males composed the congregation. A woman playedprecentor, starting with a longish note; the catechist joined inupon the second bar; and then the faithful in a body. Some hadprinted hymn-books which they followed; some of the rest filled upwith 'eh--eh--eh, ' the Paumotuan tol-de-rol. After the hymn, wehad an antiphonal prayer or two; and then Taniera rose from thefront bench, where he had been sitting in his catechist's robes, passed within the altar-rails, opened his Tahitian Bible, and beganto preach from notes. I understood one word--the name of God; butthe preacher managed his voice with taste, used rare and expressivegestures, and made a strong impression of sincerity. The plainservice, the vernacular Bible, the hymn-tunes mostly on an Englishpattern--'God save the Queen, ' I was informed, a specialfavourite, --all, save some paper flowers upon the altar, seemed notmerely but austerely Protestant. It is thus the Catholics have mettheir low island proselytes half-way. 

Taniera had the keys of our house; it was with him I made mybargain, if that could be called a bargain in which all wasremitted to my generosity; it was he who fed the cats and poultry, he who came to call and pick a meal with us like an acknowledgedfriend; and we long fondly supposed he was our landlord. Thisbelief was not to bear the test of experience; and, as my chapterhas to relate, no certainty succeeded it. 

We passed some days of airless quiet and great heat; shell-gatherers were warned from the ocean beach, where sunstroke waitedthem from ten till four; the highest palm hung motionless, therewas no voice audible but that of the sea on the far side. At last, about four of a certain afternoon, long cat's-paws flawed the faceof the lagoon; and presently in the tree-tops there awoke thegrateful bustle of the trades, and all the houses and alleys of theisland were fanned out. To more than one enchanted ship, that hadlain long becalmed in view of the green shore, the wind broughtdeliverance; and by daylight on the morrow a schooner and twocutters lay moored in the port of Rotoava. Not only in the outersea, but in the lagoon itself, a certain traffic woke with thereviving breeze; and among the rest one Francois, a half-blood, setsail with the first light in his own half-decked cutter. He hadheld before a court appointment; being, I believe, the Residencysweeper-out. Trouble arising with the unpopular Vice-Resident, hehad thrown his honours down, and fled to the far parts of the atollto plant cabbages--or at least coco-palms. Thence he was nowdriven by such need as even a Cincinnatus must acknowledge, andfared for the capital city, the seat of his late functions, toexchange half a ton of copra for necessary flour. And here, for awhile, the story leaves to tell of his voyaging. 

It must tell, instead, of our house, where, toward seven at night, the catechist came suddenly in with his pleased air of beingwelcome; armed besides with a considerable bunch of keys. These heproceeded to try on the sea-chests, drawing each in turn from itsplace against the wall. Heads of strangers appeared in the doorwayand volunteered suggestions. All in vain. Either they were thewrong keys or the wrong boxes, or the wrong man was trying them. For a little Taniera fumed and fretted; then had recourse to themore summary method of the hatchet; one of the chests was brokenopen, and an armful of clothing, male and female, baled out andhanded to the strangers on the verandah. 

These were Francois, his wife, and their child. About eight a. M. , in the midst of the lagoon, their cutter had capsized in jibbing. They got her righted, and though she was still full of water putthe child on board. The mainsail had been carried away, but thejib still drew her sluggishly along, and Francois and the womanswam astern and worked the rudder with their hands. The cold wascruel; the fatigue, as time went on, became excessive; and in thatpreserve of sharks, fear hunted them. Again and again, Francois, the half-breed, would have desisted and gone down; but the woman, whole blood of an amphibious race, still supported him withcheerful words. I am reminded of a woman of Hawaii who swam withher husband, I dare not say how many miles, in a high sea, and cameashore at last with his dead body in her arms. It was about fivein the evening, after nine hours' swimming, that Francois and hiswife reached land at Rotoava. The gallant fight was won, andinstantly the more childish side of native character appears. Theyhad supped, and told and retold their story, dripping as they came;the flesh of the woman, whom Mrs. Stevenson helped to shift, wascold as stone; and Francois, having changed to a dry cotton shirtand trousers, passed the remainder of the evening on my floor andbetween open doorways, in a thorough draught. Yet Francois, theson of a French father, speaks excellent French himself and seemsintelligent. 

It was our first idea that the catechist, true to his evangelicalvocation, was clothing the naked from his superfluity. Then itcame out that Francois was but dealing with his own. The clotheswere his, so was the chest, so was the house. Francois was in factthe landlord. Yet you observe he had hung back on the verandahwhile Taniera tried his 'prentice hand upon the locks: and evennow, when his true character appeared, the only use he made of theestate was to leave the clothes of his family drying on the fence. Taniera was still the friend of the house, still fed the poultry, still came about us on his daily visits, Francois, during theremainder of his stay, holding bashfully aloof. And there wasstranger matter. Since Francois had lost the whole load of hiscutter, the half ton of copra, an axe, bowls, knives, and clothes--since he had in a manner to begin the world again, and hisnecessary flour was not yet bought or paid for--I proposed toadvance him what he needed on the rent. To my enduring amazementhe refused, and the reason he gave--if that can be called a reasonwhich but darkens counsel--was that Taniera was his friend. Hisfriend, you observe; not his creditor. I inquired into that, andwas assured that Taniera, an exile in a strange isle, mightpossibly be in debt himself, but certainly was no man's creditor. 

Very early one morning we were awakened by a bustling presence inthe yard, and found our camp had been surprised by a tall, lean oldnative lady, dressed in what were obviously widow's weeds. Youcould see at a glance she was a notable woman, a housewife, sternlypractical, alive with energy, and with fine possibilities oftemper. Indeed, there was nothing native about her but the skin;and the type abounds, and is everywhere respected, nearer home. Itdid us good to see her scour the grounds, examining the plants andchickens; watering, feeding, trimming them; taking angry, purpose-like possession. When she neared the house our sympathy abated;when she came to the broken chest I wished I were elsewhere. Wehad scarce a word in common; but her whole lean body spoke for herwith indignant eloquence. 'My chest!' it cried, with a stress onthe possessive. 'My chest--broken open! This is a fine state ofthings!' I hastened to lay the blame where it belonged--onFrancois and his wife--and found I had made things worse instead ofbetter. She repeated the names at first with incredulity, thenwith despair. A while she seemed stunned, next fell todisembowelling the box, piling the goods on the floor, and visiblycomputing the extent of Francois's ravages; and presently after shewas observed in high speech with Taniera, who seemed to hang an earlike one reproved. 

Here, then, by all known marks, should be my land-lady at last;here was every character of the proprietor fully developed. ShouldI not approach her on the still depending question of my rent? Icarried the point to an adviser. 'Nonsense!' he cried. 'That'sthe old woman, the mother. It doesn't belong to her. I believethat's the man the house belongs to, ' and he pointed to one of thecoloured photographs on the wall. On this I gave up all desire ofunderstanding; and when the time came for me to leave, in thejudgment-hall of the archipelago, and with the awful countenance ofthe acting Governor, I duly paid my rent to Taniera. He wassatisfied, and so was I. But what had he to do with it? Mr. Donat, acting magistrate and a man of kindred blood, could throw nolight upon the mystery; a plain private person, with a taste forletters, cannot be expected to do more. 

CHAPTER IV--TRAITS AND SECTS IN THE PAUMOTUS

The most careless reader must have remarked a change of air sincethe Marquesas. The house, crowded with effects, the bustlinghousewife counting her possessions, the serious, indoctrinatedisland pastor, the long fight for life in the lagoon: here aretraits of a new world. I read in a pamphlet (I will not give theauthor's name) that the Marquesan especially resembles thePaumotuan. I should take the two races, though so near inneighbourhood, to be extremes of Polynesian diversity. TheMarquesan is certainly the most beautiful of human races, and oneof the tallest--the Paumotuan averaging a good inch shorter, andnot even handsome; the Marquesan open-handed, inert, insensible toreligion, childishly self-indulgent--the Paumotuan greedy, hardy, enterprising, a religious disputant, and with a trace of theascetic character. 

Yet a few years ago, and the people of the archipelago were craftysavages. Their isles might be called sirens' isles, not merelyfrom the attraction they exerted on the passing mariner, but fromthe perils that awaited him on shore. Even to this day, in certainoutlying islands, danger lingers; and the civilized Paumotuandreads to land and hesitates to accost his backward brother. But, except in these, to-day the peril is a memory. When our generationwere yet in the cradle and playroom it was still a living fact. Between 1830 and 1840, Hao, for instance, was a place of the mostdangerous approach, where ships were seized and crews kidnapped. As late as 1856, the schooner Sarah Ann sailed from Papeete and wasseen no more. She had women on board, and children, the captain'swife, a nursemaid, a baby, and the two young sons of a CaptainSteven on their way to the mainland for schooling. All weresupposed to have perished in a squall. A year later, the captainof the Julia, coasting along the island variously called Bligh, Lagoon, and Tematangi saw armed natives follow the course of hisschooner, clad in many-coloured stuffs. Suspicion was at oncearoused; the mother of the lost children was profuse of money; andone expedition having found the place deserted, and returnedcontent with firing a few shots, she raised and herself accompaniedanother. None appeared to greet or to oppose them; they roamed awhile among abandoned huts and empty thickets; then formed twoparties and set forth to beat, from end to end, the pandanus jungleof the island. One man remained alone by the landing-place--Teina, a chief of Anaa, leader of the armed natives who made the strengthof the expedition. Now that his comrades were departed this wayand that, on their laborious exploration, the silence fellprofound; and this silence was the ruin of the islanders. A soundof stones rattling caught the ear of Teina. He looked, thinking toperceive a crab, and saw instead the brown hand of a human beingissue from a fissure in the ground. A shout recalled the searchparties and announced their doom to the buried caitiffs. In thecave below, sixteen were found crouching among human bones andsingular and horrid curiosities. One was a head of golden hair, supposed to be a relic of the captain's wife; another was half ofthe body of a European child, sun-dried and stuck upon a stick, doubtless with some design of wizardry. 

The Paumotuan is eager to be rich. He saves, grudges, buriesmoney, fears not work. For a dollar each, two natives passed thehours of daylight cleaning our ship's copper. It was strange tosee them so indefatigable and so much at ease in the water--workingat times with their pipes lighted, the smoker at times submergedand only the glowing bowl above the surface; it was stranger stillto think they were next congeners to the incapable Marquesan. Butthe Paumotuan not only saves, grudges, and works, he stealsbesides; or, to be more precise, he swindles. He will never deny adebt, he only flees his creditor. He is always keen for anadvance; so soon as he has fingered it he disappears. He knowsyour ship; so soon as it nears one island, he is off to another. You may think you know his name; he has already changed it. Pursuit in that infinity of isles were fruitless. The result canbe given in a nutshell. It has been actually proposed in aGovernment report to secure debts by taking a photograph of thedebtor; and the other day in Papeete credits on the Paumotus to theamount of sixteen thousand pounds were sold for less than forty--quatre cent mille francs pour moins de mille francs. Even so, thepurchase was thought hazardous; and only the man who made it andwho had special opportunities could have dared to give so much. 

The Paumotuan is sincerely attached to those of his own blood andhousehold. A touching affection sometimes unites wife and husband. Their children, while they are alive, completely rule them; afterthey are dead, their bones or their mummies are often jealouslypreserved and carried from atoll to atoll in the wanderings of thefamily. I was told there were many houses in Fakarava with themummy of a child locked in a sea-chest; after I heard it, I wouldglance a little jealously at those by my own bed; in that cupboard, also, it was possible there was a tiny skeleton. 

The race seems in a fair way to survive. From fifteen islands, whose rolls I had occasion to consult, I found a proportion of 59births to 47 deaths for 1887. Dropping three out of the fifteen, there remained for the other twelve the comfortable ratio of 50births to 32 deaths. Long habits of hardship and activitydoubtless explain the contrast with Marquesan figures. But thePaumotuan displays, besides, a certain concern for health and therudiments of a sanitary discipline. Public talk with these free-spoken people plays the part of the Contagious Diseases Act; in-comers to fresh islands anxiously inquire if all be well; andsyphilis, when contracted, is successfully treated with indigenousherbs. Like their neighbours of Tahiti, from whom they haveperhaps imbibed the error, they regard leprosy with comparativeindifference, elephantiasis with disproportionate fear. But, unlike indeed to the Tahitian, their alarm puts on the guise ofself-defence. Any one stricken with this painful and ugly maladyis confined to the ends of villages, denied the use of paths andhighways, and condemned to transport himself between his house andcoco-patch by water only, his very footprint being held infectious. Fe'efe'e, being a creature of marshes and the sequel of malarialfever, is not original in atolls. On the single isle of Makatea, where the lagoon is now a marsh, the disease has made a home. Manysuffer; they are excluded (if Mr. Wilmot be right) from much of thecomfort of society; and it is believed they take a secretvengeance. The defections of the sick are considered highlypoisonous. Early in the morning, it is narrated, aged andmalicious persons creep into the sleeping village, and stealthilymake water at the doors of the houses of young men. Thus theypropagate disease; thus they breathe on and obliterate comelinessand health, the objects of their envy. Whether horrid fact or moreabominable legend, it equally depicts that something bitter andenergetic which distinguishes Paumotuan man. 

The archipelago is divided between two main religions, Catholic andMormon. They front each other proudly with a false air ofpermanence; yet are but shapes, their membership in a perpetualflux. The Mormon attends mass with devotion: the Catholic sitsattentive at a Mormon sermon, and to-morrow each may havetransferred allegiance. One man had been a pillar of the Church ofRome for fifteen years; his wife dying, he decided that must be apoor religion that could not save a man his wife, and turnedMormon. According to one informant, Catholicism was the morefashionable in health, but on the approach of sickness it wasjudged prudent to secede. As a Mormon, there were five chances outof six you might recover; as a Catholic, your hopes were small; andthis opinion is perhaps founded on the comfortable rite of unction. 

We all know what Catholics are, whether in the Paumotus or at home. But the Paumotuan Mormon seemed a phenomenon apart. He marries butthe one wife, uses the Protestant Bible, observes Protestant formsof worship, forbids the use of liquor and tobacco, practises adultbaptism by immersion, and after every public sin, rechristens thebackslider. I advised with Mahinui, whom I found well informed inthe history of the American Mormons, and he declared against theleast connection. 'Pour moi, ' said he, with a fine charity, 'lesMormons ici un petit Catholiques. ' Some months later I had anopportunity to consult an orthodox fellow-countryman, an olddissenting Highlander, long settled in Tahiti, but still breathingof the heather of Tiree. 'Why do they call themselves Mormons?' Iasked. 'My dear, and that is my question!' he exclaimed. 'For byall that I can hear of their doctrine, I have nothing to sayagainst it, and their life, it is above reproach. ' And for allthat, Mormons they are, but of the earlier sowing: the so-calledJosephites, the followers of Joseph Smith, the opponents of BrighamYoung. 

Grant, then, the Mormons to be Mormons. Fresh points at oncearise: What are the Israelites? and what the Kanitus? For a longwhile back the sect had been divided into Mormons proper and so-called Israelites, I never could hear why. A few years since therecame a visiting missionary of the name of Williams, who made anexcellent collection, and retired, leaving fresh disruptionimminent. Something irregular (as I was told) in his way of'opening the service' had raised partisans and enemies; the churchwas once more rent asunder; and a new sect, the Kanitu, issued fromthe division. Since then Kanitus and Israelites, like theCameronians and the United Presbyterians, have made common cause;and the ecclesiastical history of the Paumotus is, for the moment, uneventful. There will be more doing before long, and these islesbid fair to be the Scotland of the South. Two things I could neverlearn. The nature of the innovations of the Rev. Mr. Williams nonewould tell me, and of the meaning of the name Kanitu none had aguess. It was not Tahitian, it was not Marquesan; it formed nopart of that ancient speech of the Paumotus, now passing swiftlyinto obsolescence. One man, a priest, God bless him! said it wasthe Latin for a little dog. I have found it since as the name of agod in New Guinea; it must be a bolder man than I who should hintat a connection. Here, then, is a singular thing: a brand-newsect, arising by popular acclamation, and a nonsense word inventedfor its name. 

The design of mystery seems obvious, and according to a veryintelligent observer, Mr. Magee of Mangareva, this element of themysterious is a chief attraction of the Mormon Church. It enjoyssome of the status of Freemasonry at home, and there is for theconvert some of the exhilaration of adventure. Other attractionsare certainly conjoined. Perpetual rebaptism, leading to asuccession of baptismal feasts, is found, both from the social andthe spiritual side, a pleasing feature. More important is the factthat all the faithful enjoy office; perhaps more important still, the strictness of the discipline. 'The veto on liquor, ' said Mr. Magee, 'brings them plenty members. ' There is no doubt theseislanders are fond of drink, and no doubt they refrain from theindulgence; a bout on a feast-day, for instance, may be followed bya week or a month of rigorous sobriety. Mr. Wilmot attributes thisto Paumotuan frugality and the love of hoarding; it goes fardeeper. I have mentioned that I made a feast on board the Casco. To wash down ship's bread and jam, each guest was given the choiceof rum or syrup, and out of the whole number only one man voted--ina defiant tone, and amid shouts of mirth--for 'Trum'! This was inpublic. I had the meanness to repeat the experiment, whenever Ihad a chance, within the four walls of my house; and three atleast, who had refused at the festival, greedily drank rum behind adoor. But there were others thoroughly consistent. I said thevirtues of the race were bourgeois and puritan; and how bourgeoisis this! how puritanic! how Scottish! and how Yankee!--thetemptation, the resistance, the public hypocritical conformity, thePharisees, the Holy Willies, and the true disciples. With such apeople the popularity of an ascetic Church appears legitimate; inthese strict rules, in this perpetual supervision, the weak findtheir advantage, the strong a certain pleasure; and the doctrine ofrebaptism, a clean bill and a fresh start, will comfort manystaggering professors. 

There is yet another sect, or what is called a sect--no doubtimproperly--that of the Whistlers. Duncan Cameron, so clear infavour of the Mormons, was no less loud in condemnation of theWhistlers. Yet I do not know; I still fancy there is someconnection, perhaps fortuitous, probably disavowed. Here at leastare some doings in the house of an Israelite clergyman (or prophet)in the island of Anaa, of which I am equally sure that Duncan woulddisclaim and the Whistlers hail them for an imitation of their own. My informant, a Tahitian and a Catholic, occupied one part of thehouse; the prophet and his family lived in the other. Night afternight the Mormons, in the one end, held their evening sacrifice ofsong; night after night, in the other, the wife of the Tahitian layawake and listened to their singing with amazement. At length shecould contain herself no longer, woke her husband, and asked himwhat he heard. 'I hear several persons singing hymns, ' said he. 'Yes, ' she returned, 'but listen again! Do you not hear somethingsupernatural?' His attention thus directed, he was aware of astrange buzzing voice--and yet he declared it was beautiful--whichjustly accompanied the singers. The next day he made inquiries. 'It is a spirit, ' said the prophet, with entire simplicity, 'whichhas lately made a practice of joining us at family worship. ' Itdid not appear the thing was visible, and like other spirits raisednearer home in these degenerate days, it was rudely ignorant, atfirst could only buzz, and had only learned of late to bear a partcorrectly in the music. 

The performances of the Whistlers are more business-like. Theirmeetings are held publicly with open doors, all being 'cordiallyinvited to attend. ' The faithful sit about the room--according toone informant, singing hymns; according to another, now singing andnow whistling; the leader, the wizard--let me rather say, themedium--sits in the midst, enveloped in a sheet and silent; andpresently, from just above his head, or sometimes from the midst ofthe roof, an aerial whistling proceeds, appalling to theinexperienced. This, it appears, is the language of the dead; itspurport is taken down progressively by one of the experts, writing, I was told, 'as fast as a telegraph operator'; and thecommunications are at last made public. They are of the baldesttriviality; a schooner is, perhaps, announced, some idle gossipreported of a neighbour, or if the spirit shall have been called toconsultation on a case of sickness, a remedy may be suggested. Oneof these, immersion in scalding water, not long ago proved fatal tothe patient. The whole business is very dreary, very silly, andvery European; it has none of the picturesque qualities of similarconjurations in New Zealand; it seems to possess no kernel ofpossible sense, like some that I shall describe among the Gilbertislanders. Yet I was told that many hardy, intelligent nativeswere inveterate Whistlers. 'Like Mahinui?' I asked, willing tohave a standard; and I was told 'Yes. ' Why should I wonder? Menmore enlightened than my convict-catechist sit down at home tofollies equally sterile and dull. 

The medium is sometimes female. It was a woman, for instance, whointroduced these practices on the north coast of Taiarapu, to thescandal of her own connections, her brother-in-law in particulardeclaring she was drunk. But what shocked Tahiti might seem fitenough in the Paumotus, the more so as certain women there possess, by the gift of nature, singular and useful powers. They say theyare honest, well-intentioned ladies, some of them embarrassed bytheir weird inheritance. And indeed the trouble caused by thisendowment is so great, and the protection afforded soinfinitesimally small, that I hesitate whether to call it a gift ora hereditary curse. You may rob this lady's coco-patch, steal hercanoes, burn down her house, and slay her family scatheless; butone thing you must not do: you must not lay a hand upon hersleeping-mat, or your belly will swell, and you can only be curedby the lady or her husband. Here is the report of an eye-witness, Tasmanian born, educated, a man who has made money--certainly nofool. In 1886 he was present in a house on Makatea, where two ladsbegan to skylark on the mats, and were (I think) ejected. Instantly after, their bellies began to swell; pains took hold onthem; all manner of island remedies were exhibited in vain, andrubbing only magnified their sufferings. The man of the house wascalled, explained the nature of the visitation, and prepared thecure. A cocoa-nut was husked, filled with herbs, and with all theceremonies of a launch, and the utterance of spells in thePaumotuan language, committed to the sea. From that moment thepains began to grow more easy and the swelling to subside. Thereader may stare. I can assure him, if he moved much among oldresidents of the archipelago, he would be driven to admit one thingof two--either that there is something in the swollen bellies ornothing in the evidence of man. 

I have not met these gifted ladies; but I had an experience of myown, for I have played, for one night only, the part of thewhistling spirit. It had been blowing wearily all day, but withthe fall of night the wind abated, and the moon, which was thenfull, rolled in a clear sky. We went southward down the island onthe side of the lagoon, walking through long-drawn forest aisles ofpalm, and on a floor of snowy sand. No life was abroad, nor soundof life; till in a clear part of the isle we spied the embers of afire, and not far off, in a dark house, heard natives talkingsoftly. To sit without a light, even in company, and under cover, is for a Paumotuan a somewhat hazardous extreme. The whole scene--the strong moonlight and crude shadows on the sand, the scatteredcoals, the sound of the low voices from the house, and the lap ofthe lagoon along the beach--put me (I know not how) on thoughts ofsuperstition. I was barefoot, I observed my steps were noiseless, and drawing near to the dark house, but keeping well in shadow, began to whistle. 'The Heaving of the Lead' was my air--no verytragic piece. With the first note the conversation and allmovement ceased; silence accompanied me while I continued; and whenI passed that way on my return I found the lamp was lighted in thehouse, but the tongues were still mute. All night, as I now think, the wretches shivered and were silent. For indeed, I had no guessat the time at the nature and magnitude of the terrors I inflicted, or with what grisly images the notes of that old song had peopledthe dark house. 

CHAPTER V--A PAUMOTUAN FUNERAL

No, I had no guess of these men's terrors. Yet I had received erethat a hint, if I had understood; and the occasion was a funeral. 

A little apart in the main avenue of Rotoava, in a low hut ofleaves that opened on a small enclosure, like a pigsty on a pen, anold man dwelt solitary with his aged wife. Perhaps they were tooold to migrate with the others; perhaps they were too poor, and hadno possessions to dispute. At least they had remained behind; andit thus befell that they were invited to my feast. I dare say itwas quite a piece of politics in the pigsty whether to come or notto come, and the husband long swithered between curiosity and age, till curiosity conquered, and they came, and in the midst of thatlast merrymaking death tapped him on the shoulder. For some days, when the sky was bright and the wind cool, his mat would be spreadin the main highway of the village, and he was to be seen lyingthere inert, a mere handful of a man, his wife inertly seated byhis head. They seemed to have outgrown alike our needs andfaculties; they neither spoke nor listened; they suffered us topass without a glance; the wife did not fan, she seemed not toattend upon her husband, and the two poor antiques sat juxtaposedunder the high canopy of palms, the human tragedy reduced to itsbare elements, a sight beyond pathos, stirring a thrill ofcuriosity. And yet there was one touch of the pathetic haunted me:that so much youth and expectation should have run in these starvedveins, and the man should have squandered all his lees of life on apleasure party. 

On the morning of 17th September the sufferer died, and, timepressing, he was buried the same day at four. The cemetery lies toseaward behind Government House; broken coral, like so much road-metal, forms the surface; a few wooden crosses, a fewinconsiderable upright stones, designate graves; a mortared wall, high enough to lean on, rings it about; a clustering shrubsurrounds it with pale leaves. Here was the grave dug thatmorning, doubtless by uneasy diggers, to the sound of the nigh seaand the cries of sea-birds; meanwhile the dead man waited in hishouse, and the widow and another aged woman leaned on the fencebefore the door, no speech upon their lips, no speculation in theireyes. 

Sharp at the hour the procession was in march, the coffin wrappedin white and carried by four bearers; mourners behind--not many, for not many remained in Rotoava, and not many in black, for thesewere poor; the men in straw hats, white coats, and blue trousers orthe gorgeous parti-coloured pariu, the Tahitian kilt; the women, with a few exceptions, brightly habited. Far in the rear came thewidow, painfully carrying the dead man's mat; a creature agedbeyond humanity, to the likeness of some missing link. 

The dead man had been a Mormon; but the Mormon clergyman was gonewith the rest to wrangle over boundaries in the adjacent isle, anda layman took his office. Standing at the head of the open grave, in a white coat and blue pariu, his Tahitian Bible in his hand andone eye bound with a red handkerchief, he read solemnly thatchapter in Job which has been read and heard over the bones of somany of our fathers, and with a good voice offered up two prayers. The wind and the surf bore a burthen. By the cemetery gate amother in crimson suckled an infant rolled in blue. In the midstthe widow sat upon the ground and polished one of the coffin-stretchers with a piece of coral; a little later she had turned herback to the grave and was playing with a leaf. Did she understand?God knows. The officiant paused a moment, stooped, and gatheredand threw reverently on the coffin a handful of rattling coral. Dust to dust: but the grains of this dust were gross likecherries, and the true dust that was to follow sat near by, stillcohering (as by a miracle) in the tragic semblance of a female ape. 

So far, Mormon or not, it was a Christian funeral. The well-knownpassage had been read from Job, the prayers had been rehearsed, thegrave was filled, the mourners straggled homeward. With a littlecoarser grain of covering earth, a little nearer outcry of the sea, a stronger glare of sunlight on the rude enclosure, and someincongruous colours of attire, the well-remembered form had beenobserved. 

By rights it should have been otherwise. The mat should have beenburied with its owner; but, the family being poor, it was thriftilyreserved for a fresh service. The widow should have flung herselfupon the grave and raised the voice of official grief, theneighbours have chimed in, and the narrow isle rung for a spacewith lamentation. But the widow was old; perhaps she hadforgotten, perhaps never understood, and she played like a childwith leaves and coffin-stretchers. In all ways my guest was buriedwith maimed rites. Strange to think that his last consciouspleasure was the Casco and my feast; strange to think that he hadlimped there, an old child, looking for some new good. And thegood thing, rest, had been allotted him. 

But though the widow had neglected much, there was one part shemust not utterly neglect. She came away with the dispersingfuneral; but the dead man's mat was left behind upon the grave, andI learned that by set of sun she must return to sleep there. Thisvigil is imperative. From sundown till the rising of the morningstar the Paumotuan must hold his watch above the ashes of hiskindred. Many friends, if the dead have been a man of mark, willkeep the watchers company; they will be well supplied withcoverings against the weather; I believe they bring food, and therite is persevered in for two weeks. Our poor survivor, if, indeed, she properly survived, had little to cover, and few to sitwith her; on the night of the funeral a strong squall chased herfrom her place of watch; for days the weather held uncertain andoutrageous; and ere seven nights were up she had desisted, andreturned to sleep in her low roof. That she should be at the painsof returning for so short a visit to a solitary house, that thisborderer of the grave should fear a little wind and a wet blanket, filled me at the time with musings. I could not say she wasindifferent; she was so far beyond me in experience that the courtof my criticism waived jurisdiction; but I forged excuses, tellingmyself she had perhaps little to lament, perhaps suffered much, perhaps understood nothing. And lo! in the whole affair there wasno question whether of tenderness or piety, and the sturdy returnof this old remnant was a mark either of uncommon sense or ofuncommon fortitude. 

Yet one thing had occurred that partly set me on the trail. I havesaid the funeral passed much as at home. But when all was over, when we were trooping in decent silence from the graveyard gate anddown the path to the settlement, a sudden inbreak of a differentspirit startled and perhaps dismayed us. Two people walked not farapart in our procession: my friend Mr. Donat--Donat-Rimarau:'Donat the much-handed'--acting Vice-Resident, present ruler of thearchipelago, by far the man of chief importance on the scene, butknown besides for one of an unshakable good temper; and a certaincomely, strapping young Paumotuan woman, the comeliest on the isle, not (let us hope) the bravest or the most polite. Of a sudden, ereyet the grave silence of the funeral was broken, she made a leap atthe Resident, with pointed finger, shrieked a few words, and fellback again with a laughter, not a natural mirth. 'What did she sayto you?' I asked. 'She did not speak to ME, ' said Donat, a shadeperturbed; 'she spoke to the ghost of the dead man. ' And thepurport of her speech was this: 'See there! Donat will be a finefeast for you to-night. '

'M. Donat called it a jest, ' I wrote at the time in my diary. 'Itseemed to me more in the nature of a terrified conjuration, asthough she would divert the ghost's attention from herself. Acannibal race may well have cannibal phantoms. ' The guesses of thetraveller appear foredoomed to be erroneous; yet in these I wasprecisely right. The woman had stood by in terror at the funeral, being then in a dread spot, the graveyard. She looked on in terrorto the coming night, with that ogre, a new spirit, loosed upon theisle. And the words she had cried in Donat's face were indeed aterrified conjuration, basely to shield herself, basely to dedicateanother in her stead. One thing is to be said in her excuse. Doubtless she partly chose Donat because he was a man of greatgood-nature, but partly, too, because he was a man of the half-caste. For I believe all natives regard white blood as a kind oftalisman against the powers of hell. In no other way can theyexplain the unpunished recklessness of Europeans. 

CHAPTER VI--GRAVEYARD STORIES

WITH my superstitious friend, the islander, I fear I am not whollyfrank, often leading the way with stories of my own, and beingalways a grave and sometimes an excited hearer. But the deceit isscarce mortal, since I am as pleased to hear as he to tell, aspleased with the story as he with the belief; and, besides, it isentirely needful. For it is scarce possible to exaggerate theextent and empire of his superstitions; they mould his life, theycolour his thinking; and when he does not speak to me of ghosts, and gods, and devils, he is playing the dissembler and talking onlywith his lips. With thoughts so different, one must indulge theother; and I would rather that I should indulge his superstitionthan he my incredulity. Of one thing, besides, I may be sure: Letme indulge it as I please, I shall not hear the whole; for he isalready on his guard with me, and the amount of the lore isboundless. 

I will give but a few instances at random, chiefly from my owndoorstep in Upolu, during the past month (October 1890). One of myworkmen was sent the other day to the banana patch, there to dig;this is a hollow of the mountain, buried in woods, out of all sightand cry of mankind; and long before dusk Lafaele was back againbeside the cook-house with embarrassed looks; he dared not longerstay alone, he was afraid of 'spirits in the bush. ' It seems theseare the souls of the unburied dead, haunting where they fell, andwearing woodland shapes of pig, or bird, or insect; the bush isfull of them, they seem to eat nothing, slay solitary wanderersapparently in spite, and at times, in human form, go down tovillages and consort with the inhabitants undetected. So much Ilearned a day or so after, walking in the bush with a veryintelligent youth, a native. It was a little before noon; a greyday and squally; and perhaps I had spoken lightly. A dark squallburst on the side of the mountain; the woods shook and cried; thedead leaves rose from the ground in clouds, like butterflies; andmy companion came suddenly to a full stop. He was afraid, he said, of the trees falling; but as soon as I had changed the subject ofour talk he proceeded with alacrity. A day or two before amessenger came up the mountain from Apia with a letter; I was inthe bush, he must await my return, then wait till I had answered:and before I was done his voice sounded shrill with terror of thecoming night and the long forest road. These are the commons. Take the chiefs. There has been a great coming and going of signsand omens in our group. One river ran down blood; red eels werecaptured in another; an unknown fish was thrown upon the coast, anominous word found written on its scales. So far we might bereading in a monkish chronicle; now we come on a fresh note, atonce modern and Polynesian. The gods of Upolu and Savaii, our twochief islands, contended recently at cricket. Since then they areat war. Sounds of battle are heard to roll along the coast. Awoman saw a man swim from the high seas and plunge direct into thebush; he was no man of that neighbourhood; and it was known he wasone of the gods, speeding to a council. Most perspicuous of all, amissionary on Savaii, who is also a medical man, was disturbed latein the night by knocking; it was no hour for the dispensary, but atlength he woke his servant and sent him to inquire; the servant, looking from a window, beheld crowds of persons, all with grievouswounds, lopped limbs, broken heads, and bleeding bullet-holes; butwhen the door was opened all had disappeared. They were gods fromthe field of battle. Now these reports have certainlysignificance; it is not hard to trace them to political grumblersor to read in them a threat of coming trouble; from that merelyhuman side I found them ominous myself. But it was the spiritualside of their significance that was discussed in secret council bymy rulers. I shall best depict this mingled habit of thePolynesian mind by two connected instances. I once lived in avillage, the name of which I do not mean to tell. The chief andhis sister were persons perfectly intelligent: gentlefolk, apt ofspeech. The sister was very religious, a great church-goer, onethat used to reprove me if I stayed away; I found afterwards thatshe privately worshipped a shark. The chief himself was somewhatof a freethinker; at the least, a latitudinarian: he was a man, besides, filled with European knowledge and accomplishments; of animpassive, ironical habit; and I should as soon have expectedsuperstition in Mr. Herbert Spencer. Hear the sequel. I haddiscovered by unmistakable signs that they buried too shallow inthe village graveyard, and I took my friend, as the responsibleauthority, to task. 'There is something wrong about yourgraveyard, ' said I, 'which you must attend to, or it may have verybad results. ' 'Something wrong? What is it?' he asked, with anemotion that surprised me. 'If you care to go along there anyevening about nine o'clock you can see for yourself, ' said I. Hestepped backward. 'A ghost!' he cried. 

In short, in the whole field of the South Seas, there is not one toblame another. Half blood and whole, pious and debauched, intelligent and dull, all men believe in ghosts, all men combinewith their recent Christianity fear of and a lingering faith in theold island deities. So, in Europe, the gods of Olympus slowlydwindled into village bogies; so to-day, the theological Highlandersneaks from under the eye of the Free Church divine to lay anoffering by a sacred well. 

I try to deal with the whole matter here because of a particularquality in Paumotuan superstitions. It is true I heard them toldby a man with a genius for such narrations. Close about ourevening lamp, within sound of the island surf, we hung on hiswords, thrilling. The reader, in far other scenes, must listenclose for the faint echo. 

This bundle of weird stories sprang from the burial and the woman'sselfish conjuration. I was dissatisfied with what I heard, harpedupon questions, and struck at last this vein of metal. It is fromsundown to about four in the morning that the kinsfolk camp uponthe grave; and these are the hours of the spirits' wanderings. Atany time of the night--it may be earlier, it may be later--a soundis to be heard below, which is the noise of his liberation; at foursharp, another and a louder marks the instant of the re-imprisonment; between-whiles, he goes his malignant rounds. 'Didyou ever see an evil spirit?' was once asked of a Paumotuan. 'Once. ' 'Under what form?' 'It was in the form of a crane. ' 'Andhow did you know that crane to be a spirit?' was asked. 'I willtell you, ' he answered; and this was the purport of hisinconclusive narrative. His father had been dead nearly afortnight; others had wearied of the watch; and as the sun wassetting, he found himself by the grave alone. It was not yet dark, rather the hour of the afterglow, when he was aware of a snow-whitecrane upon the coral mound; presently more cranes came, some white, some black; then the cranes vanished, and he saw in their place awhite cat, to which there was silently joined a great company ofcats of every hue conceivable; then these also disappeared, and hewas left astonished. 

This was an anodyne appearance. Take instead the experience ofRua-a-mariterangi on the isle of Katiu. He had a need for somepandanus, and crossed the isle to the sea-beach, where it chieflyflourishes. The day was still, and Rua was surprised to hear acrashing sound among the thickets, and then the fall of aconsiderable tree. Here must be some one building a canoe; and heentered the margin of the wood to find and pass the time of daywith this chance neighbour. The crashing sounded more at hand; andthen he was aware of something drawing swiftly near among the tree-tops. It swung by its heels downward, like an ape, so that itshands were free for murder; it depended safely by the slightesttwigs; the speed of its coming was incredible; and soon Ruarecognised it for a corpse, horrible with age, its bowels hangingas it came. Prayer was the weapon of Christian in the Valley ofthe Shadow, and it is to prayer that Rua-a-mariterangi attributeshis escape. No merely human expedition had availed. 

This demon was plainly from the grave; yet you will observe he wasabroad by day. And inconsistent as it may seem with the hours ofthe night watch and the many references to the rising of themorning star, it is no singular exception. I could never find acase of another who had seen this ghost, diurnal and arboreal inits habits; but others have heard the fall of the tree, which seemsthe signal of its coming. Mr. Donat was once pearling on theuninhabited isle of Haraiki. It was a day without a breath ofwind, such as alternate in the archipelago with days ofcontumelious breezes. The divers were in the midst of the lagoonupon their employment; the cook, a boy of ten, was over his pots inthe camp. Thus were all souls accounted for except a single nativewho accompanied Donat into the wood in quest of sea-fowls' eggs. In a moment, out of the stillness, came the sound of the fall of agreat tree. Donat would have passed on to find the cause. 'No, 'cried his companion, 'that was no tree. It was something NOTRIGHT. Let us go back to camp. ' Next Sunday the divers wereturned on, all that part of the isle was thoroughly examined, andsure enough no tree had fallen. A little later Mr. Donat saw oneof his divers flee from a similar sound, in similar unaffectedpanic, on the same isle. But neither would explain, and it was nottill afterwards, when he met with Rua, that he learned the occasionof their terrors. 

But whether by day or night, the purpose of the dead in theseabhorred activities is still the same. In Samoa, my informant hadno idea of the food of the bush spirits; no such ambiguity wouldexist in the mind of a Paumotuan. In that hungry archipelago, living and dead must alike toil for nutriment; and the race havingbeen cannibal in the past, the spirits are so still. When theliving ate the dead, horrified nocturnal imagination drew theshocking inference that the dead might eat the living. Doubtlessthey slay men, doubtless even mutilate them, in mere malice. Marquesan spirits sometimes tear out the eyes of travellers; buteven that may be more practical than appears, for the eye is acannibal dainty. And certainly the root-idea of the dead, at leastin the far eastern islands, is to prowl for food. It was as adainty morsel for a meal that the woman denounced Donat at thefuneral. There are spirits besides who prey in particular not onthe bodies but on the souls of the dead. The point is clearly madein a Tahitian story. A child fell sick, grew swiftly worse, and atlast showed signs of death. The mother hastened to the house of asorcerer, who lived hard by. 'You are yet in time, ' said he; 'aspirit has just run past my door carrying the soul of your childwrapped in the leaf of a purao; but I have a spirit stronger andswifter who will run him down ere he has time to eat it. ' Wrappedin a leaf: like other things edible and corruptible. 

Or take an experience of Mr. Donat's on the island of Anaa. It wasa night of a high wind, with violent squalls; his child was verysick, and the father, though he had gone to bed, lay wakeful, hearkening to the gale. All at once a fowl was violently dashed onthe house wall. Supposing he had forgot to put it in shelter withthe rest, Donat arose, found the bird (a cock) lying on theverandah, and put it in the hen-house, the door of which hesecurely fastened. Fifteen minutes later the business wasrepeated, only this time, as it was being dashed against the wall, the bird crew. Again Donat replaced it, examining the hen-housethoroughly and finding it quite perfect; as he was so engaged thewind puffed out his light, and he must grope back to the door agood deal shaken. Yet a third time the bird was dashed upon thewall; a third time Donat set it, now near dead, beside its mates;and he was scarce returned before there came a rush, like that of afurious strong man, against the door, and a whistle as loud as thatof a railway engine rang about the house. The sceptical reader mayhere detect the finger of the tempest; but the women gave up allfor lost and clustered on the beds lamenting. Nothing followed, and I must suppose the gale somewhat abated, for presently after achief came visiting. He was a bold man to be abroad so late, butdoubtless carried a bright lantern. And he was certainly a man ofcounsel, for as soon as he heard the details of these disturbanceshe was in a position to explain their nature. 'Your child, ' saidhe, 'must certainly die. This is the evil spirit of our island wholies in wait to eat the spirits of the newly dead. ' And then hewent on to expatiate on the strangeness of the spirit's conduct. He was not usually, he explained, so open of assault, but satsilent on the house-top waiting, in the guise of a bird, whilewithin the people tended the dying and bewailed the dead, and hadno thought of peril. But when the day came and the doors wereopened, and men began to go abroad, blood-stains on the wallbetrayed the tragedy. 

This is the quality I admire in Paumotuan legend. In Tahiti thespirit-eater is said to assume a vesture which has much more ofpomp, but how much less of horror. It has been seen by all sortsand conditions, native and foreign; only the last insist it is ameteor. My authority was not so sure. He was riding with his wifeabout two in the morning; both were near asleep, and the horses notmuch better. It was a brilliant and still night, and the roadwound over a mountain, near by a deserted marae (old Tahitiantemple). All at once the appearance passed above them: a form oflight; the head round and greenish; the body long, red, and with afocus of yet redder brilliancy about the midst. A buzzing hootaccompanied its passage; it flew direct out of one marae, anddirect for another down the mountain side. And this, as myinformant argued, is suggestive. For why should a mere meteorfrequent the altars of abominable gods? The horses, I should say, were equally dismayed with their riders. Now I am not dismayed atall--not even agreeably. Give me rather the bird upon the house-top and the morning blood-gouts on the wall. 

But the dead are not exclusive in their diet. They carry with themto the grave, in particular, the Polynesian taste for fish, andenter at times with the living into a partnership in fishery. Rua-a-mariterangi is again my authority; I feel it diminishes thecredit of the fact, but how it builds up the image of thisinveterate ghost-seer! He belongs to the miserably poor island ofTaenga, yet his father's house was always well supplied. As Ruagrew up he was called at last to go a-fishing with this fortunateparent. They rowed the lagoon at dusk, to an unlikely place, andthe lay down in the stern, and the father began vainly to cast hisline over the bows. It is to be supposed that Rua slept; and whenhe awoke there was the figure of another beside his father, and hisfather was pulling in the fish hand over hand. 'Who is that man, father?' Rua asked. 'It is none of your business, ' said thefather; and Rua supposed the stranger had swum off to them fromshore. Night after night they fared into the lagoon, often to themost unlikely places; night after night the stranger would suddenlybe seen on board, and as suddenly be missed; and morning aftermorning the canoe returned laden with fish. 'My father is a verylucky man, ' thought Rua. At last, one fine day, there came firstone boat party and then another, who must be entertained; fatherand son put off later than usual into the lagoon; and before thecanoe was landed it was four o'clock, and the morning star wasclose on the horizon. Then the stranger appeared seized with somedistress; turned about, showing for the first time his face, whichwas that of one long dead, with shining eyes; stared into the east, set the tips of his fingers to his mouth like one a-cold, uttered astrange, shuddering sound between a whistle and a moan--a thing tofreeze the blood; and, the day-star just rising from the sea, hesuddenly was not. Then Rua understood why his father prospered, why his fishes rotted early in the day, and why some were alwayscarried to the cemetery and laid upon the graves. My informant isa man not certainly averse to superstition, but he keeps his head, and takes a certain superior interest, which I may be allowed tocall scientific. The last point reminding him of some parallelpractice in Tahiti, he asked Rua if the fish were left, or carriedhome again after a formal dedication. It appears old Mariterangipractised both methods; sometimes treating his shadowy partner to amere oblation, sometimes honestly leaving his fish to rot upon thegrave. 

It is plain we have in Europe stories of a similar complexion; andthe Polynesian varua ino or aitu o le vao is clearly the nearkinsman of the Transylvanian vampire. Here is a tale in which thekinship appears broadly marked. On the atoll of Penrhyn, thenstill partly savage, a certain chief was long the salutary terrorof the natives. He died, he was buried; and his late neighbourshad scarce tasted the delights of licence ere his ghost appearedabout the village. Fear seized upon all; a council was held of thechief men and sorcerers; and with the approval of the Rarotonganmissionary, who was as frightened as the rest, and in the presenceof several whites--my friend Mr. Ben Hird being one--the grave wasopened, deepened until water came, and the body re-interred facedown. The still recent staking of suicides in England and thedecapitation of vampires in the east of Europe form closeparallels. 

So in Samoa only the spirits of the unburied awake fear. Duringthe late war many fell in the bush; their bodies, sometimesheadless, were brought back by native pastors and interred; butthis (I know not why) was insufficient, and the spirit stilllingered on the theatre of death. When peace returned a singularscene was enacted in many places, and chiefly round the high gorgesof Lotoanuu, where the struggle was long centred and the loss hadbeen severe. Kinswomen of the dead came carrying a mat or sheetand guided by survivors of the fight. The place of death wasearnestly sought out; the sheet was spread upon the ground; and thewomen, moved with pious anxiety, sat about and watched it. If anyliving thing alighted it was twice brushed away; upon the thirdcoming it was known to be the spirit of the dead, was folded in, carried home and buried beside the body; and the aitu rested. Therite was practised beyond doubt in simple piety; the repose of thesoul was its object: its motive, reverent affection. The presentking disowns indeed all knowledge of a dangerous aitu; he declaresthe souls of the unburied were only wanderers in limbo, lacking anentrance to the proper country of the dead, unhappy, nowisehurtful. And this severely classic opinion doubtless representsthe views of the enlightened. But the flight of my Lafaele marksthe grosser terrors of the ignorant. 

This belief in the exorcising efficacy of funeral rites perhapsexplains a fact, otherwise amazing, that no Polynesian seems at allto share our European horror of human bones and mummies. Of thefirst they made their cherished ornaments; they preserved them inhouses or in mortuary caves; and the watchers of royal sepulchresdwelt with their children among the bones of generations. Themummy, even in the making, was as little feared. In the Marquesas, on the extreme coast, it was made by the household with continualunction and exposure to the sun; in the Carolines, upon thefarthest west, it is still cured in the smoke of the family hearth. Head-hunting, besides, still lives around my doorstep in Samoa. And not ten years ago, in the Gilberts, the widow must disinter, cleanse, polish, and thenceforth carry about her, by day and night, the head of her dead husband. In all these cases we may supposethe process, whether of cleansing or drying, to have fullyexorcised the aitu. 

But the Paumotuan belief is more obscure. Here the man is dulyburied, and he has to be watched. He is duly watched, and thespirit goes abroad in spite of watches. Indeed, it is not thepurpose of the vigils to prevent these wanderings; only to mollifyby polite attention the inveterate malignity of the dead. Neglect(it is supposed) may irritate and thus invite his visits, and theaged and weakly sometimes balance risks and stay at home. Observe, it is the dead man's kindred and next friends who thus deprecatehis fury with nocturnal watchings. Even the placatory vigil isheld perilous, except in company, and a boy was pointed out to mein Rotoava, because he had watched alone by his own father. Notthe ties of the dead, nor yet their proved character, affect theissue. A late Resident, who died in Fakarava of sunstroke, wasbeloved in life and is still remembered with affection; none theless his spirit went about the island clothed with terrors, and theneighbourhood of Government House was still avoided after dark. Wemay sum up the cheerful doctrine thus: All men become vampires, and the vampire spares none. And here we come face to face with atempting inconsistency. For the whistling spirits are notoriouslyclannish; I understood them to wait upon and to enlighten kinsfolkonly, and that the medium was always of the race of thecommunicating spirit. Here, then, we have the bonds of the family, on the one hand, severed at the hour of death; on the other, helpfully persisting. 

The child's soul in the Tahitian tale was wrapped in leaves. It isthe spirits of the newly dead that are the dainty. When they areslain, the house is stained with blood. Rua's dead fisherman wasdecomposed; so--and horribly--was his arboreal demon. The spirit, then, is a thing material; and it is by the material ensigns ofcorruption that he is distinguished from the living man. Thisopinion is widespread, adds a gross terror to the more uglyPolynesian tales, and sometimes defaces the more engaging with apainful and incongruous touch. I will give two examplessufficiently wide apart, one from Tahiti, one from Samoa. 

And first from Tahiti. A man went to visit the husband of hissister, then some time dead. In her life the sister had beendainty in the island fashion, and went always adorned with acoronet of flowers. In the midst of the night the brother awokeand was aware of a heavenly fragrance going to and fro in the darkhouse. The lamp I must suppose to have burned out; no Tahitianwould have lain down without one lighted. A while he lay wonderingand delighted; then called upon the rest. 'Do none of you smellflowers?' he asked. 'O, ' said his brother-in-law, 'we are used tothat here. ' The next morning these two men went walking, and thewidower confessed that his dead wife came about the housecontinually, and that he had even seen her. She was shaped anddressed and crowned with flowers as in her lifetime; only she moveda few inches above the earth with a very easy progress, and flitteddryshod above the surface of the river. And now comes my point:It was always in a back view that she appeared; and these brothers-in-law, debating the affair, agreed that this was to conceal theinroads of corruption. 

Now for the Samoan story. I owe it to the kindness of Dr. F. OttoSierich, whose collection of folk-tales I expect with a high degreeof interest. A man in Manu'a was married to two wives and had noissue. He went to Savaii, married there a third, and was morefortunate. When his wife was near her time he remembered he was ina strange island, like a poor man; and when his child was born hemust be shamed for lack of gifts. It was in vain his wifedissuaded him. He returned to his father in Manu'a seeking help;and with what he could get he set off in the night to re-embark. Now his wives heard of his coming; they were incensed that he didnot stay to visit them; and on the beach, by his canoe, interceptedand slew him. Now the third wife lay asleep in Savaii;--her babewas born and slept by her side; and she was awakened by the spiritof her husband. 'Get up, ' he said, 'my father is sick in Manu'aand we must go to visit him. ' 'It is well, ' said she; 'take youthe child, while I carry its mats. ' 'I cannot carry the child, 'said the spirit; 'I am too cold from the sea. ' When they were goton board the canoe the wife smelt carrion. 'How is this?' shesaid. 'What have you in the canoe that I should smell carrion?''It is nothing in the canoe, ' said the spirit. 'It is the land-wind blowing down the mountains, where some beast lies dead. ' Itappears it was still night when they reached Manu'a--the swiftestpassage on record--and as they entered the reef the bale-firesburned in the village. Again she asked him to carry the child; butnow he need no more dissemble. 'I cannot carry your child, ' saidhe, 'for I am dead, and the fires you see are burning for myfuneral. '

The curious may learn in Dr. Sierich's book the unexpected sequelof the tale. Here is enough for my purpose. Though the man wasbut new dead, the ghost was already putrefied, as thoughputrefaction were the mark and of the essence of a spirit. Thevigil on the Paumotuan grave does not extend beyond two weeks, andthey told me this period was thought to coincide with that of theresolution of the body. The ghost always marked with decay--thedanger seemingly ending with the process of dissolution--here istempting matter for the theorist. But it will not do. The lady ofthe flowers had been long dead, and her spirit was still supposedto bear the brand of perishability. The Resident had been morethan a fortnight buried, and his vampire was still supposed to gothe rounds. 

Of the lost state of the dead, from the lurid Mangaian legend, inwhich infernal deities hocus and destroy the souls of all, to thevarious submarine and aerial limbos where the dead feast, floatidle, or resume the occupations of their life on earth, it would bewearisome to tell. One story I give, for it is singular in itself, is well-known in Tahiti, and has this of interest, that it is post-Christian, dating indeed from but a few years back. A princess ofthe reigning house died; was transported to the neighbouring isleof Raiatea; fell there under the empire of a spirit who condemnedher to climb coco-palms all day and bring him the nuts; was foundafter some time in this miserable servitude by a second spirit, oneof her own house; and by him, upon her lamentations, reconveyed toTahiti, where she found her body still waked, but already swollenwith the approaches of corruption. It is a lively point in thetale that, on the sight of this dishonoured tabernacle, theprincess prayed she might continue to be numbered with the dead. But it seems it was too late, her spirit was replaced by the leastdignified of entrances, and her startled family beheld the bodymove. The seemingly purgatorial labours, the helpful kindredspirit, and the horror of the princess at the sight of her taintedbody, are all points to be remarked. 

The truth is, the tales are not necessarily consistent inthemselves; and they are further darkened for the stranger by anambiguity of language. Ghosts, vampires, spirits, and gods are allconfounded. And yet I seem to perceive that (with exceptions)those whom we would count gods were less maleficent. Permanentspirits haunt and do murder in corners of Samoa; but thoselegitimate gods of Upolu and Savaii, whose wars and cricketings oflate convulsed society, I did not gather to be dreaded, or not witha like fear. The spirit of Aana that ate souls is certainly afearsome inmate; but the high gods, even of the archipelago, seemhelpful. Mahinui--from whom our convict-catechist had been named--the spirit of the sea, like a Proteus endowed with endless avatars, came to the assistance of the shipwrecked and carried them ashorein the guise of a ray fish. The same divinity bore priests fromisle to isle about the archipelago, and by his aid, within thecentury, persons have been seen to fly. The tutelar deity of eachisle is likewise helpful, and by a particular form of wedge-shapedcloud on the horizon announces the coming of a ship. 

To one who conceives of these atolls, so narrow, so barren, sobeset with sea, here would seem a superfluity of ghostly denizens. And yet there are more. In the various brackish pools and ponds, beautiful women with long red hair are seen to rise and bathe; only(timid as mice) on the first sound of feet upon the coral they diveagain for ever. They are known to be healthy and harmless livingpeople, dwellers of an underworld; and the same fancy is current inTahiti, where also they have the hair red. Tetea is the Tahitianname; the Paumotuan, Mokurea. 

PART III: THE GILBERTS

CHAPTER I--BUTARITARI

At Honolulu we had said farewell to the Casco and to Captain Otis, and our next adventure was made in changed conditions. Passage wastaken for myself, my wife, Mr. Osbourne, and my China boy, Ah Fu, on a pigmy trading schooner, the Equator, Captain Dennis Reid; andon a certain bright June day in 1889, adorned in the Hawaiianfashion with the garlands of departure, we drew out of port andbore with a fair wind for Micronesia. 

The whole extent of the South Seas is a desert of ships; moreespecially that part where we were now to sail. No post runs inthese islands; communication is by accident; where you may havedesigned to go is one thing, where you shall be able to arriveanother. It was my hope, for instance, to have reached theCarolines, and returned to the light of day by way of Manila andthe China ports; and it was in Samoa that we were destined to re-appear and be once more refreshed with the sight of mountains. Since the sunset faded from the peaks of Oahu six months hadintervened, and we had seen no spot of earth so high as an ordinarycottage. Our path had been still on the flat sea, our dwellingsupon unerected coral, our diet from the pickle-tub or out of tins;I had learned to welcome shark's flesh for a variety; and amountain, an onion, an Irish potato or a beef-steak, had been longlost to sense and dear to aspiration. 

The two chief places of our stay, Butaritari and Apemama, lie nearthe line; the latter within thirty miles. Both enjoy a superbocean climate, days of blinding sun and bracing wind, nights of aheavenly brightness. Both are somewhat wider than Fakarava, measuring perhaps (at the widest) a quarter of a mile from beach tobeach. In both, a coarse kind of taro thrives; its culture is achief business of the natives, and the consequent mounds andditches make miniature scenery and amuse the eye. In all else theyshow the customary features of an atoll: the low horizon, theexpanse of the lagoon, the sedge-like rim of palm-tops, thesameness and smallness of the land, the hugely superior size andinterest of sea and sky. Life on such islands is in many pointslike life on shipboard. The atoll, like the ship, is soon takenfor granted; and the islanders, like the ship's crew, become soonthe centre of attention. The isles are populous, independent, seats of kinglets, recently civilised, little visited. In the lastdecade many changes have crept in; women no longer go unclothedtill marriage; the widow no longer sleeps at night and goes abroadby day with the skull of her dead husband; and, fire-arms beingintroduced, the spear and the shark-tooth sword are sold forcuriosities. Ten years ago all these things and practices were tobe seen in use; yet ten years more, and the old society will haveentirely vanished. We came in a happy moment to see itsinstitutions still erect and (in Apemama) scarce decayed. 

Populous and independent--warrens of men, ruled over with somerustic pomp--such was the first and still the recurring impressionof these tiny lands. As we stood across the lagoon for the town ofButaritari, a stretch of the low shore was seen to be crowded withthe brown roofs of houses; those of the palace and king's summerparlour (which are of corrugated iron) glittered near one endconspicuously bright; the royal colours flew hard by on a tallflagstaff; in front, on an artificial islet, the gaol played thepart of a martello. Even upon this first and distant view, theplace had scarce the air of what it truly was, a village; rather ofthat which it was also, a petty metropolis, a city rustic and yetroyal. 

The lagoon is shoal. The tide being out, we waded for some quarterof a mile in tepid shallows, and stepped ashore at last into aflagrant stagnancy of sun and heat. The lee side of a line islandafter noon is indeed a breathless place; on the ocean beach thetrade will be still blowing, boisterous and cool; out in the lagoonit will be blowing also, speeding the canoes; but the screen ofbush completely intercepts it from the shore, and sleep and silenceand companies of mosquitoes brood upon the towns. 

We may thus be said to have taken Butaritari by surprise. A fewinhabitants were still abroad in the north end, at which we landed. As we advanced, we were soon done with encounter, and seemed toexplore a city of the dead. Only, between the posts of openhouses, we could see the townsfolk stretched in the siesta, sometimes a family together veiled in a mosquito-net, sometimes asingle sleeper on a platform like a corpse on a bier. 

The houses were of all dimensions, from those of toys to those ofchurches. Some might hold a battalion, some were so minute theycould scarce receive a pair of lovers; only in the playroom, whenthe toys are mingled, do we meet such incongruities of scale. Manywere open sheds; some took the form of roofed stages; others werewalled and the walls pierced with little windows. A few wereperched on piles in the lagoon; the rest stood at random on agreen, through which the roadway made a ribbon of sand, or alongthe embankments of a sheet of water like a shallow dock. One andall were the creatures of a single tree; palm-tree wood and palm-tree leaf their materials; no nail had been driven, no hammersounded, in their building, and they were held together by lashingsof palm-tree sinnet. 

In the midst of the thoroughfare, the church stands like an island, a lofty and dim house with rows of windows; a rich tracery offraming sustains the roof; and through the door at either end thestreet shows in a vista. The proportions of the place, in suchsurroundings, and built of such materials, appeared august; and wethreaded the nave with a sentiment befitting visitors in acathedral. Benches run along either side. In the midst, on acrazy dais, two chairs stand ready for the king and queen when theyshall choose to worship; over their heads a hoop, apparently from ahogshead, depends by a strip of red cotton; and the hoop (whichhangs askew) is dressed with streamers of the same material, redand white. 

This was our first advertisement of the royal dignity, andpresently we stood before its seat and centre. The palace is builtof imported wood upon a European plan; the roof of corrugated iron, the yard enclosed with walls, the gate surmounted by a sort oflych-house. It cannot be called spacious; a labourer in the Statesis sometimes more commodiously lodged; but when we had the chanceto see it within, we found it was enriched (beyond all islandexpectation) with coloured advertisements and cuts from theillustrated papers. Even before the gate some of the treasures ofthe crown stand public: a bell of a good magnitude, two pieces ofcannon, and a single shell. The bell cannot be rung nor the gunsfired; they are curiosities, proofs of wealth, a part of the paradeof the royalty, and stand to be admired like statues in a square. A straight gut of water like a canal runs almost to the palacedoor; the containing quay-walls excellently built of coral; overagainst the mouth, by what seems an effect of landscape art, themartello-like islet of the gaol breaks the lagoon. Vassal chiefswith tribute, neighbour monarchs come a-roving, might here sail in, view with surprise these extensive public works, and be awed bythese mouths of silent cannon. It was impossible to see the placeand not to fancy it designed for pageantry. But the elaboratetheatre then stood empty; the royal house deserted, its doors andwindows gaping; the whole quarter of the town immersed in silence. On the opposite bank of the canal, on a roofed stage, an ancientgentleman slept publicly, sole visible inhabitant; and beyond onthe lagoon a canoe spread a striped lateen, the sole thing moving. 

The canal is formed on the south by a pier or causeway with aparapet. At the far end the parapet stops, and the quay expandsinto an oblong peninsula in the lagoon, the breathing-place andsummer parlour of the king. The midst is occupied by an open houseor permanent marquee--called here a maniapa, or, as the word is nowpronounced, a maniap'--at the lowest estimation forty feet bysixty. The iron roof, lofty but exceedingly low-browed, so that awoman must stoop to enter, is supported externally on pillars ofcoral, within by a frame of wood. The floor is of broken coral, divided in aisles by the uprights of the frame; the house farenough from shore to catch the breeze, which enters freely anddisperses the mosquitoes; and under the low eaves the sun is seento glitter and the waves to dance on the lagoon. 

It was now some while since we had met any but slumberers; and whenwe had wandered down the pier and stumbled at last into this brightshed, we were surprised to find it occupied by a society of wakefulpeople, some twenty souls in all, the court and guardsmen ofButaritari. The court ladies were busy making mats; the guardsmenyawned and sprawled. Half a dozen rifles lay on a rock and acutlass was leaned against a pillar: the armoury of these drowsymusketeers. At the far end, a little closed house of wooddisplayed some tinsel curtains, and proved, upon examination, to bea privy on the European model. In front of this, upon some mats, lolled Tebureimoa, the king; behind him, on the panels of thehouse, two crossed rifles represented fasces. He wore pyjamaswhich sorrowfully misbecame his bulk; his nose was hooked andcruel, his body overcome with sodden corpulence, his eye timorousand dull: he seemed at once oppressed with drowsiness and heldawake by apprehension: a pepper rajah muddled with opium, andlistening for the march of a Dutch army, looks perhaps nototherwise. We were to grow better acquainted, and first and last Ihad the same impression; he seemed always drowsy, yet always tohearken and start; and, whether from remorse or fear, there is nodoubt he seeks a refuge in the abuse of drugs. 

The rajah displayed no sign of interest in our coming. But thequeen, who sat beside him in a purple sacque, was more accessible;and there was present an interpreter so willing that his volubilitybecame at last the cause of our departure. He had greeted us uponour entrance:- 'That is the honourable King, and I am hisinterpreter, ' he had said, with more stateliness than truth. Forhe held no appointment in the court, seemed extremely ill-acquainted with the island language, and was present, likeourselves, upon a visit of civility. Mr. Williams was his name:an American darkey, runaway ship's cook, and bar-keeper at The Landwe Live in tavern, Butaritari. I never knew a man who had morewords in his command or less truth to communicate; neither thegloom of the monarch, nor my own efforts to be distant, could inthe least abash him; and when the scene closed, the darkey was lefttalking. 

The town still slumbered, or had but just begun to turn and stretchitself; it was still plunged in heat and silence. So much the morevivid was the impression that we carried away of the house upon theislet, the Micronesian Saul wakeful amid his guards, and hisunmelodious David, Mr. Williams, chattering through the drowsyhours. 

CHAPTER II--THE FOUR BROTHERS

The kingdom of Tebureimoa includes two islands, Great and LittleMakin; some two thousand subjects pay him tribute, and two semi-independent chieftains do him qualified homage. The importance ofthe office is measured by the man; he may be a nobody, he may beabsolute; and both extremes have been exemplified within the memoryof residents. 

On the death of king Tetimararoa, Tebureimoa's father, Nakaeia, theeldest son, succeeded. He was a fellow of huge physical strength, masterful, violent, with a certain barbaric thrift and someintelligence of men and business. Alone in his islands, it was hewho dealt and profited; he was the planter and the merchant; andhis subjects toiled for his behoof in servitude. When they wroughtlong and well their taskmaster declared a holiday, and supplied andshared a general debauch. The scale of his providing was at timesmagnificent; six hundred dollars' worth of gin and brandy was setforth at once; the narrow land resounded with the noise of revelry:and it was a common thing to see the subjects (staggeringthemselves) parade their drunken sovereign on the fore-hatch of awrecked vessel, king and commons howling and singing as they went. At a word from Nakaeia's mouth the revel ended; Makin became oncemore an isle of slaves and of teetotalers; and on the morrow allthe population must be on the roads or in the taro-patches toilingunder his bloodshot eye. 

The fear of Nakaeia filled the land. No regularity of justice wasaffected; there was no trial, there were no officers of the law; itseems there was but one penalty, the capital; and daylight assaultand midnight murder were the forms of process. The king himselfwould play the executioner: and his blows were dealt by stealth, and with the help and countenance of none but his own wives. Thesewere his oarswomen; one that caught a crab, he slew incontinentlywith the tiller; thus disciplined, they pulled him by night to thescene of his vengeance, which he would then execute alone andreturn well-pleased with his connubial crew. The inmates of theharem held a station hard for us to conceive. Beasts of draught, and driven by the fear of death, they were yet implicitly trustedwith their sovereign's life; they were still wives and queens, andit was supposed that no man should behold their faces. They killedby the sight like basilisks; a chance view of one of thoseboatwomen was a crime to be wiped out with blood. In the days ofNakaeia the palace was beset with some tall coco-palms whichcommanded the enclosure. It chanced one evening, while Nakaeia satbelow at supper with his wives, that the owner of the grove was ina tree-top drawing palm-tree wine; it chanced that he looked down, and the king at the same moment looking up, their eyes encountered. Instant flight preserved the involuntary criminal. But during theremainder of that reign he must lurk and be hid by friends inremote parts of the isle; Nakaeia hunted him without remission, although still in vain; and the palms, accessories to the fact, were ruthlessly cut down. Such was the ideal of wifely purity inan isle where nubile virgins went naked as in paradise. And yetscandal found its way into Nakaeia's well-guarded harem. He was atthat time the owner of a schooner, which he used for a pleasure-house, lodging on board as she lay anchored; and thither one day hesummoned a new wife. She was one that had been sealed to him; thatis to say (I presume), that he was married to her sister, for thehusband of an elder sister has the call of the cadets. She wouldbe arrayed for the occasion; she would come scented, garlanded, decked with fine mats and family jewels, for marriage, as herfriends supposed; for death, as she well knew. 'Tell me the man'sname, and I will spare you, ' said Nakaeia. But the girl wasstaunch; she held her peace, saved her lover and the queensstrangled her between the mats. 

Nakaeia was feared; it does not appear that he was hated. Deedsthat smell to us of murder wore to his subjects the reverend faceof justice; his orgies made him popular; natives to this day recallwith respect the firmness of his government; and even the whites, whom he long opposed and kept at arm's-length, give him the name(in the canonical South Sea phrase) of 'a perfect gentleman whensober. '

When he came to lie, without issue, on the bed of death, hesummoned his next brother, Nanteitei, made him a discourse on royalpolicy, and warned him he was too weak to reign. The warning wastaken to heart, and for some while the government moved on themodel of Nakaeia's. Nanteitei dispensed with guards, and walkedabroad alone with a revolver in a leather mail-bag. To conceal hisweakness he affected a rude silence; you might talk to him all day;advice, reproof, appeal, and menace alike remained unanswered. 

The number of his wives was seventeen, many of them heiresses; forthe royal house is poor, and marriage was in these days a chiefmeans of buttressing the throne. Nakaeia kept his harem busy forhimself; Nanteitei hired it out to others. In his days, forinstance, Messrs. Wightman built a pier with a verandah at thenorth end of the town. The masonry was the work of the seventeenqueens, who toiled and waded there like fisher lasses; but the manwho was to do the roofing durst not begin till they had finished, lest by chance he should look down and see them. 

It was perhaps the last appearance of the harem gang. For sometime already Hawaiian missionaries had been seated at Butaritari--Maka and Kanoa, two brave childlike men. Nakaeia would none oftheir doctrine; he was perhaps jealous of their presence; beinghuman, he had some affection for their persons. In the house, before the eyes of Kanoa, he slew with his own hand three sailorsof Oahu, crouching on their backs to knife them, and menacing themissionary if he interfered; yet he not only spared him at themoment, but recalled him afterwards (when he had fled) with someexpressions of respect. Nanteitei, the weaker man, fell morecompletely under the spell. Maka, a light-hearted, lovable, yet inhis own trade very rigorous man, gained and improved an influenceon the king which soon grew paramount. Nanteitei, with the royalhouse, was publicly converted; and, with a severity which liberalmissionaries disavow, the harem was at once reduced. It was acompendious act. The throne was thus impoverished, its influenceshaken, the queen's relatives mortified, and sixteen chief women(some of great possessions) cast in a body on the market. I havebeen shipmates with a Hawaiian sailor who was successively marriedto two of these impromptu widows, and successively divorced by bothfor misconduct. That two great and rich ladies (for both of thesewere rich) should have married 'a man from another island' marksthe dissolution of society. The laws besides were whollyremodelled, not always for the better. I love Maka as a man; as alegislator he has two defects: weak in the punishment of crime, stern to repress innocent pleasures. 

War and revolution are the common successors of reform; yetNanteitei died (of an overdose of chloroform), in quiet possessionof the throne, and it was in the reign of the third brother, Nabakatokia, a man brave in body and feeble of character, that thestorm burst. The rule of the high chiefs and notables seems tohave always underlain and perhaps alternated with monarchy. TheOld Men (as they were called) have a right to sit with the king inthe Speak House and debate: and the king's chief superiority is aform of closure--'The Speaking is over. ' After the long monocracyof Nakaeia and the changes of Nanteitei, the Old Men were doubtlessgrown impatient of obscurity, and they were beyond question jealousof the influence of Maka. Calumny, or rather caricature, wascalled in use; a spoken cartoon ran round society; Maka wasreported to have said in church that the king was the first man inthe island and himself the second; and, stung by the supposedaffront, the chiefs broke into rebellion and armed gatherings. Inthe space of one forenoon the throne of Nakaeia was humbled in thedust. The king sat in the maniap' before the palace gate expectinghis recruits; Maka by his side, both anxious men; and meanwhile, inthe door of a house at the north entry of the town, a chief hadtaken post and diverted the succours as they came. They camesingly or in groups, each with his gun or pistol slung about hisneck. 'Where are you going?' asked the chief. 'The king calledus, ' they would reply. 'Here is your place. Sit down, ' returnedthe chief. With incredible disloyalty, all obeyed; and sufficientforce being thus got together from both sides, Nabakatokia wassummoned and surrendered. About this period, in almost every partof the group, the kings were murdered; and on Tapituea, theskeleton of the last hangs to this day in the chief Speak House ofthe isle, a menace to ambition. Nabakatokia was more fortunate;his life and the royal style were spared to him, but he wasstripped of power. The Old Men enjoyed a festival of publicspeaking; the laws were continually changed, never enforced; thecommons had an opportunity to regret the merits of Nakaeia; and theking, denied the resource of rich marriages and the service of atroop of wives, fell not only in disconsideration but in debt. 

He died some months before my arrival on the islands, and no oneregretted him; rather all looked hopefully to his successor. Thiswas by repute the hero of the family. Alone of the four brothers, he had issue, a grown son, Natiata, and a daughter three years old;it was to him, in the hour of the revolution, that Nabakatokiaturned too late for help; and in earlier days he had been the righthand of the vigorous Nakaeia. Nontemat', Mr. Corpse, was hisappalling nickname, and he had earned it well. Again and again, atthe command of Nakaeia, he had surrounded houses in the dead ofnight, cut down the mosquito bars and butchered families. Here wasthe hand of iron; here was Nakaeia redux. He came, summoned fromthe tributary rule of Little Makin: he was installed, he proved apuppet and a trembler, the unwieldy shuttlecock of orators; and thereader has seen the remains of him in his summer parlour under thename of Tebureimoa. 

The change in the man's character was much commented on in theisland, and variously explained by opium and Christianity. To myeyes, there seemed no change at all, rather an extreme consistency. Mr. Corpse was afraid of his brother: King Tebureimoa is afraid ofthe Old Men. Terror of the first nerved him for deeds ofdesperation; fear of the second disables him for the least act ofgovernment. He played his part of bravo in the past, following theline of least resistance, butchering others in his own defence:to-day, grown elderly and heavy, a convert, a reader of the Bible, perhaps a penitent, conscious at least of accumulated hatreds, andhis memory charged with images of violence and blood, hecapitulates to the Old Men, fuddles himself with opium, and sitsamong his guards in dreadful expectation. The same cowardice thatput into his hand the knife of the assassin deprives him of thesceptre of a king. 

A tale that I was told, a trifling incident that fell in myobservation, depicts him in his two capacities. A chief in LittleMakin asked, in an hour of lightness, 'Who is Kaeia?' A birdcarried the saying; and Nakaeia placed the matter in the hands of acommittee of three. Mr. Corpse was chairman; the secondcommissioner died before my arrival; the third was yet alive andgreen, and presented so venerable an appearance that we gave himthe name of Abou ben Adhem. Mr. Corpse was troubled with ascruple; the man from Little Makin was his adopted brother; in sucha case it was not very delicate to appear at all, to strike theblow (which it seems was otherwise expected of him) would be worsethan awkward. 'I will strike the blow, ' said the venerable Abou;and Mr. Corpse (surely with a sigh) accepted the compromise. Thequarry was decoyed into the bush; he was set to carrying a log; andwhile his arms were raised Abou ripped up his belly at a blow. Justice being thus done, the commission, in a childish horror, turned to flee. But their victim recalled them to his side. 'Youneed not run away now, ' he said. 'You have done this thing to me. Stay. ' He was some twenty minutes dying, and his murderers satwith him the while: a scene for Shakespeare. All the stages of aviolent death, the blood, the failing voice, the decomposingfeatures, the changed hue, are thus present in the memory of Mr. Corpse; and since he studied them in the brother he betrayed, hehas some reason to reflect on the possibilities of treachery. Iwas never more sure of anything than the tragic quality of theking's thoughts; and yet I had but the one sight of him atunawares. I had once an errand for his ear. It was once more thehour of the siesta; but there were loiterers abroad, and thesedirected us to a closed house on the bank of the canal whereTebureimoa lay unguarded. We entered without ceremony, being insome haste. He lay on the floor upon a bed of mats, reading in hisGilbert Island Bible with compunction. On our sudden entrance theunwieldy man reared himself half-sitting so that the Bible rolledon the floor, stared on us a moment with blank eyes, and, havingrecognised his visitors, sank again upon the mats. So Eglon lookedon Ehud. 

The justice of facts is strange, and strangely just; Nakaeia, theauthor of these deeds, died at peace discoursing on the craft ofkings; his tool suffers daily death for his enforced complicity. Not the nature, but the congruity of men's deeds and circumstancesdamn and save them; and Tebureimoa from the first has beenincongruously placed. At home, in a quiet bystreet of a village, the man had been a worthy carpenter, and, even bedevilled as he is, he shows some private virtues. He has no lands, only the use ofsuch as are impignorate for fines; he cannot enrich himself in theold way by marriages; thrift is the chief pillar of his future, andhe knows and uses it. Eleven foreign traders pay him a patent of ahundred dollars, some two thousand subjects pay capitation at therate of a dollar for a man, half a dollar for a woman, and ashilling for a child: allowing for the exchange, perhaps a totalof three hundred pounds a year. He had been some nine months onthe throne: had bought his wife a silk dress and hat, figureunknown, and himself a uniform at three hundred dollars; had senthis brother's photograph to be enlarged in San Francisco at twohundred and fifty dollars; had greatly reduced that brother'slegacy of debt and had still sovereigns in his pocket. Anaffectionate brother, a good economist; he was besides a handycarpenter, and cobbled occasionally on the woodwork of the palace. It is not wonderful that Mr. Corpse has virtues; that Tebureimoashould have a diversion filled me with surprise. 

CHAPTER III--AROUND OUR HOUSE

When we left the palace we were still but seafarers ashore; andwithin the hour we had installed our goods in one of the sixforeign houses of Butaritari, namely, that usually occupied byMaka, the Hawaiian missionary. Two San Francisco firms are hereestablished, Messrs. Crawford and Messrs. Wightman Brothers; thefirst hard by the palace of the mid town, the second at the northentry; each with a store and bar-room. Our house was in theWightman compound, betwixt the store and bar, within a fencedenclosure. Across the road a few native houses nestled in themargin of the bush, and the green wall of palms rose solid, shutting out the breeze. A little sandy cove of the lagoon ran inbehind, sheltered by a verandah pier, the labour of queens' hands. Here, when the tide was high, sailed boats lay to be loaded; whenthe tide was low, the boats took ground some half a mile away, andan endless series of natives descended the pier stair, tailedacross the sand in strings and clusters, waded to the waist withthe bags of copra, and loitered backward to renew their charge. The mystery of the copra trade tormented me, as I sat and watchedthe profits drip on the stair and the sands. 

In front, from shortly after four in the morning until nine atnight, the folk of the town streamed by us intermittingly along theroad: families going up the island to make copra on their lands;women bound for the bush to gather flowers against the eveningtoilet; and, twice a day, the toddy-cutters, each with his knifeand shell. In the first grey of the morning, and again late in theafternoon, these would straggle past about their tree-top business, strike off here and there into the bush, and vanish from the faceof the earth. At about the same hour, if the tide be low in thelagoon, you are likely to be bound yourself across the island for abath, and may enter close at their heels alleys of the palm wood. Right in front, although the sun is not yet risen, the east isalready lighted with preparatory fires, and the huge accumulationsof the trade-wind cloud glow with and heliograph the coming day. The breeze is in your face; overhead in the tops of the palms, itsplaythings, it maintains a lively bustle; look where you will, above or below, there is no human presence, only the earth andshaken forest. And right overhead the song of an invisible singerbreaks from the thick leaves; from farther on a second tree-topanswers; and beyond again, in the bosom of the woods, a still moredistant minstrel perches and sways and sings. So, all round theisle, the toddy-cutters sit on high, and are rocked by the trade, and have a view far to seaward, where they keep watch for sails, and like huge birds utter their songs in the morning. They singwith a certain lustiness and Bacchic glee; the volume of sound andthe articulate melody fall unexpected from the tree-top, whence weanticipate the chattering of fowls. And yet in a sense these songsalso are but chatter; the words are ancient, obsolete, and sacred;few comprehend them, perhaps no one perfectly; but it wasunderstood the cutters 'prayed to have good toddy, and sang oftheir old wars. ' The prayer is at least answered; and when thefoaming shell is brought to your door, you have a beverage well'worthy of a grace. ' All forenoon you may return and taste; itonly sparkles, and sharpens, and grows to be a new drink, not lessdelicious; but with the progress of the day the fermentationquickens and grows acid; in twelve hours it will be yeast forbread, in two days more a devilish intoxicant, the counsellor ofcrime. 

The men are of a marked Arabian cast of features, often bearded andmustached, often gaily dressed, some with bracelets and anklets, all stalking hidalgo-like, and accepting salutations with a haughtylip. The hair (with the dandies of either sex) is worn turban-wisein a frizzled bush; and like the daggers of the Japanese a pointedstick (used for a comb) is thrust gallantly among the curls. Thewomen from this bush of hair look forth enticingly: the racecannot be compared with the Tahitian for female beauty; I doubteven if the average be high; but some of the prettiest girls, andone of the handsomest women I ever saw, were Gilbertines. Butaritari, being the commercial centre of the group, isEuropeanised; the coloured sacque or the white shift are commonwear, the latter for the evening; the trade hat, loaded withflowers, fruit, and ribbons, is unfortunately not unknown; and thecharacteristic female dress of the Gilberts no longer universal. The ridi is its name: a cutty petticoat or fringe of the smokedfibre of cocoa-nut leaf, not unlike tarry string: the lower edgenot reaching the mid-thigh, the upper adjusted so low upon thehaunches that it seems to cling by accident. A sneeze, you think, and the lady must surely be left destitute. 'The perilous, hairbreadth ridi' was our word for it; and in the conflict thatrages over women's dress it has the misfortune to please neitherside, the prudish condemning it as insufficient, the more frivolousfinding it unlovely in itself. Yet if a pretty Gilbertine wouldlook her best, that must be her costume. In that and nakedotherwise, she moves with an incomparable liberty and grace andlife, that marks the poetry of Micronesia. Bundle her in a gown, the charm is fled, and she wriggles like an Englishwoman. 

Towards dusk the passers-by became more gorgeous. The men brokeout in all the colours of the rainbow--or at least of the trade-room, --and both men and women began to be adorned and scented withnew flowers. A small white blossom is the favourite, sometimessown singly in a woman's hair like little stars, now composed in athick wreath. With the night, the crowd sometimes thickened in theroad, and the padding and brushing of bare feet became continuous;the promenades mostly grave, the silence only interrupted by somegiggling and scampering of girls; even the children quiet. Atnine, bed-time struck on a bell from the cathedral, and the life ofthe town ceased. At four the next morning the signal is repeatedin the darkness, and the innocent prisoners set free; but for sevenhours all must lie--I was about to say within doors, of a placewhere doors, and even walls, are an exception--housed, at least, under their airy roofs and clustered in the tents of the mosquito-nets. Suppose a necessary errand to occur, suppose it imperativeto send abroad, the messenger must then go openly, advertisinghimself to the police with a huge brand of cocoa-nut, which flaresfrom house to house like a moving bonfire. Only the policethemselves go darkling, and grope in the night for misdemeanants. I used to hate their treacherous presence; their captain inparticular, a crafty old man in white, lurked nightly about mypremises till I could have found it in my heart to beat him. Butthe rogue was privileged. 

Not one of the eleven resident traders came to town, no captaincast anchor in the lagoon, but we saw him ere the hour was out. This was owing to our position between the store and the bar--theSans Souci, as the last was called. Mr. Rick was not only Messrs. Wightman's manager, but consular agent for the States; Mrs. Rickwas the only white woman on the island, and one of the only two inthe archipelago; their house besides, with its cool verandahs, itsbookshelves, its comfortable furniture, could not be rivallednearer than Jaluit or Honolulu. Every one called in consequence, save such as might be prosecuting a South Sea quarrel, hingeing onthe price of copra and the odd cent, or perhaps a difference aboutpoultry. Even these, if they did not appear upon the north, wouldbe presently visible to the southward, the Sans Souci drawing themas with cords. In an island with a total population of twelvewhite persons, one of the two drinking-shops might seemsuperfluous: but every bullet has its billet, and the doubleaccommodation of Butaritari is found in practice highly convenientby the captains and the crews of ships: The Land we Live in beingtacitly resigned to the forecastle, the Sans Souci tacitly reservedfor the afterguard. So aristocratic were my habits, so commandingwas my fear of Mr. Williams, that I have never visited the first;but in the other, which was the club or rather the casino of theisland, I regularly passed my evenings. It was small, but neatlyfitted, and at night (when the lamp was lit) sparkled with glassand glowed with coloured pictures like a theatre at Christmas. Thepictures were advertisements, the glass coarse enough, thecarpentry amateur; but the effect, in that incongruous isle, was ofunbridled luxury and inestimable expense. Here songs were sung, tales told, tricks performed, games played. The Ricks, ourselves, Norwegian Tom the bar-keeper, a captain or two from the ships, andperhaps three or four traders come down the island in their boatsor by the road on foot, made up the usual company. The traders, all bred to the sea, take a humorous pride in their new business;'South Sea Merchants' is the title they prefer. 'We are allsailors here'--'Merchants, if you please'--'South Sea Merchants, '--was a piece of conversation endlessly repeated, that never seemedto lose in savour. We found them at all times simple, genial, gay, gallant, and obliging; and, across some interval of time, recallwith pleasure the traders of Butaritari. There was one black sheepindeed. I tell of him here where he lived, against my rule; for inthis case I have no measure to preserve, and the man is typical ofa class of ruffians that once disgraced the whole field of theSouth Seas, and still linger in the rarely visited isles ofMicronesia. He had the name on the beach of 'a perfect gentlemanwhen sober, ' but I never saw him otherwise than drunk. The fewshocking and savage traits of the Micronesian he has singled outwith the skill of a collector, and planted in the soil of hisoriginal baseness. He has been accused and acquitted of atreacherous murder; and has since boastfully owned it, whichinclines me to suppose him innocent. His daughter is defaced byhis erroneous cruelty, for it was his wife he had intended todisfigure, and in the darkness of the night and the frenzy of coco-brandy, fastened on the wrong victim. The wife has since fled andharbours in the bush with natives; and the husband still demandsfrom deaf ears her forcible restoration. The best of his businessis to make natives drink, and then advance the money for the fineupon a lucrative mortgage. 'Respect for whites' is the man's word:'What is the matter with this island is the want of respect forwhites. ' On his way to Butaritari, while I was there, he spied hiswife in the bush with certain natives and made a dash to captureher; whereupon one of her companions drew a knife and the husbandretreated: 'Do you call that proper respect for whites?' he cried. At an early stage of the acquaintance we proved our respect for hiskind of white by forbidding him our enclosure under pain of death. Thenceforth he lingered often in the neighbourhood with I knew notwhat sense of envy or design of mischief; his white, handsome face(which I beheld with loathing) looked in upon us at all hoursacross the fence; and once, from a safe distance, he avengedhimself by shouting a recondite island insult, to us quiteinoffensive, on his English lips incredibly incongruous. 

Our enclosure, round which this composite of degradations wandered, was of some extent. In one corner was a trellis with a long tableof rough boards. Here the Fourth of July feast had been held notlong before with memorable consequences, yet to be set forth; herewe took our meals; here entertained to a dinner the king andnotables of Makin. In the midst was the house, with a verandahfront and back, and three is rooms within. In the verandah weslung our man-of-war hammocks, worked there by day, and slept atnight. Within were beds, chairs, a round table, a fine hanginglamp, and portraits of the royal family of Hawaii. Queen Victoriaproves nothing; Kalakaua and Mrs. Bishop are diagnostic; and thetruth is we were the stealthy tenants of the parsonage. On the dayof our arrival Maka was away; faithless trustees unlocked hisdoors; and the dear rigorous man, the sworn foe of liquor andtobacco, returned to find his verandah littered with cigarettes andhis parlour horrible with bottles. He made but one condition--onthe round table, which he used in the celebration of thesacraments, he begged us to refrain from setting liquor; in allelse he bowed to the accomplished fact, refused rent, retiredacross the way into a native house, and, plying in his boat, beatthe remotest quarters of the isle for provender. He found us pigs--I could not fancy where--no other pigs were visible; he brought usfowls and taro; when we gave our feast to the monarch and gentry, it was he who supplied the wherewithal, he who superintended thecooking, he who asked grace at table, and when the king's healthwas proposed, he also started the cheering with an English hip-hip-hip. There was never a more fortunate conception; the heart of thefatted king exulted in his bosom at the sound. 

Take him for all in all, I have never known a more engagingcreature than this parson of Butaritari: his mirth, his kindness, his noble, friendly feelings, brimmed from the man in speech andgesture. He loved to exaggerate, to act and overact the momentarypart, to exercise his lungs and muscles, and to speak and laughwith his whole body. He had the morning cheerfulness of birds andhealthy children; and his humour was infectious. We were nextneighbours and met daily, yet our salutations lasted minutes at astretch--shaking hands, slapping shoulders, capering like a pair ofMerry-Andrews, laughing to split our sides upon some pleasantrythat would scarce raise a titter in an infant-school. It might befive in the morning, the toddy-cutters just gone by, the roadempty, the shade of the island lying far on the lagoon: and theebullition cheered me for the day. 

Yet I always suspected Maka of a secret melancholy--these jubilantextremes could scarce be constantly maintained. He was besideslong, and lean, and lined, and corded, and a trifle grizzled; andhis Sabbath countenance was even saturnine. On that day we made aprocession to the church, or (as I must always call it) thecathedral: Maka (a blot on the hot landscape) in tall hat, blackfrock-coat, black trousers; under his arm the hymn-book and theBible; in his face, a reverent gravity:- beside him Mary his wife, a quiet, wise, and handsome elderly lady, seriously attired:-myself following with singular and moving thoughts. Long before, to the sound of bells and streams and birds, through a greenLothian glen, I had accompanied Sunday by Sunday a minister inwhose house I lodged; and the likeness, and the difference, and theseries of years and deaths, profoundly touched me. In the great, dusky, palm-tree cathedral the congregation rarely numbered thirty:the men on one side, the women on the other, myself posted (for aprivilege) amongst the women, and the small missionary contingentgathered close around the platform, we were lost in that roundvault. The lessons were read antiphonally, the flock wascatechised, a blind youth repeated weekly a long string of psalms, hymns were sung--I never heard worse singing, --and the sermonfollowed. To say I understood nothing were untrue; there werepoints that I learned to expect with certainty; the name ofHonolulu, that of Kalakaua, the word Cap'n-man-o'-wa', the wordship, and a description of a storm at sea, infallibly occurred; andI was not seldom rewarded with the name of my own Sovereign in thebargain. The rest was but sound to the ears, silence for the mind:a plain expanse of tedium, rendered unbearable by heat, a hardchair, and the sight through the wide doors of the more happyheathen on the green. Sleep breathed on my joints and eyelids, sleep hummed in my ears; it reigned in the dim cathedral. Thecongregation stirred and stretched; they moaned, they groanedaloud; they yawned upon a singing note, as you may sometimes hear adog when he has reached the tragic bitterest of boredom. In vainthe preacher thumped the table; in vain he singled and addressed byname particular hearers. I was myself perhaps a more effectiveexcitant; and at least to one old gentleman the spectacle of mysuccessful struggles against sleep--and I hope they weresuccessful--cheered the flight of time. He, when he was notcatching flies or playing tricks upon his neighbours, gloated witha fixed, truculent eye upon the stages of my agony; and once, whenthe service was drawing towards a close, he winked at me across thechurch. 

I write of the service with a smile; yet I was always there--alwayswith respect for Maka, always with admiration for his deepseriousness, his burning energy, the fire of his roused eye, thesincere and various accents of his voice. To see him weeklyflogging a dead horse and blowing a cold fire was a lesson infortitude and constancy. It may be a question whether if themission were fully supported, and he was set free from businessavocations, more might not result; I think otherwise myself; Ithink not neglect but rigour has reduced his flock, that rigourwhich has once provoked a revolution, and which to-day, in a man solively and engaging, amazes the beholder. No song, no dance, notobacco, no liquor, no alleviative of life--only toil and church-going; so says a voice from his face; and the face is the face ofthe Polynesian Esau, but the voice is the voice of a Jacob from adifferent world. And a Polynesian at the best makes a singularmissionary in the Gilberts, coming from a country recklesslyunchaste to one conspicuously strict; from a race hag-ridden withbogies to one comparatively bold against the terrors of the dark. The thought was stamped one morning in my mind, when I chanced tobe abroad by moonlight, and saw all the town lightless, but thelamp faithfully burning by the missionary's bed. It requires nolaw, no fire, and no scouting police, to withhold Maka and hiscountrymen from wandering in the night unlighted. 

CHAPTER IV--A TALE OF A TAPU

On the morrow of our arrival (Sunday, 14th July 1889) ourphotographers were early stirring. Once more we traversed a silenttown; many were yet abed and asleep; some sat drowsily in theiropen houses; there was no sound of intercourse or business. Inthat hour before the shadows, the quarter of the palace and canalseemed like a landing-place in the Arabian Nights or from theclassic poets; here were the fit destination of some 'faeryfrigot, ' here some adventurous prince might step ashore among newcharacters and incidents; and the island prison, where it floatedon the luminous face of the lagoon, might have passed for therepository of the Grail. In such a scene, and at such an hour, theimpression received was not so much of foreign travel--rather ofpast ages; it seemed not so much degrees of latitude that we hadcrossed, as centuries of time that we had re-ascended; leaving, bythe same steps, home and to-day. A few children followed us, mostly nude, all silent; in the clear, weedy waters of the canalsome silent damsels waded, baring their brown thighs; and to one ofthe maniap's before the palace gate we were attracted by a low butstirring hum of speech. 

The oval shed was full of men sitting cross-legged. The king wasthere in striped pyjamas, his rear protected by four guards withWinchesters, his air and bearing marked by unwonted spirit anddecision; tumblers and black bottles went the round; and the talk, throughout loud, was general and animated. I was inclined at firstto view this scene with suspicion. But the hour appearedunsuitable for a carouse; drink was besides forbidden equally bythe law of the land and the canons of the church; and while I wasyet hesitating, the king's rigorous attitude disposed of my lastdoubt. We had come, thinking to photograph him surrounded by hisguards, and at the first word of the design his piety revolted. Wewere reminded of the day--the Sabbath, in which thou shalt take nophotographs--and returned with a flea in our ear, bearing therejected camera. 

At church, a little later, I was struck to find the throneunoccupied. So nice a Sabbatarian might have found the means to bepresent; perhaps my doubts revived; and before I got home they weretransformed to certainties. Tom, the bar-keeper of the Sans Souci, was in conversation with two emissaries from the court. The'keen, ' they said, wanted 'din, ' failing which 'perandi. ' No din, was Tom's reply, and no perandi; but 'pira' if they pleased. Itseems they had no use for beer, and departed sorrowing. 

'Why, what is the meaning of all this?' I asked. 'Is the island onthe spree?'

Such was the fact. On the 4th of July a feast had been made, andthe king, at the suggestion of the whites, had raised the tapuagainst liquor. There is a proverb about horses; it scarce appliesto the superior animal, of whom it may be rather said, that any onecan start him drinking, not any twenty can prevail on him to stop. The tapu, raised ten days before, was not yet re-imposed; for tendays the town had been passing the bottle or lying (as we had seenit the afternoon before) in hoggish sleep; and the king, moved bythe Old Men and his own appetites, continued to maintain theliberty, to squander his savings on liquor, and to join in and leadthe debauch. The whites were the authors of this crisis; it wasupon their own proposal that the freedom had been granted at thefirst; and for a while, in the interests of trade, they weredoubtless pleased it should continue. That pleasure had nowsometime ceased; the bout had been prolonged (it was conceded)unduly; and it now began to be a question how it might conclude. Hence Tom's refusal. Yet that refusal was avowedly only for themoment, and it was avowedly unavailing; the king's foragers, deniedby Tom at the Sans Souci, would be supplied at The Land we Live inby the gobbling Mr. Williams. 

The degree of the peril was not easy to measure at the time, and Iam inclined to think now it was easy to exaggerate. Yet theconduct of drunkards even at home is always matter for anxiety; andat home our populations are not armed from the highest to thelowest with revolvers and repeating rifles, neither do we go on adebauch by the whole townful--and I might rather say, by the wholepolity--king, magistrates, police, and army joining in one commonscene of drunkenness. It must be thought besides that we were herein barbarous islands, rarely visited, lately and partly civilised. First and last, a really considerable number of whites haveperished in the Gilberts, chiefly through their own misconduct; andthe natives have displayed in at least one instance a dispositionto conceal an accident under a butchery, and leave nothing but dumbbones. This last was the chief consideration against a suddenclosing of the bars; the bar-keepers stood in the immediate breachand dealt direct with madmen; too surly a refusal might at anymoment precipitate a blow, and the blow might prove the signal fora massacre. 

Monday, 15th. --At the same hour we returned to the same muniap'. Kummel (of all drinks) was served in tumblers; in the midst sat thecrown prince, a fatted youth, surrounded by fresh bottles andbusily plying the corkscrew; and king, chief, and commons showedthe loose mouth, the uncertain joints, and the blurred and animatedeye of the early drinker. It was plain we were impatientlyexpected; the king retired with alacrity to dress, the guards weredespatched after their uniforms; and we were left to await theissue of these preparations with a shedful of tipsy natives. Theorgie had proceeded further than on Sunday. The day promised to beof great heat; it was already sultry, the courtiers were alreadyfuddled; and still the kummel continued to go round, and the crownprince to play butler. Flemish freedom followed upon Flemishexcess; and a funny dog, a handsome fellow, gaily dressed, and witha full turban of frizzed hair, delighted the company with ahumorous courtship of a lady in a manner not to be described. Itwas our diversion, in this time of waiting, to observe thegathering of the guards. They have European arms, Europeanuniforms, and (to their sorrow) European shoes. We saw one warrior(like Mars) in the article of being armed; two men and a stalwartwoman were scarce strong enough to boot him; and after a singleappearance on parade the army is crippled for a week. 

At last, the gates under the king's house opened; the army issued, one behind another, with guns and epaulettes; the colours stoopedunder the gateway; majesty followed in his uniform bedizened withgold lace; majesty's wife came next in a hat and feathers, and anample trained silk gown; the royal imps succeeded; there stood thepageantry of Makin marshalled on its chosen theatre. Dickens mighthave told how serious they were; how tipsy; how the king melted andstreamed under his cocked hat; how he took station by the larger ofhis two cannons--austere, majestic, but not truly vertical; how thetroops huddled, and were straightened out, and clubbed again; howthey and their firelocks raked at various inclinations like themasts of ships; and how an amateur photographer reviewed, arrayed, and adjusted them, to see his dispositions change before he reachedthe camera. 

The business was funny to see; I do not know that it is graceful tolaugh at; and our report of these transactions was received on ourreturn with the shaking of grave heads. 

The day had begun ill; eleven hours divided us from sunset; and atany moment, on the most trifling chance, the trouble might begin. The Wightman compound was in a military sense untenable, commandedon three sides by houses and thick bush; the town was computed tocontain over a thousand stand of excellent new arms; and retreat tothe ships, in the case of an alert, was a recourse not to bethought of. Our talk that morning must have closely reproduced thetalk in English garrisons before the Sepoy mutiny; the sturdy doubtthat any mischief was in prospect, the sure belief that (should anycome) there was nothing left but to go down fighting, the half-amused, half-anxious attitude of mind in which we were awaitingfresh developments. 

The kummel soon ran out; we were scarce returned before the kinghad followed us in quest of more. Mr. Corpse was now divested ofhis more awful attitude, the lawless bulk of him again encased instriped pyjamas; a guardsman brought up the rear with his rifle atthe trail: and his majesty was further accompanied by a Rarotonganwhalerman and the playful courtier with the turban of frizzed hair. There was never a more lively deputation. The whalerman wasgapingly, tearfully tipsy: the courtier walked on air; the kinghimself was even sportive. Seated in a chair in the Ricks'sitting-room, he bore the brunt of our prayers and menaces unmoved. He was even rated, plied with historic instances, threatened withthe men-of-war, ordered to restore the tapu on the spot--andnothing in the least affected him. It should be done to-morrow, hesaid; to-day it was beyond his power, to-day he durst not. 'Isthat royal?' cried indignant Mr. Rick. No, it was not royal; hadthe king been of a royal character we should ourselves have held adifferent language; and royal or not, he had the best of thedispute. The terms indeed were hardly equal; for the king was theonly man who could restore the tapu, but the Ricks were not theonly people who sold drink. He had but to hold his ground on thefirst question, and they were sure to weaken on the second. Alittle struggle they still made for the fashion's sake; and thenone exceedingly tipsy deputation departed, greatly rejoicing, acase of brandy wheeling beside them in a barrow. The Rarotongan(whom I had never seen before) wrung me by the hand like a manbound on a far voyage. 'My dear frien'!' he cried, 'good-bye, mydear frien'!'--tears of kummel standing in his eyes; the kinglurched as he went, the courtier ambled, --a strange party ofintoxicated children to be entrusted with that barrowful ofmadness. 

You could never say the town was quiet; all morning there was aferment in the air, an aimless movement and congregation of nativesin the street. But it was not before half-past one that a suddenhubbub of voices called us from the house, to find the whole whitecolony already gathered on the spot as by concerted signal. TheSans Souci was overrun with rabble, the stair and verandahthronged. From all these throats an inarticulate babbling cry wentup incessantly; it sounded like the bleating of young lambs, butangrier. In the road his royal highness (whom I had seen so latelyin the part of butler) stood crying upon Tom; on the top step, tossed in the hurly-burly, Tom was shouting to the prince. Yet awhile the pack swayed about the bar, vociferous. Then came abrutal impulse; the mob reeled, and returned, and was rejected; thestair showed a stream of heads; and there shot into view, throughthe disbanding ranks, three men violently dragging in their midst afourth. By his hair and his hands, his head forced as low as hisknees, his face concealed, he was wrenched from the verandah andwhisked along the road into the village, howling as he disappeared. Had his face been raised, we should have seen it bloodied, and theblood was not his own. The courtier with the turban of frizzedhair had paid the costs of this disturbance with the lower part ofone ear. 

So the brawl passed with no other casualty than might seem comic tothe inhumane. Yet we looked round on serious faces and--a factthat spoke volumes--Tom was putting up the shutters on the bar. Custom might go elsewhere, Mr. Williams might profit as he pleased, but Tom had had enough of bar-keeping for that day. Indeed theevent had hung on a hair. A man had sought to draw a revolver--onwhat quarrel I could never learn, and perhaps he himself could nothave told; one shot, when the room was so crowded, could scarcehave failed to take effect; where many were armed and all tipsy, itcould scarce have failed to draw others; and the woman who spiedthe weapon and the man who seized it may very well have saved thewhite community. 

The mob insensibly melted from the scene; and for the rest of theday our neighbourhood was left in peace and a good deal insolitude. But the tranquillity was only local; din and perandistill flowed in other quarters: and we had one more sight ofGilbert Island violence. In the church, where we had wanderedphotographing, we were startled by a sudden piercing outcry. Thescene, looking forth from the doors of that great hall of shadow, was unforgettable. The palms, the quaint and scattered houses, theflag of the island streaming from its tall staff, glowed withintolerable sunshine. In the midst two women rolled fighting onthe grass. The combatants were the more easy to be distinguished, because the one was stripped to the ridi and the other wore aholoku (sacque) of some lively colour. The first was uppermost, her teeth locked in her adversary's face, shaking her like a dog;the other impotently fought and scratched. So for a moment we sawthem wallow and grapple there like vermin; then the mob closed andshut them in. 

It was a serious question that night if we should sleep ashore. But we were travellers, folk that had come far in quest of theadventurous; on the first sign of an adventure it would have been asingular inconsistency to have withdrawn; and we sent on boardinstead for our revolvers. Mindful of Taahauku, Mr. Rick, Mr. Osbourne, and Mrs. Stevenson held an assault of arms on the publichighway, and fired at bottles to the admiration of the natives. Captain Reid of the Equator stayed on shore with us to be at handin case of trouble, and we retired to bed at the accustomed hour, agreeably excited by the day's events. The night was exquisite, the silence enchanting; yet as I lay in my hammock looking on thestrong moonshine and the quiescent palms, one ugly picture hauntedme of the two women, the naked and the clad, locked in that hostileembrace. The harm done was probably not much, yet I could havelooked on death and massacre with less revolt. The return to theseprimeval weapons, the vision of man's beastliness, of his ferality, shocked in me a deeper sense than that with which we count the costof battles. There are elements in our state and history which itis a pleasure to forget, which it is perhaps the better wisdom notto dwell on. Crime, pestilence, and death are in the day's work;the imagination readily accepts them. It instinctively rejects, onthe contrary, whatever shall call up the image of our race upon itslowest terms, as the partner of beasts, beastly itself, dwellingpell-mell and hugger-mugger, hairy man with hairy woman, in thecaves of old. And yet to be just to barbarous islanders we mustnot forget the slums and dens of our cities; I must not forget thatI have passed dinnerward through Soho, and seen that which cured meof my dinner. 

CHAPTER V--A TALE OF A TAPU--continued

Tuesday, July 16. --It rained in the night, sudden and loud, inGilbert Island fashion. Before the day, the crowing of a cockaroused me and I wandered in the compound and along the street. The squall was blown by, the moon shone with incomparable lustre, the air lay dead as in a room, and yet all the isle sounded asunder a strong shower, the eaves thickly pattering, the lofty palmsdripping at larger intervals and with a louder note. In this boldnocturnal light the interior of the houses lay inscrutable, onelump of blackness, save when the moon glinted under the roof, andmade a belt of silver, and drew the slanting shadows of the pillarson the floor. Nowhere in all the town was any lamp or ember; not acreature stirred; I thought I was alone to be awake; but the policewere faithful to their duty; secretly vigilant, keeping account oftime; and a little later, the watchman struck slowly and repeatedlyon the cathedral bell; four o'clock, the warning signal. It seemedstrange that, in a town resigned to drunkenness and tumult, curfewand reveille should still be sounded and still obeyed. 

The day came, and brought little change. The place still laysilent; the people slept, the town slept. Even the few who wereawake, mostly women and children, held their peace and kept withinunder the strong shadow of the thatch, where you must stop and peerto see them. Through the deserted streets, and past the sleepinghouses, a deputation took its way at an early hour to the palace;the king was suddenly awakened, and must listen (probably with aheadache) to unpalatable truths. Mrs. Rick, being a sufficientmistress of that difficult tongue, was spokeswoman; she explainedto the sick monarch that I was an intimate personal friend of QueenVictoria's; that immediately on my return I should make her areport upon Butaritari; and that if my house should have been againinvaded by natives, a man-of-war would be despatched to makereprisals. It was scarce the fact--rather a just and necessaryparable of the fact, corrected for latitude; and it certainly toldupon the king. He was much affected; he had conceived the notion(he said) that I was a man of some importance, but not dreamed itwas as bad as this; and the missionary house was tapu'd under afine of fifty dollars. 

So much was announced on the return of the deputation; not anymore; and I gathered subsequently that much more had passed. Theprotection gained was welcome. It had been the most annoying andnot the least alarming feature of the day before, that our housewas periodically filled with tipsy natives, twenty or thirty at atime, begging drink, fingering our goods, hard to be dislodged, awkward to quarrel with. Queen Victoria's friend (who was soonpromoted to be her son) was free from these intrusions. Not onlymy house, but my neighbourhood as well, was left in peace; even onour walks abroad we were guarded and prepared for; and, like greatpersons visiting a hospital, saw only the fair side. For thematter of a week we were thus suffered to go out and in and live ina fool's paradise, supposing the king to have kept his word, thetapu to be revived and the island once more sober. 

Tuesday, July 23. --We dined under a bare trellis erected for theFourth of July; and here we used to linger by lamplight over coffeeand tobacco. In that climate evening approaches without sensiblechill; the wind dies out before sunset; heaven glows a while andfades, and darkens into the blueness of the tropical night; swiftlyand insensibly the shadows thicken, the stars multiply theirnumber; you look around you and the day is gone. It was then thatwe would see our Chinaman draw near across the compound in alurching sphere of light, divided by his shadows; and with thecoming of the lamp the night closed about the table. The faces ofthe company, the spars of the trellis, stood out suddenly bright ona ground of blue and silver, faintly designed with palm-tops andthe peaked roofs of houses. Here and there the gloss upon a leaf, or the fracture of a stone, returned an isolated sparkle. All elsehad vanished. We hung there, illuminated like a galaxy of stars invacuo; we sat, manifest and blind, amid the general ambush of thedarkness; and the islanders, passing with light footfalls and lowvoices in the sand of the road, lingered to observe us, unseen. 

On Tuesday the dusk had fallen, the lamp had just been brought, when a missile struck the table with a rattling smack and reboundedpast my ear. Three inches to one side and this page had never beenwritten; for the thing travelled like a cannon ball. It wassupposed at the time to be a nut, though even at the time I thoughtit seemed a small one and fell strangely. 

Wednesday, July 24. --The dusk had fallen once more, and the lampbeen just brought out, when the same business was repeated. Andagain the missile whistled past my ear. One nut I had been willingto accept; a second, I rejected utterly. A cocoa-nut does not comeslinging along on a windless evening, making an angle of aboutfifteen degrees with the horizon; cocoa-nuts do not fall onsuccessive nights at the same hour and spot; in both cases, besides, a specific moment seemed to have been chosen, that whenthe lamp was just carried out, a specific person threatened, andthat the head of the family. I may have been right or wrong, but Ibelieved I was the mark of some intimidation; believed the missilewas a stone, aimed not to hit, but to frighten. 

No idea makes a man more angry. I ran into the road, where thenatives were as usual promenading in the dark; Maka joined me witha lantern; and I ran from one to another, glared in quite innocentfaces, put useless questions, and proffered idle threats. Thence Icarried my wrath (which was worthy the son of any queen in history)to the Ricks. They heard me with depression, assured me this trickof throwing a stone into a family dinner was not new; that it meantmischief, and was of a piece with the alarming disposition of thenatives. And then the truth, so long concealed from us, came out. The king had broken his promise, he had defied the deputation; thetapu was still dormant, The Land we Live in still selling drink, and that quarter of the town disturbed and menaced by perpetualbroils. But there was worse ahead: a feast was now preparing forthe birthday of the little princess; and the tributary chiefs ofKuma and Little Makin were expected daily. Strong in a followingof numerous and somewhat savage clansmen, each of these wasbelieved, like a Douglas of old, to be of doubtful loyalty. Kuma(a little pot-bellied fellow) never visited the palace, neverentered the town, but sat on the beach on a mat, his gun across hisknees, parading his mistrust and scorn; Karaiti of Makin, althoughhe was more bold, was not supposed to be more friendly; and notonly were these vassals jealous of the throne, but the followers oneither side shared in the animosity. Brawls had already takenplace; blows had passed which might at any moment be repaid inblood. Some of the strangers were already here and alreadydrinking; if the debauch continued after the bulk of them had come, a collision, perhaps a revolution, was to be expected. 

The sale of drink is in this group a measure of the jealousy oftraders; one begins, the others are constrained to follow; and tohim who has the most gin, and sells it the most recklessly, thelion's share of copra is assured. It is felt by all to be anextreme expedient, neither safe, decent, nor dignified. A traderon Tarawa, heated by an eager rivalry, brought many cases of gin. He told me he sat afterwards day and night in his house till it wasfinished, not daring to arrest the sale, not venturing to go forth, the bush all round him filled with howling drunkards. At night, above all, when he was afraid to sleep, and heard shots and voicesabout him in the darkness, his remorse was black. 

'My God!' he reflected, 'if I was to lose my life on such awretched business!' Often and often, in the story of the Gilberts, this scene has been repeated; and the remorseful trader sat besidehis lamp, longing for the day, listening with agony for the soundof murder, registering resolutions for the future. For thebusiness is easy to begin, but hazardous to stop. The natives arein their way a just and law-abiding people, mindful of their debts, docile to the voice of their own institutions; when the tapu is re-enforced they will cease drinking; but the white who seeks toantedate the movement by refusing liquor does so at his peril. 

Hence, in some degree, the anxiety and helplessness of Mr. Rick. He and Tom, alarmed by the rabblement of the Sans Souci, hadstopped the sale; they had done so without danger, because The Landwe Live in still continued selling; it was claimed, besides, thatthey had been the first to begin. What step could be taken? CouldMr. Rick visit Mr. Muller (with whom he was not on terms) andaddress him thus: 'I was getting ahead of you, now you are gettingahead of me, and I ask you to forego your profit. I got my placeclosed in safety, thanks to your continuing; but now I think youhave continued long enough. I begin to be alarmed; and because Iam afraid I ask you to confront a certain danger'? It was not tobe thought of. Something else had to be found; and there was oneperson at one end of the town who was at least not interested incopra. There was little else to be said in favour of myself as anambassador. I had arrived in the Wightman schooner, I was livingin the Wightman compound, I was the daily associate of the Wightmancoterie. It was egregious enough that I should now intrude unaskedin the private affairs of Crawford's agent, and press upon him thesacrifice of his interests and the venture of his life. But bad asI might be, there was none better; since the affair of the stone Iwas, besides, sharp-set to be doing, the idea of a delicateinterview attracted me, and I thought it policy to show myselfabroad. 

The night was very dark. There was service in the church, and thebuilding glimmered through all its crevices like a dim KirkAllowa'. I saw few other lights, but was indistinctly aware ofmany people stirring in the darkness, and a hum and sputter of lowtalk that sounded stealthy. I believe (in the old phrase) my beardwas sometimes on my shoulder as I went. Muller's was but partlylighted, and quite silent, and the gate was fastened. I could byno means manage to undo the latch. No wonder, since I found itafterwards to be four or five feet long--a fortification in itself. As I still fumbled, a dog came on the inside and sniffedsuspiciously at my hands, so that I was reduced to calling 'Houseahoy!' Mr. Muller came down and put his chin across the paling inthe dark. 'Who is that?' said he, like one who has no mind towelcome strangers. 

'My name is Stevenson, ' said I. 

'O, Mr. Stevens! I didn't know you. Come inside. ' We steppedinto the dark store, when I leaned upon the counter and he againstthe wall. All the light came from the sleeping-room, where I sawhis family being put to bed; it struck full in my face, but Mr. Muller stood in shadow. No doubt he expected what was Coming, andsought the advantage of position; but for a man who wished topersuade and had nothing to conceal, mine was the preferable. 

'Look here, ' I began, 'I hear you are selling to the natives. '

'Others have done that before me, ' he returned pointedly. 

'No doubt, ' said I, 'and I have nothing to do with the past, butthe future. I want you to promise you will handle these spiritscarefully. '

'Now what is your motive in this?' he asked, and then, with asneer, 'Are you afraid of your life?'

'That is nothing to the purpose, ' I replied. 'I know, and youknow, these spirits ought not to be used at all. '

'Tom and Mr. Rick have sold them before. '

'I have nothing to do with Tom and Mr. Rick. All I know is I haveheard them both refuse. '

'No, I suppose you have nothing to do with them. Then you are justafraid of your life. '

'Come now, ' I cried, being perhaps a little stung, 'you know inyour heart I am asking a reasonable thing. I don't ask you to loseyour profit--though I would prefer to see no spirits brought here, as you would--'

'I don't say I wouldn't. I didn't begin this, ' he interjected. 

'No, I don't suppose you did, ' said I. 'And I don't ask you tolose; I ask you to give me your word, man to man, that you willmake no native drunk. '

Up to now Mr. Muller had maintained an attitude very trying to mytemper; but he had maintained it with difficulty, his sentimentbeing all upon my side; and here he changed ground for the worse. 'It isn't me that sells, ' said he. 

'No, it's that nigger, ' I agreed. 'But he's yours to buy and sell;you have your hand on the nape of his neck; and I ask you--I havemy wife here--to use the authority you have. '

He hastily returned to his old ward. 'I don't deny I could if Iwanted, ' said he. 'But there's no danger, the natives are allquiet. You're just afraid of your life. '

I do not like to be called a coward, even by implication; and hereI lost my temper and propounded an untimely ultimatum. 'You hadbetter put it plain, ' I cried. 'Do you mean to refuse me what Iask?'

'I don't want either to refuse it or grant it, ' he replied. 

'You'll find you have to do the one thing or the other, and rightnow!' I cried, and then, striking into a happier vein, 'Come, ' saidI, 'you're a better sort than that. I see what's wrong with you--you think I came from the opposite camp. I see the sort of man youare, and you know that what I ask is right. '

Again he changed ground. 'If the natives get any drink, it isn'tsafe to stop them, ' he objected. 

'I'll be answerable for the bar, ' I said. 'We are three men andfour revolvers; we'll come at a word, and hold the place againstthe village. '

'You don't know what you're talking about; it's too dangerous!' hecried. 

'Look here, ' said I, 'I don't mind much about losing that life youtalk so much of; but I mean to lose it the way I want to, and thatis, putting a stop to all this beastliness. '

He talked a while about his duty to the firm; I minded not at all, I was secure of victory. He was but waiting to capitulate, andlooked about for any potent to relieve the strain. In the gush oflight from the bedroom door I spied a cigar-holder on the desk. 'That is well coloured, ' said I. 

'Will you take a cigar?' said he. 

I took it and held it up unlighted. 'Now, ' said I, 'you promiseme. '

'I promise you you won't have any trouble from natives that havedrunk at my place, ' he replied. 

'That is all I ask, ' said I, and showed it was not by immediatelyoffering to try his stock. 

So far as it was anyway critical our interview here ended. Mr. Muller had thenceforth ceased to regard me as an emissary from hisrivals, dropped his defensive attitude, and spoke as he believed. I could make out that he would already, had he dared, have stoppedthe sale himself. Not quite daring, it may be imagined how heresented the idea of interference from those who had (by his ownstatement) first led him on, then deserted him in the breach, andnow (sitting themselves in safety) egged him on to a new peril, which was all gain to them, all loss to him! I asked him what hethought of the danger from the feast. 

'I think worse of it than any of you, ' he answered. 'They wereshooting around here last night, and I heard the balls too. I saidto myself, "That's bad. " What gets me is why you should be makingthis row up at your end. I should be the first to go. '

It was a thoughtless wonder. The consolation of being second isnot great; the fact, not the order of going--there was our concern. 

Scott talks moderately of looking forward to a time of fighting'with a feeling that resembled pleasure. ' The resemblance seemsrather an identity. In modern life, contact is ended; man growsimpatient of endless manoeuvres; and to approach the fact, to findourselves where we can push an advantage home, and stand a fairrisk, and see at last what we are made of, stirs the blood. It wasso at least with all my family, who bubbled with delight at theapproach of trouble; and we sat deep into the night like a pack ofschoolboys, preparing the revolvers and arranging plans against themorrow. It promised certainly to be a busy and eventful day. TheOld Men were to be summoned to confront me on the question of thetapu; Muller might call us at any moment to garrison his bar; andsuppose Muller to fail, we decided in a family council to take thatmatter into our own hands, The Land we Live in at the pistol'smouth, and with the polysyllabic Williams, dance to a new tune. AsI recall our humour I think it would have gone hard with themulatto. 

Wednesday, July 24. --It was as well, and yet it was disappointingthat these thunder-clouds rolled off in silence. Whether the OldMen recoiled from an interview with Queen Victoria's son, whetherMuller had secretly intervened, or whether the step flowednaturally from the fears of the king and the nearness of the feast, the tapu was early that morning re-enforced; not a day too soon, from the manner the boats began to arrive thickly, and the town wasfilled with the big rowdy vassals of Karaiti. 

The effect lingered for some time on the minds of the traders; itwas with the approval of all present that I helped to draw up apetition to the United States, praying for a law against the liquortrade in the Gilberts; and it was at this request that I added, under my own name, a brief testimony of what had passed;--uselesspains; since the whole reposes, probably unread and possiblyunopened, in a pigeon-hole at Washington. 

Sunday, July 28. --This day we had the afterpiece of the debauch. The king and queen, in European clothes, and followed by armedguards, attended church for the first time, and sat perched aloftin a precarious dignity under the barrel-hoops. Before sermon hismajesty clambered from the dais, stood lopsidedly upon the gravelfloor, and in a few words abjured drinking. The queen followedsuit with a yet briefer allocution. All the men in church werenext addressed in turn; each held up his right hand, and the affairwas over--throne and church were reconciled. 

CHAPTER VI--THE FIVE DAYS' FESTIVAL

Thursday, July 25. --The street was this day much enlivened by thepresence of the men from Little Makin; they average taller thanButaritarians, and being on a holiday, went wreathed with yellowleaves and gorgeous in vivid colours. They are said to be moresavage, and to be proud of the distinction. Indeed, it seemed tous they swaggered in the town, like plaided Highlanders upon thestreets of Inverness, conscious of barbaric virtues. 

In the afternoon the summer parlour was observed to be packed withpeople; others standing outside and stooping to peer under theeaves, like children at home about a circus. It was the Makincompany, rehearsing for the day of competition. Karaiti sat in thefront row close to the singers, where we were summoned (I supposein honour of Queen Victoria) to join him. A strong breathless heatreigned under the iron roof, and the air was heavy with the scentof wreaths. The singers, with fine mats about their loins, cocoa-nut feathers set in rings upon their fingers, and their headscrowned with yellow leaves, sat on the floor by companies. Avarying number of soloists stood up for different songs; and thesebore the chief part in the music. But the full force of thecompanies, even when not singing, contributed continuously to theeffect, and marked the ictus of the measure, mimicking, grimacing, casting up their heads and eyes, fluttering the feathers on theirfingers, clapping hands, or beating (loud as a kettledrum) on theleft breast; the time was exquisite, the music barbarous, but fullof conscious art. I noted some devices constantly employed. Asudden change would be introduced (I think of key) with no break ofthe measure, but emphasised by a sudden dramatic heightening of thevoice and a swinging, general gesticulation. The voices of thesoloists would begin far apart in a rude discord, and graduallydraw together to a unison; which, when, they had reached, they werejoined and drowned by the full chorus. The ordinary, hurried, barking unmelodious movement of the voices would at times be brokenand glorified by a psalm-like strain of melody, often wellconstructed, or seeming so by contrast. There was much variety ofmeasure, and towards the end of each piece, when the fun becamefast and furious, a recourse to this figure -

[Musical notation which cannot be produced. It means two/four timewith quaver, quaver, crotchet repeated for three bars. ]

It is difficult to conceive what fire and devilry they get intothese hammering finales; all go together, voices, hands, eyes, leaves, and fluttering finger-rings; the chorus swings to the eye, the song throbs on the ear; the faces are convulsed with enthusiasmand effort. 

Presently the troop stood up in a body, the drums forming a half-circle for the soloists, who were sometimes five or even more innumber. The songs that followed were highly dramatic; though I hadnone to give me any explanation, I would at times make out someshadowy but decisive outline of a plot; and I was continuallyreminded of certain quarrelsome concerted scenes in grand operas athome; just so the single voices issue from and fall again into thegeneral volume; just so do the performers separate and crowdtogether, brandish the raised hand, and roll the eye to heaven--orthe gallery. Already this is beyond the Thespian model; the art ofthis people is already past the embryo: song, dance, drums, quartette and solo--it is the drama full developed although stillin miniature. Of all so-called dancing in the South Seas, thatwhich I saw in Butaritari stands easily the first. The hula, as itmay be viewed by the speedy globe-trotter in Honolulu, is surelythe most dull of man's inventions, and the spectator yawns underits length as at a college lecture or a parliamentary debate. Butthe Gilbert Island dance leads on the mind; it thrills, rouses, subjugates; it has the essence of all art, an unexplored imminentsignificance. Where so many are engaged, and where all must make(at a given moment) the same swift, elaborate, and often arbitrarymovement, the toil of rehearsal is of course extreme. But theybegin as children. A child and a man may often be seen together ina maniap': the man sings and gesticulates, the child stands beforehim with streaming tears and tremulously copies him in act andsound; it is the Gilbert Island artist learning (as all artistsmust) his art in sorrow. 

I may seem to praise too much; here is a passage from my wife'sdiary, which proves that I was not alone in being moved, andcompletes the picture:- 'The conductor gave the cue, and all thedancers, waving their arms, swaying their bodies, and clappingtheir breasts in perfect time, opened with an introductory. Theperformers remained seated, except two, and once three, and twice asingle soloist. These stood in the group, making a slight movementwith the feet and rhythmical quiver of the body as they sang. There was a pause after the introductory, and then the realbusiness of the opera--for it was no less--began; an opera whereevery singer was an accomplished actor. The leading man, in animpassioned ecstasy which possessed him from head to foot, seemedtransfigured; once it was as though a strong wind had swept overthe stage--their arms, their feathered fingers thrilling with anemotion that shook my nerves as well: heads and bodies followedlike a field of grain before a gust. My blood came hot and cold, tears pricked my eyes, my head whirled, I felt an almostirresistible impulse to join the dancers. One drama, I think, Ivery nearly understood. A fierce and savage old man took the solopart. He sang of the birth of a prince, and how he was tenderlyrocked in his mother's arms; of his boyhood, when he excelled hisfellows in swimming, climbing, and all athletic sports; of hisyouth, when he went out to sea with his boat and fished; of hismanhood, when he married a wife who cradled a son of his own in herarms. Then came the alarm of war, and a great battle, of which fora time the issue was doubtful; but the hero conquered, as he alwaysdoes, and with a tremendous burst of the victors the piece closed. There were also comic pieces, which caused great amusement. Duringone, an old man behind me clutched me by the arm, shook his fingerin my face with a roguish smile, and said something with a chuckle, which I took to be the equivalent of "O, you women, you women; itis true of you all!" I fear it was not complimentary. At no timewas there the least sign of the ugly indecency of the easternislands. All was poetry pure and simple. The music itself was ascomplex as our own, though constructed on an entirely differentbasis; once or twice I was startled by a bit of something very likethe best English sacred music, but it was only for an instant. Atlast there was a longer pause, and this time the dancers were allon their feet. As the drama went on, the interest grew. Theperformers appealed to each other, to the audience, to the heavenabove; they took counsel with each other, the conspirators drewtogether in a knot; it was just an opera, the drums coming in atproper intervals, the tenor, baritone, and bass all where theyshould be--except that the voices were all of the same calibre. Awoman once sang from the back row with a very fine contralto voicespoilt by being made artificially nasal; I notice all the womenaffect that unpleasantness. At one time a boy of angelic beautywas the soloist; and at another, a child of six or eight, doubtlessan infant phenomenon being trained, was placed in the centre. Thelittle fellow was desperately frightened and embarrassed at first, but towards the close warmed up to his work and showed muchdramatic talent. The changing expressions on the faces of thedancers were so speaking, that it seemed a great stupidity not tounderstand them. '

Our neighbour at this performance, Karaiti, somewhat favours hisButaritarian majesty in shape and feature, being, like him, portly, bearded, and Oriental. In character he seems the reverse: alert, smiling, jovial, jocular, industrious. At home in his own island, he labours himself like a slave, and makes his people labour like aslave-driver. He takes an interest in ideas. George the tradertold him about flying-machines. 'Is that true, George?' he asked. 'It is in the papers, ' replied George. 'Well, ' said Karaiti, 'ifthat man can do it with machinery, I can do it without'; and hedesigned and made a pair of wings, strapped them on his shoulders, went to the end of a pier, launched himself into space, and fellbulkily into the sea. His wives fished him out, for his wingshindered him in swimming. 'George, ' said he, pausing as he went upto change, 'George, you lie. ' He had eight wives, for his smallrealm still follows ancient customs; but he showed embarrassmentwhen this was mentioned to my wife. 'Tell her I have only broughtone here, ' he said anxiously. Altogether the Black Douglas pleasedus much; and as we heard fresh details of the king's uneasiness, and saw for ourselves that all the weapons in the summer parlourhad been hid, we watched with the more admiration the cause of allthis anxiety rolling on his big legs, with his big smiling face, apparently unarmed, and certainly unattended, through the hostiletown. The Red Douglas, pot-bellied Kuma, having perhaps heard wordof the debauch, remained upon his fief; his vassals thus cameuncommanded to the feast, and swelled the following of Karaiti. 

Friday, July 26. --At night in the dark, the singers of Makinparaded in the road before our house and sang the song of theprincess. 'This is the day; she was born to-day; Nei Kamaunave wasborn to-day--a beautiful princess, Queen of Butaritari. ' So I wastold it went in endless iteration. The song was of course out ofseason, and the performance only a rehearsal. But it was aserenade besides; a delicate attention to ourselves from our newfriend, Karaiti. 

Saturday, July 27. --We had announced a performance of the magiclantern to-night in church; and this brought the king to visit us. In honour of the Black Douglas (I suppose) his usual two guardsmenwere now increased to four; and the squad made an outlandish figureas they straggled after him, in straw hats, kilts and jackets. Three carried their arms reversed, the butts over their shoulders, the muzzles menacing the king's plump back; the fourth had passedhis weapon behind his neck, and held it there with arms extendedlike a backboard. The visit was extraordinarily long. The king, no longer galvanised with gin, said and did nothing. He satcollapsed in a chair and let a cigar go out. It was hot, it wassleepy, it was cruel dull; there was no resource but to spy in thecountenance of Tebureimoa for some remaining trait of Mr. Corpsethe butcher. His hawk nose, crudely depressed and flattened at thepoint, did truly seem to us to smell of midnight murder. When hetook his leave, Maka bade me observe him going down the stair (orrather ladder) from the verandah. 'Old man, ' said Maka. 'Yes, 'said I, 'and yet I suppose not old man. ' 'Young man, ' returnedMaka, 'perhaps fo'ty. ' And I have heard since he is most likelyyounger. 

While the magic lantern was showing, I skulked without in the dark. The voice of Maka, excitedly explaining the Scripture slides, seemed to fill not the church only, but the neighbourhood. Allelse was silent. Presently a distant sound of singing arose andapproached; and a procession drew near along the road, the hotclean smell of the men and women striking in my face delightfully. At the corner, arrested by the voice of Maka and the lightening anddarkening of the church, they paused. They had no mind to gonearer, that was plain. They were Makin people, I believe, probably staunch heathens, contemners of the missionary and hisworks. Of a sudden, however, a man broke from their company, tookto his heels, and fled into the church; next moment three hadfollowed him; the next it was a covey of near upon a score, allpelting for their lives. So the little band of the heathen pausedirresolute at the corner, and melted before the attractions of amagic lantern, like a glacier in spring. The more staunch vainlytaunted the deserters; three fled in a guilty silence, but stillfled; and when at length the leader found the wit or the authorityto get his troop in motion and revive the singing, it was with muchdiminished forces that they passed musically on up the dark road. 

Meanwhile inside the luminous pictures brightened and faded. Istood for some while unobserved in the rear of the spectators, whenI could hear just in front of me a pair of lovers following theshow with interest, the male playing the part of interpreter and(like Adam) mingling caresses with his lecture. The wild animals, a tiger in particular, and that old school-treat favourite, thesleeper and the mouse, were hailed with joy; but the chief marveland delight was in the gospel series. Maka, in the opinion of hisaggrieved wife, did not properly rise to the occasion. 'What isthe matter with the man? Why can't he talk?' she cried. Thematter with the man, I think, was the greatness of the opportunity;he reeled under his good fortune; and whether he did ill or well, the exposure of these pious 'phantoms' did as a matter of factsilence in all that part of the island the voice of the scoffer. 'Why then, ' the word went round, 'why then, the Bible is true!'And on our return afterwards we were told the impression was yetlively, and those who had seen might be heard telling those who hadnot, 'O yes, it is all true; these things all happened, we haveseen the pictures. ' The argument is not so childish as it seems;for I doubt if these islanders are acquainted with any other modeof representation but photography; so that the picture of an event(on the old melodrama principle that 'the camera cannot lie, Joseph, ') would appear strong proof of its occurrence. The factamused us the more because our slides were some of them ludicrouslysilly, and one (Christ before Pilate) was received with shouts ofmerriment, in which even Maka was constrained to join. 

Sunday, July 28. --Karaiti came to ask for a repetition of the'phantoms'--this was the accepted word--and, having received apromise, turned and left my humble roof without the shadow of asalutation. I felt it impolite to have the least appearance ofpocketing a slight; the times had been too difficult, and werestill too doubtful; and Queen Victoria's son was bound to maintainthe honour of his house. Karaiti was accordingly summoned thatevening to the Ricks, where Mrs. Rick fell foul of him in words, and Queen Victoria's son assailed him with indignant looks. I wasthe ass with the lion's skin; I could not roar in the language ofthe Gilbert Islands; but I could stare. Karaiti declared he hadmeant no offence; apologised in a sound, hearty, gentlemanlymanner; and became at once at his ease. He had in a dagger toexamine, and announced he would come to price it on the morrow, to-day being Sunday; this nicety in a heathen with eight wivessurprised me. The dagger was 'good for killing fish, ' he saidroguishly; and was supposed to have his eye upon fish upon twolegs. It is at least odd that in Eastern Polynesia fish was theaccepted euphemism for the human sacrifice. Asked as to thepopulation of his island, Karaiti called out to his vassals who satwaiting him outside the door, and they put it at four hundred andfifty; but (added Karaiti jovially) there will soon be plenty more, for all the women are in the family way. Long before we separatedI had quite forgotten his offence. He, however, still bore it inmind; and with a very courteous inspiration returned early on thenext day, paid us a long visit, and punctiliously said farewellwhen he departed. 

Monday, July 29. --The great day came round at last. In the firsthours the night was startled by the sound of clapping hands and thechant of Nei Kamaunava; its melancholy, slow, and somewhat menacingmeasures broken at intervals by a formidable shout. The littlemorsel of humanity thus celebrated in the dark hours was observedat midday playing on the green entirely naked, and equallyunobserved and unconcerned. 

The summer parlour on its artificial islet, relieved against theshimmering lagoon, and shimmering itself with sun and tinned iron, was all day crowded about by eager men and women. Within, it wasboxed full of islanders, of any age and size, and in every degreeof nudity and finery. So close we squatted, that at one time I hada mighty handsome woman on my knees, two little naked urchinshaving their feet against my back. There might be a dame in fullattire of holoku and hat and flowers; and her next neighbour mightthe next moment strip some little rag of a shift from her fatshoulders and come out a monument of flesh, painted rather thancovered by the hairbreadth ridi. Little ladies who thoughtthemselves too great to appear undraped upon so high a festivalwere seen to pause outside in the bright sunshine, their miniatureridis in their hand; a moment more and they were full-dressed andentered the concert-room. 

At either end stood up to sing, or sat down to rest, the alternatecompanies of singers; Kuma and Little Makin on the north, Butaritari and its conjunct hamlets on the south; both groupsconspicuous in barbaric bravery. In the midst, between these rivalcamps of troubadours, a bench was placed; and here the king andqueen throned it, some two or three feet above the crowded audienceon the floor--Tebureimoa as usual in his striped pyjamas with asatchel strapped across one shoulder, doubtless (in the islandfashion) to contain his pistols; the queen in a purple holoku, herabundant hair let down, a fan in her hand. The bench was turnedfacing to the strangers, a piece of well-considered civility; andwhen it was the turn of Butaritari to sing, the pair must twistround on the bench, lean their elbows on the rail, and turn to usthe spectacle of their broad backs. The royal couple occasionallysolaced themselves with a clay pipe; and the pomp of state wasfurther heightened by the rifles of a picket of the guard. 

With this kingly countenance, and ourselves squatted on the ground, we heard several songs from one side or the other. Then royaltyand its guards withdrew, and Queen Victoria's son and daughter-in-law were summoned by acclamation to the vacant throne. Our pridewas perhaps a little modified when we were joined on our highplaces by a certain thriftless loafer of a white; and yet I wasglad too, for the man had a smattering of native, and could give mesome idea of the subject of the songs. One was patriotic, anddared Tembinok' of Apemama, the terror of the group, to aninvasion. One mixed the planting of taro and the harvest-home. Some were historical, and commemorated kings and the illustriouschances of their time, such as a bout of drinking or a war. One, at least, was a drama of domestic interest, excellently played bythe troop from Makin. It told the story of a man who has lost hiswife, at first bewails her loss, then seeks another: the earlierstrains (or acts) are played exclusively by men; but towards theend a woman appears, who has just lost her husband; and I supposethe pair console each other, for the finale seemed of happy omen. Of some of the songs my informant told me briefly they were 'likeabout the weemen'; this I could have guessed myself. Each side (Ishould have said) was strengthened by one or two women. They wereall soloists, did not very often join in the performance, but stooddisengaged at the back part of the stage, and looked (in ridi, necklace, and dressed hair) for all the world like European ballet-dancers. When the song was anyway broad these ladies cameparticularly to the front; and it was singular to see that, aftereach entry, the premiere danseuse pretended to be overcome byshame, as though led on beyond what she had meant, and her maleassistants made a feint of driving her away like one who haddisgraced herself. Similar affectations accompany certain trulyobscene dances of Samoa, where they are very well in place. Hereit was different. The words, perhaps, in this free-spoken world, were gross enough to make a carter blush; and the most suggestivefeature was this feint of shame. For such parts the women showedsome disposition; they were pert, they were neat, they wereacrobatic, they were at times really amusing, and some of them werepretty. But this is not the artist's field; there is the wholewidth of heaven between such capering and ogling, and the strangerhythmic gestures, and strange, rapturous, frenzied faces withwhich the best of the male dancers held us spellbound through aGilbert Island ballet. 

Almost from the first it was apparent that the people of the citywere defeated. I might have thought them even good, only I had theother troop before my eyes to correct my standard, and remind mecontinually of 'the little more, and how much it is. ' Perceivingthemselves worsted, the choir of Butaritari grew confused, blundered, and broke down; amid this hubbub of unfamiliar intervalsI should not myself have recognised the slip, but the audience werequick to catch it, and to jeer. To crown all, the Makin companybegan a dance of truly superlative merit. I know not what it wasabout, I was too much absorbed to ask. In one act a part of thechorus, squealing in some strange falsetto, produced very much theeffect of our orchestra; in another, the dancers, leaping likejumping-jacks, with arms extended, passed through and through eachother's ranks with extraordinary speed, neatness, and humour. Amore laughable effect I never saw; in any European theatre it wouldhave brought the house down, and the island audience roared withlaughter and applause. This filled up the measure for the rivalcompany, and they forgot themselves and decency. After each act orfigure of the ballet, the performers pause a moment standing, andthe next is introduced by the clapping of hands in triplets. Notuntil the end of the whole ballet do they sit down, which is thesignal for the rivals to stand up. But now all rules were to bebroken. During the interval following on this great applause, thecompany of Butaritari leaped suddenly to their feet and mostunhandsomely began a performance of their own. It was strange tosee the men of Makin staring; I have seen a tenor in Europe starewith the same blank dignity into a hissing theatre; but presently, to my surprise, they sobered down, gave up the unsung remainder oftheir ballet, resumed their seats, and suffered their ungallantadversaries to go on and finish. Nothing would suffice. Again, atthe first interval, Butaritari unhandsomely cut in; Makin, irritated in turn, followed the example; and the two companies ofdancers remained permanently standing, continuously clapping hands, and regularly cutting across each other at each pause. I expectedblows to begin with any moment; and our position in the midst washighly unstrategical. But the Makin people had a better thought;and upon a fresh interruption turned and trooped out of the house. We followed them, first because these were the artists, secondbecause they were guests and had been scurvily ill-used. A largepopulation of our neighbours did the same, so that the causeway wasfilled from end to end by the procession of deserters; and theButaritari choir was left to sing for its own pleasure in an emptyhouse, having gained the point and lost the audience. It wassurely fortunate that there was no one drunk; but, drunk or sober, where else would a scene so irritating have concluded withoutblows?

The last stage and glory of this auspicious day was of our ownproviding--the second and positively the last appearance of thephantoms. All round the church, groups sat outside, in the night, where they could see nothing; perhaps ashamed to enter, certainlyfinding some shadowy pleasure in the mere proximity. Within, aboutone-half of the great shed was densely packed with people. In themidst, on the royal dais, the lantern luminously smoked; chancerays of light struck out the earnest countenance of our Chinamangrinding the hand-organ; a fainter glimmer showed off the raftersand their shadows in the hollow of the roof; the pictures shone andvanished on the screen; and as each appeared, there would run ahush, a whisper, a strong shuddering rustle, and a chorus of smallcries among the crowd. There sat by me the mate of a wreckedschooner. 'They would think this a strange sight in Europe or theStates, ' said he, 'going on in a building like this, all tied withbits of string. '

CHAPTER VII--HUSBAND AND WIFE

The trader accustomed to the manners of Eastern Polynesia has alesson to learn among the Gilberts. The ridi is but a spareattire; as late as thirty years back the women went naked untilmarriage; within ten years the custom lingered; and these facts, above all when heard in description, conveyed a very false idea ofthe manners of the group. A very intelligent missionary describedit (in its former state) as a 'Paradise of naked women' for theresident whites. It was at least a platonic Paradise, whereLothario ventured at his peril. Since 1860, fourteen whites haveperished on a single island, all for the same cause, all foundwhere they had no business, and speared by some indignant father ofa family; the figure was given me by one of their contemporarieswho had been more prudent and survived. The strange persistence ofthese fourteen martyrs might seem to point to monomania or a seriesof romantic passions; gin is the more likely key. The poorbuzzards sat alone in their houses by an open case; they drank;their brain was fired; they stumbled towards the nearest houses onchance; and the dart went through their liver. In place of aParadise the trader found an archipelago of fierce husbands and ofvirtuous women. 'Of course if you wish to make love to them, it'sthe same as anywhere else, ' observed a trader innocently; but heand his companions rarely so choose. 

The trader must be credited with a virtue: he often makes a kindand loyal husband. Some of the worst beachcombers in the Pacific, some of the last of the old school, have fallen in my path, andsome of them were admirable to their native wives, and one made adespairing widower. The position of a trader's wife in theGilberts is, besides, unusually enviable. She shares theimmunities of her husband. Curfew in Butaritari sounds for her invain. Long after the bell is rung and the great island ladies areconfined for the night to their own roof, this chartered libertinemay scamper and giggle through the deserted streets or go down tobathe in the dark. The resources of the store are at her hand; shegoes arrayed like a queen, and feasts delicately everyday upontinned meats. And she who was perhaps of no regard or stationamong natives sits with captains, and is entertained on board ofschooners. Five of these privileged dames were some time ourneighbours. Four were handsome skittish lasses, gamesome likechildren, and like children liable to fits of pouting. They woredresses by day, but there was a tendency after dark to strip theselendings and to career and squall about the compound in theaboriginal ridi. Games of cards were continually played, withshells for counters; their course was much marred by cheating; andthe end of a round (above all if a man was of the party) resolveditself into a scrimmage for the counters. The fifth was a matron. It was a picture to see her sail to church on a Sunday, a parasolin hand, a nursemaid following, and the baby buried in a trade hatand armed with a patent feeding-bottle. The service was enlivenedby her continual supervision and correction of the maid. It wasimpossible not to fancy the baby was a doll, and the church someEuropean playroom. All these women were legitimately married. Itis true that the certificate of one, when she proudly showed it, proved to run thus, that she was 'married for one night, ' and hergracious partner was at liberty to 'send her to hell' the nextmorning; but she was none the wiser or the worse for the dastardlytrick. Another, I heard, was married on a work of mine in apirated edition; it answered the purpose as well as a Hall Bible. Notwithstanding all these allurements of social distinction, rarefood and raiment, a comparative vacation from toil, and legitimatemarriage contracted on a pirated edition, the trader must sometimesseek long before he can be mated. While I was in the group one hadbeen eight months on the quest, and he was still a bachelor. 

Within strictly native society the old laws and practices wereharsh, but not without a certain stamp of high-mindedness. Stealthy adultery was punished with death; open elopement wasproperly considered virtue in comparison, and compounded for a finein land. The male adulterer alone seems to have been punished. Itis correct manners for a jealous man to hang himself; a jealouswoman has a different remedy--she bites her rival. Ten or twentyyears ago it was a capital offence to raise a woman's ridi; to thisday it is still punished with a heavy fine; and the garment itselfis still symbolically sacred. Suppose a piece of land to bedisputed in Butaritari, the claimant who shall first hang a ridi onthe tapu-post has gained his cause, since no one can remove ortouch it but himself. 

The ridi was the badge not of the woman but the wife, the mark notof her sex but of her station. It was the collar on the slave'sneck, the brand on merchandise. The adulterous woman seems to havebeen spared; were the husband offended, it would be a poorconsolation to send his draught cattle to the shambles. Karaiti, to this day, calls his eight wives 'his horses, ' some trader havingexplained to him the employment of these animals on farms; andNanteitei hired out his wives to do mason-work. Husbands, at leastwhen of high rank, had the power of life and death; even whitesseem to have possessed it; and their wives, when they hadtransgressed beyond forgiveness, made haste to pronounce theformula of deprecation--I KANA KIM. This form of words had so muchvirtue that a condemned criminal repeating it on a particular dayto the king who had condemned him, must be instantly released. Itis an offer of abasement, and, strangely enough, the reverse--theimitation--is a common vulgar insult in Great Britain to this day. I give a scene between a trader and his Gilbert Island wife, as itwas told me by the husband, now one of the oldest residents, butthen a freshman in the group. 

'Go and light a fire, ' said the trader, 'and when I have broughtthis oil I will cook some fish. ' The woman grunted at him, islandfashion. 'I am not a pig that you should grunt at me, ' said he. 

'I know you are not a pig, ' said the woman, 'neither am I yourslave. '

'To be sure you are not my slave, and if you do not care to stopwith me, you had better go home to your people, ' said he. 'But inthe mean time go and light the fire; and when I have brought thisoil I will cook some fish. '

She went as if to obey; and presently when the trader looked shehad built a fire so big that the cook-house was catching in flames. 

'I Kana Kim!' she cried, as she saw him coming; but he recked not, and hit her with a cooking-pot. The leg pierced her skull, bloodspouted, it was thought she was a dead woman, and the nativessurrounded the house in a menacing expectation. Another white waspresent, a man of older experience. 'You will have us both killedif you go on like this, ' he cried. 'She had said I Kana Kim!' Ifshe had not said I Kana Kim he might have struck her with acaldron. It was not the blow that made the crime, but thedisregard of an accepted formula. 

Polygamy, the particular sacredness of wives, their semi-servilestate, their seclusion in kings' harems, even their privilege ofbiting, all would seem to indicate a Mohammedan society and theopinion of the soullessness of woman. And not so in the least. Itis a mere appearance. After you have studied these extremes in onehouse, you may go to the next and find all reversed, the woman themistress, the man only the first of her thralls. The authority isnot with the husband as such, nor the wife as such. It resides inthe chief or the chief-woman; in him or her who has inherited thelands of the clan, and stands to the clansman in the place ofparent, exacting their service, answerable for their fines. Thereis but the one source of power and the one ground of dignity--rank. The king married a chief-woman; she became his menial, and mustwork with her hands on Messrs. Wightman's pier. The king divorcedher; she regained at once her former state and power. She marriedthe Hawaiian sailor, and behold the man is her flunkey and can beshown the door at pleasure. Nay, and such low-born lords are evencorrected physically, and, like grown but dutiful children, mustendure the discipline. 

We were intimate in one such household, that of Nei Takauti and NanTok'; I put the lady first of necessity. During one week of fool'sparadise, Mrs. Stevenson had gone alone to the sea-side of theisland after shells. I am very sure the proceeding was unsafe; andshe soon perceived a man and woman watching her. Do what shewould, her guardians held her steadily in view; and when theafternoon began to fall, and they thought she had stayed longenough, took her in charge, and by signs and broken English orderedher home. On the way the lady drew from her earring-hole a claypipe, the husband lighted it, and it was handed to my unfortunatewife, who knew not how to refuse the incommodious favour; and whenthey were all come to our house, the pair sat down beside her onthe floor, and improved the occasion with prayer. From that daythey were our family friends; bringing thrice a day the beautifulisland garlands of white flowers, visiting us any evening, andfrequently carrying us down to their own maniap' in return, thewoman leading Mrs. Stevenson by the hand like one child withanother. 

Nan Tok', the husband, was young, extremely handsome, of the mostapproved good humour, and suffering in his precarious station fromsuppressed high spirits. Nei Takauti, the wife, was getting old;her grown son by a former marriage had just hanged himself beforehis mother's eyes in despair at a well-merited rebuke. Perhaps shehad never been beautiful, but her face was full of character, hereye of sombre fire. She was a high chief-woman, but by a strangeexception for a person of her rank, was small, spare, and sinewy, with lean small hands and corded neck. Her full dress of anevening was invariably a white chemise--and for adornment, greenleaves (or sometimes white blossoms) stuck in her hair and thrustthrough her huge earring-holes. The husband on the contrarychanged to view like a kaleidoscope. Whatever pretty thing my wifemight have given to Nei Takauti--a string of beads, a ribbon, apiece of bright fabric--appeared the next evening on the person ofNan Tok'. It was plain he was a clothes-horse; that he worelivery; that, in a word, he was his wife's wife. They reversed theparts indeed, down to the least particular; it was the husband whoshowed himself the ministering angel in the hour of pain, while thewife displayed the apathy and heartlessness of the proverbial man. 

When Nei Takauti had a headache Nan Tok' was full of attention andconcern. When the husband had a cold and a racking toothache thewife heeded not, except to jeer. It is always the woman's part tofill and light the pipe; Nei Takauti handed hers in silence to thewedded page; but she carried it herself, as though the page werenot entirely trusted. Thus she kept the money, but it was he whoran the errands, anxiously sedulous. A cloud on her face dimmedinstantly his beaming looks; on an early visit to their maniap' mywife saw he had cause to be wary. Nan Tok' had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had workedthemselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are toooften disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. InstantlyNan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in anecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had two names; and fromthe nature of their merriment, and the wrath that gathered on herbrow, there must be something ticklish in the second. The husbandpronounced it; a well-directed cocoa-nut from the hand of his wifecaught him on the side of the head, and the voices and the mirth ofthese indiscreet young gentlemen ceased for the day. 

The people of Eastern Polynesia are never at a loss; theiretiquette is absolute and plenary; in every circumstance it tellsthem what to do and how to do it. The Gilbertines are seeminglymore free, and pay for their freedom (like ourselves) in frequentperplexity. This was often the case with the topsy-turvy couple. We had once supplied them during a visit with a pipe and tobacco;and when they had smoked and were about to leave, they foundthemselves confronted with a problem: should they take or leavewhat remained of the tobacco? The piece of plug was taken up, itwas laid down again, it was handed back and forth, and argued over, till the wife began to look haggard and the husband elderly. Theyended by taking it, and I wager were not yet clear of the compoundbefore they were sure they had decided wrong. Another time theyhad been given each a liberal cup of coffee, and Nan Tok' withdifficulty and disaffection made an end of his. Nei Takauti hadtaken some, she had no mind for more, plainly conceived it would bea breach of manners to set down the cup unfinished, and ordered herwedded retainer to dispose of what was left. 'I have swallowed allI can, I cannot swallow more, it is a physical impossibility, ' heseemed to say; and his stern officer reiterated her commands withsecret imperative signals. Luckless dog! but in mere humanity wecame to the rescue and removed the cup. 

I cannot but smile over this funny household; yet I remember thegood souls with affection and respect. Their attention toourselves was surprising. The garlands are much esteemed, theblossoms must be sought far and wide; and though they had manyretainers to call to their aid, we often saw themselves passingafield after the blossoms, and the wife engaged with her own inputting them together. It was no want of only that disregard soincident to husbands, that made Nei Takauti despise the sufferingsof Nan Tok'. When my wife was unwell she proved a diligent andkindly nurse; and the pair, to the extreme embarrassment of thesufferer, became fixtures in the sick-room. This rugged, capable, imperious old dame, with the wild eyes, had deep and tenderqualities: her pride in her young husband it seemed that shedissembled, fearing possibly to spoil him; and when she spoke ofher dead son there came something tragic in her face. But I seemedto trace in the Gilbertines a virility of sense and sentiment whichdistinguishes them (like their harsh and uncouth language) fromtheir brother islanders in the east. 

PART IV: THE GILBERTS--APEMAMA

CHAPTER I--THE KING OF APEMAMA: THE ROYAL TRADER

There is one great personage in the Gilberts: Tembinok' ofApemama: solely conspicuous, the hero of song, the butt of gossip. Through the rest of the group the kings are slain or fallen intutelage: Tembinok' alone remains, the last tyrant, the last erectvestige of a dead society. The white man is everywhere else, building his houses, drinking his gin, getting in and out oftrouble with the weak native governments. There is only one whiteon Apemama, and he on sufferance, living far from court, andhearkening and watching his conduct like a mouse in a cat's ear. Through all the other islands a stream of native visitors comes andgoes, travelling by families, spending years on the grand tour. Apemama alone is left upon one side, the tourist dreading to riskhimself within the clutch of Tembinok'. And fear of the sameGorgon follows and troubles them at home. Maiana once paid himtribute; he once fell upon and seized Nonuti: first steps to theempire of the archipelago. A British warship coming on the scene, the conqueror was driven to disgorge, his career checked in theoutset, his dear-bought armoury sunk in his own lagoon. But theimpression had been made; periodical fear of him still shakes theislands; rumour depicts him mustering his canoes for a freshonfall; rumour can name his destination; and Tembinok' figures inthe patriotic war-songs of the Gilberts like Napoleon in those ofour grandfathers. 

We were at sea, bound from Mariki to Nonuti and Tapituea, when thewind came suddenly fair for Apemama. The course was at oncechanged; all hands were turned-to to clean ship, the decks holy-stoned, all the cabin washed, the trade-room overhauled. In allour cruising we never saw the Equator so smart as she was made forTembinok'. Nor was Captain Reid alone in these coquetries; for, another schooner chancing to arrive during my stay in Apemama, Ifound that she also was dandified for the occasion. And the twocases stand alone in my experience of South Sea traders. 

We had on board a family of native tourists, from the grandsire tothe babe in arms, trying (against an extraordinary series of ill-luck) to regain their native island of Peru. Five times alreadythey had paid their fare and taken ship; five times they had beendisappointed, dropped penniless upon strange islands, or carriedback to Butaritari, whence they sailed. This last attempt had beenno better-starred; their provisions were exhausted. Peru wasbeyond hope, and they had cheerfully made up their minds to a freshstage of exile in Tapituea or Nonuti. With this slant of windtheir random destination became once more changed; and like theCalendar's pilot, when the 'black mountains' hove in view, theychanged colour and beat upon their breasts. Their camp, which wason deck in the ship's waist, resounded with complaint. They wouldbe set to work, they must become slaves, escape was hopeless, theymust live and toil and die in Apemama, in the tyrant's den. Withthis sort of talk they so greatly terrified their children, thatone (a big hulking boy) must at last be torn screaming from theschooner's side. And their fears were wholly groundless. I havelittle doubt they were not suffered to be idle; but I can vouch forit that they were kindly and generously used. For, the matter of ayear later, I was once more shipmate with these inconsistentwanderers on board the Janet Nicoll. Their fare was paid byTembinok'; they who had gone ashore from the Equator destitute, reappeared upon the Janet with new clothes, laden with mats andpresents, and bringing with them a magazine of food, on which theylived like fighting-cocks throughout the voyage; I saw them atlength repatriated, and I must say they showed more concern onquitting Apemama than delight at reaching home. 

We entered by the north passage (Sunday, September 1st), dodgingamong shoals. It was a day of fierce equatorial sunshine; but thebreeze was strong and chill; and the mate, who conned the schoonerfrom the cross-trees, returned shivering to the deck. The lagoonwas thick with many-tinted wavelets; a continuous roaring of theouter sea overhung the anchorage; and the long, hollow crescent ofpalm ruffled and sparkled in the wind. Opposite our berth thebeach was seen to be surmounted for some distance by a terrace ofwhite coral seven or eight feet high and crowned in turn by thescattered and incongruous buildings of the palace. The villageadjoins on the south, a cluster of high-roofed maniap's. Andvillage and palace seemed deserted. 

We were scarce yet moored, however, before distant and busy figuresappeared upon the beach, a boat was launched, and a crew pulled outto us bringing the king's ladder. Tembinok' had once an accident;has feared ever since to entrust his person to the rotten chandleryof South Sea traders; and devised in consequence a frame of wood, which is brought on board a ship as soon as she appears, andremains lashed to her side until she leave. The boat's crew, having applied this engine, returned at once to shore. They mightnot come on board; neither might we land, or not without danger ofoffence; the king giving pratique in person. An interval followed, during which dinner was delayed for the great man--the prelude ofthe ladder, giving us some notion of his weighty body and sensible, ingenious character, had highly whetted our curiosity; and it waswith something like excitement that we saw the beach and terracesuddenly blacken with attendant vassals, the king and party embark, the boat (a man-of-war gig) come flying towards us dead before thewind, and the royal coxswain lay us cleverly aboard, mount theladder with a jealous diffidence, and descend heavily on deck. 

Not long ago he was overgrown with fat, obscured to view, and aburthen to himself. Captains visiting the island advised him towalk; and though it broke the habits of a life and the traditionsof his rank, he practised the remedy with benefit. His corpulenceis now portable; you would call him lusty rather than fat; but hisgait is still dull, stumbling, and elephantine. He neither stopsnor hastens, but goes about his business with an implacabledeliberation. We could never see him and not be struck with hisextraordinary natural means for the theatre: a beaked profile likeDante's in the mask, a mane of long black hair, the eye brilliant, imperious, and inquiring: for certain parts, and to one who couldhave used it, the face was a fortune. His voice matched it well, being shrill, powerful, and uncanny, with a note like a sea-bird's. Where there are no fashions, none to set them, few to follow themif they were set, and none to criticise, he dresses--as Sir CharlesGrandison lived--'to his own heart. ' Now he wears a woman's frock, now a naval uniform; now (and more usually) figures in a masqueradecostume of his own design: trousers and a singular jacket withshirt tails, the cut and fit wonderful for island workmanship, thematerial always handsome, sometimes green velvet, sometimescardinal red silk. This masquerade becomes him admirably. In thewoman's frock he looks ominous and weird beyond belief. I see himnow come pacing towards me in the cruel sun, solitary, a figure outof Hoffmann. 

A visit on board ship, such as that at which we now assisted, makesa chief part and by far the chief diversion of the life ofTembinok'. He is not only the sole ruler, he is the sole merchantof his triple kingdom, Apemama, Aranuka, and Kuria, well-plantedislands. The taro goes to the chiefs, who divide as they pleaseamong their immediate adherents; but certain fish, turtles--whichabound in Kuria, --and the whole produce of the coco-palm, belongexclusively to Tembinok'. 'A' cobra berong me, ' observed hismajesty with a wave of his hand; and he counts and sells it by thehouseful. 'You got copra, king?' I have heard a trader ask. 'Igot two, three outches, ' his majesty replied: 'I think three. 'Hence the commercial importance of Apemama, the trade of threeislands being centred there in a single hand; hence it is that somany whites have tried in vain to gain or to preserve a footing;hence ships are adorned, cooks have special orders, and captainsarray themselves in smiles, to greet the king. If he be pleasedwith his welcome and the fare he may pass days on board, and, everyday, and sometimes every hour, will be of profit to the ship. Heoscillates between the cabin, where he is entertained with strangemeats, and the trade-room, where he enjoys the pleasures ofshopping on a scale to match his person. A few obsequiousattendants squat by the house door, awaiting his least signal. Inthe boat, which has been suffered to drop astern, one or two of hiswives lie covered from the sun under mats, tossed by the short seaof the lagoon, and enduring agonies of heat and tedium. Thisseverity is now and then relaxed and the wives allowed on board. Three or four were thus favoured on the day of our arrival:substantial ladies airily attired in ridis. Each had a share ofcopra, her peculium, to dispose of for herself. The display in thetrade-room--hats, ribbbons, dresses, scents, tins of salmon--thepride of the eye and the lust of the flesh--tempted them in vain. They had but the one idea--tobacco, the island currency, tantamountto minted gold; returned to shore with it, burthened but rejoicing;and late into the night, on the royal terrace, were to be seencounting the sticks by lamplight in the open air. 

The king is no such economist. He is greedy of things new andforeign. House after house, chest after chest, in the palaceprecinct, is already crammed with clocks, musical boxes, bluespectacles, umbrellas, knitted waistcoats, bolts of stuff, tools, rifles, fowling-pieces, medicines, European foods, sewing-machines, and, what is more extraordinary, stoves: all that ever caught hiseye, tickled his appetite, pleased him for its use, or puzzled himwith its apparent inutility. And still his lust is unabated. Heis possessed by the seven devils of the collector. He hears athing spoken of, and a shadow comes on his face. 'I think I no gothim, ' he will say; and the treasures he has seem worthless incomparison. If a ship be bound for Apemama, the merchant racks hisbrain to hit upon some novelty. This he leaves carelessly in themain cabin or partly conceals in his own berth, so that the kingshall spy it for himself. 'How much you want?' inquires Tembinok', passing and pointing. 'No, king; that too dear, ' returns thetrader. 'I think I like him, ' says the king. This was a bowl ofgold-fish. On another occasion it was scented soap. 'No, king;that cost too much, ' said the trader; 'too good for a Kanaka. ''How much you got? I take him all, ' replied his majesty, andbecame the lord of seventeen boxes at two dollars a cake. Oragain, the merchant feigns the article is not for sale, is privateproperty, an heirloom or a gift; and the trick infallibly succeeds. Thwart the king and you hold him. His autocratic nature rears atthe affront of opposition. He accepts it for a challenge; sets histeeth like a hunter going at a fence; and with no mark of emotion, scarce even of interest, stolidly piles up the price. Thus, forour sins, he took a fancy to my wife's dressing-bag, a thingentirely useless to the man, and sadly battered by years ofservice. Early one forenoon he came to our house, sat down, andabruptly offered to purchase it. I told him I sold nothing, andthe bag at any rate was a present from a friend; but he wasacquainted with these pretexts from of old, and knew what they wereworth and how to meet them. Adopting what I believe is called 'theobject method, ' he drew out a bag of English gold, sovereigns andhalf-sovereigns, and began to lay them one by one in silence on thetable; at each fresh piece reading our faces with a look. In vainI continued to protest I was no trader; he deigned not to reply. There must have been twenty pounds on the table, he was still goingon, and irritation had begun to mingle with our embarrassment, whena happy idea came to our delivery. Since his majesty thought somuch of the bag, we said, we must beg him to accept it as apresent. It was the most surprising turn in Tembinok's experience. He perceived too late that his persistence was unmannerly; hung hishead a while in silence; then, lifting up a sheepish countenance, 'I 'shamed, ' said the tyrant. It was the first and the last timewe heard him own to a flaw in his behaviour. Half an hour after hesent us a camphor-wood chest worth only a few dollars--but thenheaven knows what Tembinok' had paid for it. 

Cunning by nature, and versed for forty years in the government ofmen, it must not be supposed that he is cheated blindly, or hasresigned himself without resistance to be the milch-cow of thepassing trader. His efforts have been even heroic. Like Nakaeiaof Makin, he has owned schooners. More fortunate than Nakaeia, hehas found captains. Ships of his have sailed as far as to thecolonies. He has trafficked direct, in his own bottoms, with NewZealand. And even so, even there, the world-enveloping dishonestyof the white man prevented him; his profit melted, his shipreturned in debt, the money for the insurance was embezzled, andwhen the Coronet came to be lost, he was astonished to find he hadlost all. At this he dropped his weapons; owned he might ashopefully wrestle with the winds of heaven; and like an experiencedsheep, submitted his fleece thenceforward to the shearers. He isthe last man in the world to waste anger on the incurable; acceptsit with cynical composure; asks no more in those he deals with thana certain decency of moderation; drives as good a bargain as hecan; and when he considers he is more than usually swindled, writesit in his memory against the merchant's name. He once ran over tome a list of captains and supercargoes with whom he had donebusiness, classing them under three heads: 'He cheat a litty'--'Hecheat plenty'--and 'I think he cheat too much. ' For the first twoclasses he expressed perfect toleration; sometimes, but not always, for the third. I was present when a certain merchant was turnedabout his business, and was the means (having a considerableinfluence ever since the bag) of patching up the dispute. Even onthe day of our arrival there was like to have been a hitch withCaptain Reid: the ground of which is perhaps worth recital. Amonggoods exported specially for Tembinok' there is a beverage known(and labelled) as Hennessy's brandy. It is neither Hennessy, noreven brandy; is about the colour of sherry, but is not sherry;tastes of kirsch, and yet neither is it kirsch. The king, atleast, has grown used to this amazing brand, and rather prideshimself upon the taste; and any substitution is a double offence, being at once to cheat him and to cast a doubt upon his palate. Asimilar weakness is to be observed in all connoisseurs. Now thelast case sold by the Equator was found to contain a different andI would fondly fancy a superior distillation; and the conversationopened very black for Captain Reid. But Tembinok' is a moderateman. He was reminded and admitted that all men were liable toerror, even himself; accepted the principle that a fault handsomelyacknowledged should be condoned; and wound the matter up with thisproposal: 'Tuppoti I mi'take, you 'peakee me. Tuppoti youmi'take, I 'peakee you. Mo' betta. '

After dinner and supper in the cabin, a glass or two of 'Hennetti'--the genuine article this time, with the kirsch bouquet, --and fivehours' lounging on the trade-room counter, royalty embarked forhome. Three tacks grounded the boat before the palace; the wiveswere carried ashore on the backs of vassals; Tembinok' stepped on arailed platform like a steamer's gangway, and was borne shoulderhigh through the shallows, up the beach, and by an inclined plane, paved with pebbles, to the glaring terrace where he dwells. 

CHAPTER II--THE KING OF APEMAMA: FOUNDATION OF EQUATOR TOWN

Our first sight of Tembinok' was a matter of concern, almost alarm, to my whole party. We had a favour to seek; we must approach inthe proper courtly attitude of a suitor; and must either please himor fail in the main purpose of our voyage. It was our wish to landand live in Apemama, and see more near at hand the odd character ofthe man and the odd (or rather ancient) condition of his island. In all other isles of the South Seas a white man may land with hischest, and set up house for a lifetime, if he choose, and if hehave the money or the trade; no hindrance is conceivable. ButApemama is a close island, lying there in the sea with closeddoors; the king himself, like a vigilant officer, ready at thewicket to scrutinise and reject intrenching visitors. Hence theattraction of our enterprise; not merely because it was a littledifficult, but because this social quarantine, a curiosity initself, has been the preservative of others. 

Tembinok', like most tyrants, is a conservative; like manyconservatives, he eagerly welcomes new ideas, and, except in thefield of politics, leans to practical reform. When themissionaries came, professing a knowledge of the truth, he readilyreceived them; attended their worship, acquired the accomplishmentof public prayer, and made himself a student at their feet. It isthus--it is by the cultivation of similar passing chances--that hehas learned to read, to write, to cipher, and to speak his queer, personal English, so different from ordinary 'Beach de Mar, ' somuch more obscure, expressive, and condensed. His educationattended to, he found time to become critical of the new inmates. Like Nakaeia of Makin, he is an admirer of silence in the island;broods over it like a great ear; has spies who report daily; andhad rather his subjects sang than talked. The service, and inparticular the sermon, were thus sure to become offences: 'Here, in my island, _I_ 'peak, ' he once observed to me. 'My chieps no'peak--do what I talk. ' He looked at the missionary, and what didhe see? 'See Kanaka 'peak in a big outch!' he cried, with a strongring of sarcasm. Yet he endured the subversive spectacle, andmight even have continued to endure it, had not a fresh pointarisen. He looked again, to employ his own figure; and the Kanakawas no longer speaking, he was doing worse--he was building acopra-house. The king was touched in his chief interests; revenueand prerogative were threatened. He considered besides (and somethink with him) that trade is incompatible with the missionaryclaims. 'Tuppoti mitonary think "good man": very good. Tuppotihe think "cobra": no good. I send him away ship. ' Such was hisabrupt history of the evangelist in Apemama. 

Similar deportations are common: 'I send him away ship' is theepitaph of not a few, his majesty paying the exile's fare to thenext place of call. For instance, being passionately fond ofEuropean food, he has several times added to his household a whitecook, and one after another these have been deported. They, ontheir side, swear they were not paid their wages; he, on his, thatthey robbed and swindled him beyond endurance: both perhapsjustly. A more important case was that of an agent, despatched (asI heard the story) by a firm of merchants to worm his way into theking's good graces, become, if possible, premier, and handle thecopra in the interest of his employers. He obtained authority toland, practised his fascinations, was patiently listened to byTembinok', supposed himself on the highway to success; and behold!when the next ship touched at Apemama, the would-be premier wasflung into a boat--had on board--his fare paid, and so good-bye. But it is needless to multiply examples; the proof of the puddingis in the eating. When we came to Apemama, of so many white menwho have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained--asilent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the kingremarks, 'I think he good; he no 'peak. '

I was warned at the outset we might very well fail in our design:yet never dreamed of what proved to be the fact, that we should beleft four-and-twenty hours in suspense and come within an ace ofultimate rejection. Captain Reid had primed himself; no sooner wasthe king on board, and the Hennetti question amicably settled, thanhe proceeded to express my request and give an abstract of myclaims and virtues. The gammon about Queen Victoria's son might dofor Butaritari; it was out of the question here; and I now figuredas 'one of the Old Men of England, ' a person of deep knowledge, come expressly to visit Tembinok's dominion, and eager to reportupon it to the no less eager Queen Victoria. The king made noshadow of an answer, and presently began upon a different subject. We might have thought that he had not heard, or not understood;only that we found ourselves the subject of a constant study. Aswe sat at meals, he took us in series and fixed upon each, for neara minute at a time, the same hard and thoughtful stare. As he thuslooked he seemed to forget himself, the subject and the company, and to become absorbed in the process of his thought; the look waswholly impersonal; I have seen the same in the eyes of portrait-painters. The counts upon which whites have been deported aremainly four: cheating Tembinok', meddling overmuch with copra, which is the source of his wealth, and one of the sinews of hispower, 'PEAKING, and political intrigue. I felt guiltless uponall; but how to show it? I would not have taken copra in a gift:how to express that quality by my dinner-table bearing? The restof the party shared my innocence and my embarrassment. They sharedalso in my mortification when after two whole meal-times and theodd moments of an afternoon devoted to this reconnoitring, Tembinok' took his leave in silence. Next morning, the sameundisguised study, the same silence, was resumed; and the secondday had come to its maturity before I was informed abruptly that Ihad stood the ordeal. 'I look your eye. You good man. You nolie, ' said the king: a doubtful compliment to a writer of romance. Later he explained he did not quite judge by the eye only, but themouth as well. 'Tuppoti I see man, ' he explained. 'I no tavvygood man, bad man. I look eye, look mouth. Then I tavvy. LookEYE, look mouth, ' he repeated. And indeed in our case the mouthhad the most to do with it, and it was by our talk that we gainedadmission to the island; the king promising himself (and I believereally amassing) a vast amount of useful knowledge ere we left. 

The terms of our admission were as follows: We were to choose asite, and the king should there build us a town. His people shouldwork for us, but the king only was to give them orders. One of hiscooks should come daily to help mine, and to learn of him. In caseour stores ran out, he would supply us, and be repaid on the returnof the Equator. On the other hand, he was to come to meals with uswhen so inclined; when he stayed at home, a dish was to be sent himfrom our table; and I solemnly engaged to give his subjects noliquor or money (both of which they are forbidden to possess) andno tobacco, which they were to receive only from the royal hand. Ithink I remember to have protested against the stringency of thislast article; at least, it was relaxed, and when a man worked forme I was allowed to give him a pipe of tobacco on the premises, butnone to take away. 

The site of Equator City--we named our city for the schooner--wassoon chosen. The immediate shores of the lagoon are windy andblinding; Tembinok' himself is glad to grope blue-spectacled on histerrace; and we fled the neighbourhood of the red conjunctiva, thesuppurating eyeball, and the beggar who pursues and beseeches thepassing foreigner for eye wash. Behind the town the country isdiversified; here open, sandy, uneven, and dotted with dwarfishpalms; here cut up with taro trenches, deep and shallow, and, according to the growth of the plants, presenting now theappearance of a sandy tannery, now of an alleyed and green garden. A path leads towards the sea, mounting abruptly to the main levelof the island--twenty or even thirty feet, although Findlay givesfive; and just hard by the top of the rise, where the coco-palmsbegin to be well grown, we found a grove of pandanus, and a pieceof soil pleasantly covered with green underbush. A well was notfar off under a rustic well-house; nearer still, in a sandy cup ofthe land, a pond where we might wash our clothes. The place wasout of the wind, out of the sun, and out of sight of the village. It was shown to the king, and the town promised for the morrow. 

The morrow came, Mr. Osbourne landed, found nothing done, andcarried his complaint to Tembinok'. He heard it, rose, called fora Winchester, stepped without the royal palisade, and fired twoshots in the air. A shot in the air is the first Apemama warning;it has the force of a proclamation in more loquacious countries;and his majesty remarked agreeably that it would make his labourers'mo' bright. ' In less than thirty minutes, accordingly, the menhad mustered, the work was begun, and we were told that we mightbring our baggage when we pleased. 

It was two in the afternoon ere the first boat was beached, and thelong procession of chests and crates and sacks began to stragglethrough the sandy desert towards Equator Town. The grove ofpandanus was practically a thing of the past. Fire surrounded andsmoke rose in the green underbush. In a wide circuit the axes werestill crashing. Those very advantages for which the place waschosen, it had been the king's first idea to abolish; and in themidst of this devastation there stood already a good-sized maniap'and a small closed house. A mat was spread near by for Tembinok';here he sat superintending, in cardinal red, a pith helmet on hishead, a meerschaum pipe in his mouth, a wife stretched at his backwith custody of the matches and tobacco. Twenty or thirty feet infront of him the bulk of the workers squatted on the ground; someof the bush here survived and in this the commons sat nearly totheir shoulders, and presented only an arc of brown faces, blackheads, and attentive eyes fixed on his majesty. Long pausesreigned, during which the subjects stared and the king smoked. Then Tembinok' would raise his voice and speak shrilly and briefly. There was never a response in words; but if the speech werejesting, there came by way of answer discreet, obsequious laughter--such laughter as we hear in schoolrooms; and if it were practical, the sudden uprising and departure of the squad. Twice they sodisappeared, and returned with further elements of the city: asecond house and a second maniap'. It was singular to spy, far offthrough the coco stems, the silent oncoming of the maniap', atfirst (it seemed) swimming spontaneously in the air--but on anearer view betraying under the eaves many score of moving nakedlegs. In all the affair servile obedience was no less remarkablethan servile deliberation. The gang had here mustered by the noteof a deadly weapon; the man who looked on was the unquestionedmaster of their lives; and except for civility, they bestirredthemselves like so many American hotel clerks. The spectator wasaware of an unobtrusive yet invincible inertia, at which theskipper of a trading dandy might have torn his hair. 

Yet the work was accomplished. By dusk, when his majesty withdrew, the town was founded and complete, a new and ruder Amphion havingcalled it from nothing with three cracks of a rifle. And the nextmorning the same conjurer obliged us with a further miracle: amystic rampart fencing us, so that the path which ran by our doorsbecame suddenly impassable, the inhabitants who had business acrossthe isle must fetch a wide circuit, and we sat in the midst in atransparent privacy, seeing, seen, but unapproachable, like bees ina glass hive. The outward and visible sign of this glamour was nomore than a few ragged coco-leaf garlands round the stems of theoutlying palms; but its significance reposed on the tremendoussanction of the tapu and the guns of Tembinok'. 

We made our first meal that night in the improvised city, where wewere to stay two months, and which--so soon as we had done with it--was to vanish in a day as it appeared, its elements returningwhence they came, the tapu raised, the traffic on the path resumed, the sun and the moon peering in vain between the palm-trees for thebygone work, the wind blowing over an empty site. Yet the place, which is now only an episode in some memories, seemed to have beenbuilt, and to be destined to endure, for years. It was a busyhamlet. One of the maniap's we made our dining-room, one thekitchen. The houses we reserved for sleeping. They were on theadmirable Apemama plan: out and away the best house in the SouthSeas; standing some three feet above the ground on posts; the sidesof woven flaps, which can be raised to admit light and air, orlowered to shut out the wind and the rain: airy, healthy, clean, and watertight. We had a hen of a remarkable kind: almost uniquein my experience, being a hen that occasionally laid eggs. Not faroff, Mrs. Stevenson tended a garden of salad and shalots. Thesalad was devoured by the hen--which was her bane. The shalotswere served out a leaf at a time, and welcomed and relished likepeaches. Toddy and green cocoa-nuts were brought us daily. Weonce had a present of fish from the king, and once of a turtle. Sometimes we shot so-called plover along on the shore, sometimeswild chicken in the bush. The rest of our diet was from tins. 

Our occupations were very various. While some of the party wouldbe away sketching, Mr. Osbourne and I hammered away at a novel. Weread Gibbon and Carlyle aloud; we blew on flageolets, we strummedon guitars; we took photographs by the light of the sun, the moon, and flash-powder; sometimes we played cards. Pot-hunting engaged apart of our leisure. I have myself passed afternoons in theexciting but innocuous pursuit of winged animals with a revolver;and it was fortunate there were better shots of the party, andfortunate the king could lend us a more suitable weapon, in theform of an excellent fowling-piece, or our spare diet had beensparer still. 

Night was the time to see our city, after the moon was up, afterthe lamps were lighted, and so long as the fire sparkled in thecook-house. We suffered from a plague of flies and mosquitoes, comparable to that of Egypt; our dinner-table (lent, like all ourfurniture, by the king) must be enclosed in a tent of netting, ourcitadel and refuge; and this became all luminous, and bulged andbeaconed under the eaves, like the globe of some monstrous lampunder the margin of its shade. Our cabins, the sides being proppedat a variety of inclinations, spelled out strange, angular patternsof brightness. In his roofed and open kitchen, Ah Fu was to beseen by lamp and firelight, dabbling among pots. Over all, therefell in the season an extraordinary splendour of mellow moonshine. The sand sparkled as with the dust of diamonds; the stars hadvanished. At intervals, a dusky night-bird, slow and low flying, passed in the colonnade of the tree stems and uttered a hoarsecroaking cry. 

CHAPTER III--THE KING OF APEMAMA: THE PALACE OF MANY WOMEN

The palace, or rather the ground which it includes, is severalacres in extent. A terrace encloses it toward the lagoon; on theside of the land, a palisade with several gates. These are scarceintended for defence; a man, if he were strong, might easily pluckdown the palisade; he need not be specially active to leap from thebeach upon the terrace. There is no parade of guards, soldiers, orweapons; the armoury is under lock and key; and the only sentinelsare certain inconspicuous old women lurking day and night beforethe gates. By day, these crones were often engaged in boilingsyrup or the like household occupation; by night, they lay ambushedin the shadow or crouched along the palisade, filling the office ofeunuchs to this harem, sole guards upon a tyrant life. 

Female wardens made a fit outpost for this palace of many women. Of the number of the king's wives I have no guess; and but a looseidea of their function. He himself displayed embarrassment whenthey were referred to as his wives, called them himself 'mypamily, ' and explained they were his 'cutcheons'--cousins. Wedistinguished four of the crowd: the king's mother; his sister, agrave, trenchant woman, with much of her brother's intelligence;the queen proper, to whom (and to whom alone) my wife was formallypresented; and the favourite of the hour, a pretty, graceful girl, who sat with the king daily, and once (when he shed tears) consoledhim with caresses. I am assured that even with her his relationsare platonic. In the background figured a multitude of ladies, thelean, the plump, and the elephantine, some in sacque frocks, somein the hairbreadth ridi; high-born and low, slave and mistress;from the queen to the scullion, from the favourite to the scraggysentries at the palisade. Not all of these of course are of 'mypamily, '--many are mere attendants; yet a surprising number sharedthe responsibility of the king's trust. These were key-bearers, treasurers, wardens of the armoury, the napery, and the stores. Each knew and did her part to admiration. Should anything berequired--a particular gun, perhaps, or a particular bolt ofstuff, --the right queen was summoned; she came bringing the rightchest, opened it in the king's presence, and displayed her chargein perfect preservation--the gun cleaned and oiled, the goods dulyfolded. Without delay or haste, and with the minimum of speech, the whole great establishment turned on wheels like a machine. Nowhere have I seen order more complete and pervasive. And yet Iwas always reminded of Norse tales of trolls and ogres who kepttheir hearts buried in the ground for the mere safety, and mustconfide the secret to their wives. For these weapons are the lifeof Tembinok'. He does not aim at popularity; but drives and braveshis subjects, with a simplicity of domination which it isimpossible not to admire, hard not to sympathise with. Should oneout of so many prove faithless, should the armoury be secretlyunlocked, should the crones have dozed by the palisade and theweapons find their way unseen into the village, revolution would benearly certain, death the most probable result, and the spirit ofthe tyrant of Apemama flit to rejoin his predecessors of Mariki andTapituea. Yet those whom he so trusts are all women, and allrivals. 

There is indeed a ministry and staff of males: cook, steward, carpenter, and supercargoes: the hierarchy of a schooner. Thespies, 'his majesty's daily papers, ' as we called them, come everymorning to report, and go again. The cook and steward areconcerned with the table only. The supercargoes, whose business itis to keep tally of the copra at three pounds a month and apercentage, are rarely in the palace; and two at least are in theother islands. The carpenter, indeed, shrewd and jolly old Rubam--query, Reuben?--promoted on my last visit to the greater dignity ofgovernor, is daily present, altering, extending, embellishing, pursuing the endless series of the king's inventions; and hismajesty will sometimes pass an afternoon watching and talking withRubam at his work. But the males are still outsiders; none seemsto be armed, none is entrusted with a key; by dusk they are allusually departed from the palace; and the weight of the monarchyand of the monarch's life reposes unshared on the women. 

Here is a household unlike, indeed, to one of ours; more unlikestill to the Oriental harem: that of an elderly childless man, hisdays menaced, dwelling alone amid a bevy of women of all ages, ranks, and relationships, --the mother, the sister, the cousin, thelegitimate wife, the concubine, the favourite, the eldest born, andshe of yesterday; he, in their midst, the only master, the onlymale, the sole dispenser of honours, clothes, and luxuries, thesole mark of multitudinous ambitions and desires. I doubt if youcould find a man in Europe so bold as to attempt this piece of tactand government. And seemingly Tembinok' himself had trouble in thebeginning. I hear of him shooting at a wife for some levity onboard a schooner. Another, on some more serious offence, he slewoutright; he exposed her body in an open box, and (to make thewarning more memorable) suffered it to putrefy before the palacegate. Doubtless his growing years have come to his assistance; forupon so large a scale it is more easy to play the father than thehusband. And to-day, at least to the eye of a stranger, all seemsto go smoothly, and the wives to be proud of their trust, proud oftheir rank, and proud of their cunning lord. 

I conceived they made rather a hero of the man. A popular masterin a girls' school might, perhaps, offer a figure of hispreponderating station. But then the master does not eat, sleep, live, and wash his dirty linen in the midst of his admirers; heescapes, he has a room of his own, he leads a private life; if hehad nothing else, he has the holidays, and the more unhappyTembinok' is always on the stage and on the stretch. 

In all my coming and going, I never heard him speak harshly orexpress the least displeasure. An extreme, rather heavy, benignity--the benignity of one sure to be obeyed--marked hisdemeanour; so that I was at times reminded of Samual Richardson inhis circle of admiring women. The wives spoke up and seemed tovolunteer opinions, like our wives at home--or, say, like dotingbut respectable aunts. Altogether, I conclude that he rules hisseraglio much more by art than terror; and those who give adifferent account (and who have none of them enjoyed myopportunities of observation) perhaps failed to distinguish betweendegrees of rank, between 'my pamily' and the hangers-on, laundresses, and prostitutes. 

A notable feature is the evening game of cards when lamps are setforth upon the terrace, and 'I and my pamily' play for tobacco bythe hour. It is highly characteristic of Tembinok' that he mustinvent a game for himself; highly characteristic of his worshippinghousehold that they should swear by the absurd invention. It isfounded on poker, played with the honours out of many packs, andinconceivably dreary. But I have a passion for all games, studiedit, and am supposed to be the only white who ever fairly graspedits principle: a fact for which the wives (with whom I was nototherwise popular) admired me with acclamation. It was impossibleto be deceived; this was a genuine feeling: they were proud oftheir private game, had been cut to the quick by the want ofinterest shown in it by others, and expanded under the flattery ofmy attention. Tembinok' puts up a double stake, and receives inreturn two hands to choose from: a shallow artifice which thewives (in all these years) have not yet fathomed. He himself, whentalking with me privately, made not the least secret that he wassecure of winning; and it was thus he explained his recentliberality on board the Equator. He let the wives buy their owntobacco, which pleased them at the moment. He won it back atcards, which made him once more, and without fresh expense, thatwhich he ought to be, --the sole fount of all indulgences. And hesummed the matter up in that phrase with which he almost alwaysconcludes any account of his policy: 'Mo' betta. '

The palace compound is laid with broken coral, excruciating to theeyes and the bare feet, but exquisitely raked and weeded. A scoreor more of buildings lie in a sort of street along the palisade andscattered on the margin of the terrace; dwelling-houses for thewives and the attendants, storehouses for the king's curios andtreasures, spacious maniap's for feast or council, some on pillarsof wood, some on piers of masonry. One was still in hand, a newinvention, the king's latest born: a European frame-house builtfor coolness inside a lofty maniap': its roof planked like aship's deck to be a raised, shady, and yet private promenade. Itwas here the king spent hours with Rubam; here I would sometimesjoin them; the place had a most singular appearance; and I must sayI was greatly taken with the fancy, and joined with relish in thecounsels of the architects. 

Suppose we had business with his majesty by day: we strolled overthe sand and by the dwarfish palms, exchanged a 'Konamaori' withthe crone on duty, and entered the compound. The wide sheet ofcoral glared before us deserted; all having stowed themselves indark canvas from the excess of room. I have gone to and fro inthat labyrinth of a place, seeking the king; and the only breathingcreature I could find was when I peered under the eaves of amaniap', and saw the brawny body of one of the wives stretched onthe floor, a naked Amazon plunged in noiseless slumber. If it werestill the hour of the 'morning papers' the quest would be moreeasy, the half-dozen obsequious, sly dogs squatting on the groundoutside a house, crammed as far as possible in its narrow shadow, and turning to the king a row of leering faces. Tembinok' would bewithin, the flaps of the cabin raised, the trade blowing through, hearing their report. Like journalists nearer home, when the day'snews were scanty, these would make the more of it in words; and Ihave known one to fill up a barren morning with an imaginaryconversation of two dogs. Sometimes the king deigns to laugh, sometimes to question or jest with them, his voice sounding shrillyfrom the cabin. By his side he may have the heir-apparent, Paul, his nephew and adopted son, six years old, stark naked, and a modelof young human beauty. And there will always be the favourite andperhaps two other wives awake; four more lying supine under matsand whelmed in slumber. Or perhaps we came later, fell on a moreprivate hour, and found Tembinok' retired in the house with thefavourite, an earthenware spittoon, a leaden inkpot, and acommercial ledger. In the last, lying on his belly, he writes fromday to day the uneventful history of his reign; and when thusemployed he betrayed a touch of fretfulness on interruption withwhich I was well able to sympathise. The royal annalist once readme a page or so, translating as he went; but the passage beinggenealogical, and the author boggling extremely in his version, Iown I have been sometimes better entertained. Nor does he confinehimself to prose, but touches the lyre, too, in his leisuremoments, and passes for the chief bard of his kingdom, as he is itssole public character, leading architect, and only merchant. 

His competence, however, does not reach to music; and his verses, when they are ready, are taught to a professional musician, whosets them and instructs the chorus. Asked what his songs wereabout, Tembinok' replied, 'Sweethearts and trees and the sea. Notall the same true, all the same lie. ' For a condensed view oflyrical poetry (except that he seems to have forgot the stars andflowers) this would be hard to mend. These multifariousoccupations bespeak (in a native and an absolute prince) unusualactivity of mind. 

The palace court at noon is a spot to be remembered with awe, thevisitor scrambling there, on the loose stones, through a splendidnightmare of light and heat; but the sweep of the wind delivers itfrom flies and mosquitoes; and with the set of sun it becameheavenly. I remember it best on moonless nights. The air was likea bath of milk. Countless shining stars were overhead, the lagoonpaved with them. Herds of wives squatted by companies on thegravel, softly chatting. Tembinok' would doff his jacket, and sitbare and silent, perhaps meditating songs; the favourite usually byhim, silent also. Meanwhile in the midst of the court, the palacelanterns were being lit and marshalled in rank upon the ground--sixor eight square yards of them; a sight that gave one strange ideasof the number of 'my pamily': such a sight as may be seen aboutdusk in a corner of some great terminus at home. Presently thesefared off into all corners of the precinct, lighting the lastlabours of the day, lighting one after another to their rest thatprodigious company of women. A few lingered in the middle of thecourt for the card-party, and saw the honours shuffled and dealt, and Tembinok' deliberating between his two; hands, and the queenslosing their tobacco. Then these also were scattered andextinguished; and their place was taken by a great bonfire, thenight-light of the palace. When this was no more, smaller firesburned likewise at the gates. These were tended by the crones, unseen, unsleeping--not always unheard. Should any approach in thedark hours, a guarded alert made the circuit of the palisade; eachsentry signalled her neighbour with a stone; the rattle of fallingpebbles passed and died away; and the wardens of Tembinok' crouchedin their places silent as before. 

CHAPTER IV--THE KING OF APEMAMA: EQUATOR TOWN AND THE PALACE

Five persons were detailed to wait upon us. Uncle Parker, whobrought us toddy and green nuts, was an elderly, almost an old man, with the spirits, the industry, and the morals of a boy of ten. His face was ancient, droll, and diabolical, the skin stretchedover taut sinews, like a sail on the guide-rope; and he smiled withevery muscle of his head. His nuts must be counted every day, orhe would deceive us in the tale; they must be daily examined, orsome would prove to be unhusked; nothing but the king's name, andscarcely that, would hold him to his duty. After his toils wereover he was given a pipe, matches, and tobacco, and sat on thefloor in the maniap' to smoke. He would not seem to move from hisposition, and yet every day, when the things fell to be returnedthe plug had disappeared; he had found the means to conceal it inthe roof, whence he could radiantly produce it on the morrow. Although this piece of legerdemain was performed regularly beforethree or four pairs of eyes, we could never catch him in the fact;although we searched after he was gone, we could never find thetobacco. Such were the diversions of Uncle Parker, a man nearingsixty. But he was punished according unto his deeds: Mrs. Stevenson took a fancy to paint him, and the sufferings of thesitter were beyond description. 

Three lasses came from the palace to do our washing and racket withAh Fu. They were of the lowest class, hangers-on kept for theconvenience of merchant skippers, probably low-born, perhaps out-islanders, with little refinement whether of manner or appearance, but likely and jolly enough wenches in their way. We called oneGuttersnipe, for you may find her image in the slums of any city;the same lean, dark-eyed, eager, vulgar face, the same sudden, hoarse guffaws, the same forward and yet anxious manner, as with atail of an eye on the policeman: only the policeman here was alive king, and his truncheon a rifle. I doubt if you could findanywhere out of the islands, or often there, the parallel of Fatty, a mountain of a girl, who must have weighed near as many stones asshe counted summers, could have given a good account of a life-guardsman, had the face of a baby, and applied her vast mechanicalforces almost exclusively to play. But they were all three of thesame merry spirit. Our washing was conducted in a game of romps;and they fled and pursued, and splashed, and pelted, and rolledeach other in the sand, and kept up a continuous noise of cries andlaughter like holiday children. Indeed, and however strange theirown function in that austere establishment, were they not escapedfor the day from the largest and strictest Ladies' School in theSouth Seas?

Our fifth attendant was no less a person than the royal cook. Hewas strikingly handsome both in face and body, lazy as a slave, andinsolent as a butcher's boy. He slept and smoked on our premisesin various graceful attitudes; but so far from helping Ah Fu, hewas not at the pains to watch him. It may be said of him that hecame to learn, and remained to teach; and his lessons were at timesdifficult to stomach. For example, he was sent to fill a bucketfrom the well. About half-way he found my wife watering heronions, changed buckets with her, and leaving her the empty, returned to the kitchen with the full. On another occasion he wasgiven a dish of dumplings for the king, was told they must be eatenhot, and that he should carry them as fast as possible. The wretchset off at the rate of about a mile in the hour, head in air, toesturned out. My patience, after a month of trial, failed me at thesight. I pursued, caught him by his two big shoulders, andthrusting him before me, ran with him down the hill, over thesands, and through the applauding village, to the Speak House, where the king was then holding a pow-wow. He had the impudence topretend he was internally injured by my violence, and to professserious apprehensions for his life. 

All this we endured; for the ways of Tembinok' are summary, and Iwas not yet ripe to take a hand in the man's death. But in themeanwhile, here was my unfortunate China boy slaving for the pair, and presently he fell sick. I was now in the position of CimondainLantenac, and indeed all the characters in Quatre-Vingt-Treize: tocontinue to spare the guilty, I must sacrifice the innocent. Itook the usual course and tried to save both, with the usualconsequence of failure. Well rehearsed, I went down to the palace, found the king alone, and obliged him with a vast amount ofrigmarole. The cook was too old to learn: I feared he was notmaking progress; how if we had a boy instead?--boys were moreteachable. It was all in vain; the king pierced through mydisguises to the root of the fact; saw that the cook haddesperately misbehaved; and sat a while glooming. 'I think hetavvy too much, ' he said at last, with grim concision; andimmediately turned the talk to other subjects. The same dayanother high officer, the steward, appeared in the cook's place, and, I am bound to say, proved civil and industrious. 

As soon as I left, it seems the king called for a Winchester andstrolled outside the palisade, awaiting the defaulter. That dayTembinok' wore the woman's frock; as like as not, his make-up wascompleted by a pith helmet and blue spectacles. Conceive theglaring stretch of sandhills, the dwarf palms with their noon-dayshadows, the line of the palisade, the crone sentries (each by asmall clear fire) cooking syrup on their posts--and this chimaerawaiting with his deadly engine. To him, enter at last the cook, strolling down the sandhill from Equator Town, listless, vain andgraceful; with no thought of alarm. As soon as he was well withinrange, the travestied monarch fired the six shots over his head, athis feet, and on either hand of him: the second Apemama warning, startling in itself, fatal in significance, for the next time hismajesty will aim to hit. I am told the king is a crack shot; thatwhen he aims to kill, the grave may be got ready; and when he aimsto miss, misses by so near a margin that the culprit tastes sixtimes the bitterness of death. The effect upon the cook I had anopportunity of seeing for myself. My wife and I were returningfrom the sea-side of the island, when we spied one coming to meetus at a very quick, disordered pace, between a walk and a run. Aswe drew nearer we saw it was the cook, beside himself with someemotion, his usual warm, mulatto colour declined into a bluishpallor. He passed us without word or gesture, staring on us withthe face of a Satan, and plunged on across the wood for theunpeopled quarter of the island and the long, desert beach, wherehe might rage to and fro unseen, and froth out the vials of hiswrath, fear, and humiliation. Doubtless in the curses that hethere uttered to the bursting surf and the tropic birds, the nameof the Kaupoi--the rich man--was frequently repeated. I had madehim the laughing-stock of the village in the affair of the king'sdumplings; I had brought him by my machinations into disgrace andthe immediate jeopardy of his days; last, and perhaps bitterest, hehad found me there by the way to spy upon him in the hour of hisdisorder. 

Time passed, and we saw no more of him. The season of the fullmoon came round, when a man thinks shame to lie sleeping; and Icontinued until late--perhaps till twelve or one in the morning--towalk on the bright sand and in the tossing shadow of the palms. Iplayed, as I wandered, on a flageolet, which occupied much of myattention; the fans overhead rattled in the wind with a metallicchatter; and a bare foot falls at any rate almost noiseless on thatshifting soil. Yet when I got back to Equator Town, where all thelights were out, and my wife (who was still awake, and had beenlooking forth) asked me who it was that followed me, I thought shespoke in jest. 'Not at all, ' she said. 'I saw him twice as youpassed, walking close at your heels. He only left you at thecorner of the maniap'; he must be still behind the cook-house. 'Thither I ran--like a fool, without any weapon--and came face toface with the cook. He was within my tapu-line, which was death initself; he could have no business there at such an hour but eitherto steal or to kill; guilt made him timorous; and he turned andfled before me in the night in silence. As he went I kicked him inthat place where honour lies, and he gave tongue faintly like aninjured mouse. At the moment I daresay he supposed it was a deadlyinstrument that touched him. 

What had the man been after? I have found my music betterqualified to scatter than to collect an audience. Amateur as Iwas, I could not suppose him interested in my reading of theCarnival of Venice, or that he would deny himself his natural restto follow my variations on The Ploughboy. And whatever his design, it was impossible I should suffer him to prowl by night among thehouses. A word to the king, and the man were not, his case beingfar beyond pardon. But it is one thing to kill a man yourself;quite another to bear tales behind his back and have him shot by athird party; and I determined to deal with the fellow in somemethod of my own. I told Ah Fu the story, and bade him fetch methe cook whenever he should find him. I had supposed this would bea matter of difficulty; and far from that, he came of his ownaccord: an act really of desperation, since his life hung by mysilence, and the best he could hope was to be forgotten. Yet hecame with an assured countenance, volunteered no apology orexplanation, complained of injuries received, and pretended he wasunable to sit down. I suppose I am the weakest man God made; I hadkicked him in the least vulnerable part of his big carcase; my footwas bare, and I had not even hurt my foot. Ah Fu could not controlhis merriment. On my side, knowing what must be the nature of hisapprehensions, I found in so much impudence a kind of gallantry, and secretly admired the man. I told him I should say nothing ofhis night's adventure to the king; that I should still allow him, when he had an errand, to come within my tapu-line by day; but ifever I found him there after the set of the sun I would shoot himon the spot; and to the proof showed him a revolver. He must havebeen incredibly relieved; but he showed no sign of it, took himselfoff with his usual dandy nonchalance, and was scarce seen by usagain. 

These five, then, with the substitution of the steward for thecook, came and went, and were our only visitors. The circle of thetapu held at arm's-length the inhabitants of the village. As for'my pamily, ' they dwelt like nuns in their enclosure; only oncehave I met one of them abroad, and she was the king's sister, andthe place in which I found her (the island infirmary) was verylikely privileged. There remains only the king to be accountedfor. He would come strolling over, always alone, a little before ameal-time, take a chair, and talk and eat with us like an oldfamily friend. Gilbertine etiquette appears defective on the pointof leave-taking. It may be remembered we had trouble in the matterwith Karaiti; and there was something childish and disconcerting inTembinok's abrupt 'I want go home now, ' accompanied by a kind ofducking rise, and followed by an unadorned retreat. It was theonly blot upon his manners, which were otherwise plain, decent, sensible, and dignified. He never stayed long nor drank much, andcopied our behaviour where he perceived it to differ from his own. Very early in the day, for instance, he ceased eating with hisknife. It was plain he was determined in all things to wringprofit from our visit, and chiefly upon etiquette. The quality ofhis white visitors puzzled and concerned him; he would bring upname after name, and ask if its bearer were a 'big chiep, ' or evena 'chiep' at all--which, as some were my excellent good friends, and none were actually born in the purple, became at timesembarrassing. He was struck to learn that our classes weredistinguishable by their speech, and that certain words (forinstance) were tapu on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war; and hebegged in consequence that we should watch and correct him on thepoint. We were able to assure him that he was beyond correction. His vocabulary is apt and ample to an extraordinary degree. Godknows where he collected it, but by some instinct or some accidenthe has avoided all profane or gross expressions. 'Obliged, ''stabbed, ' 'gnaw, ' 'lodge, ' 'power, ' 'company, ' 'slender, ''smooth, ' and 'wonderful, ' are a few of the unexpected words thatenrich his dialect. Perhaps what pleased him most was to hearabout saluting the quarter-deck of a man-of-war. In his gratitudefor this hint he became fulsome. 'Schooner cap'n no tell me, ' hecried; 'I think no tavvy! You tavvy too much; tavvy 'teama', tavvyman-a-wa'. I think you tavvy everything. ' Yet he gravelled meoften enough with his perpetual questions; and the false Mr. Barlowstood frequently exposed before the royal Sandford. I rememberonce in particular. We were showing the magic-lantern; a slide ofWindsor Castle was put in, and I told him there was the 'outch' ofVictoreea. 'How many pathom he high?' he asked, and I was dumbbefore him. It was the builder, the indefatigable architect ofpalaces, that spoke; collector though he was, he did not collectuseless information; and all his questions had a purpose. Afteretiquette, government, law, the police, money, and medicine werehis chief interests--things vitally important to himself as a kingand the father of his people. It was my part not only to supplynew information, but to correct the old. 'My patha he tell me, ' or'White man he tell me, ' would be his constant beginning; 'You thinkhe lie?' Sometimes I thought he did. Tembinok' once brought me adifficulty of this kind, which I was long of comprehending. Aschooner captain had told him of Captain Cook; the king was muchinterested in the story; and turned for more information--not toMr. Stephen's Dictionary, not to the Britannica, but to the Biblein the Gilbert Island version (which consists chiefly of the NewTestament and the Psalms). Here he sought long and earnestly; Paulhe found, and Festus and Alexander the coppersmith: no word ofCook. The inference was obvious: the explorer was a myth. Sohard it is, even for a man of great natural parts like Tembinok', to grasp the ideas of a new society and culture. 

CHAPTER V--KING AND COMMONS

We saw but little of the commons of the isle. At first we met themat the well, where they washed their linen and we drew water forthe table. The combination was distasteful; and, having a tyrantat command, we applied to the king and had the place enclosed inour tapu. It was one of the few favours which Tembinok' visiblyboggled about granting, and it may be conceived how little popularit made the strangers. Many villagers passed us daily goingafield; but they fetched a wide circuit round our tapu, and seemedto avert their looks. At times we went ourselves into the village--a strange place. Dutch by its canals, Oriental by the height andsteepness of the roofs, which looked at dusk like temples; but wewere rarely called into a house: no welcome, no friendship, wasoffered us; and of home life we had but the one view: the wakingof a corpse, a frigid, painful scene: the widow holding on her lapthe cold, bluish body of her husband, and now partaking of therefreshments which made the round of the company, now weeping andkissing the pale mouth. ('I fear you feel this affliction deeply, 'said the Scottish minister. 'Eh, sir, and that I do!' replied thewidow. 'I've been greetin' a' nicht; an' noo I'm just gaun to supthis bit parritch, and then I'll begin an' greet again. ') In ourwalks abroad I have always supposed the islanders avoided us, perhaps from distaste, perhaps by order; and those whom we met wetook generally by surprise. The surface of the isle is diversifiedwith palm groves, thickets, and romantic dingles four feet deep, relics of old taro plantation; and it is thus possible to stumbleunawares on folk resting or hiding from their work. About pistol-shot from our township there lay a pond in the bottom of a jungle;here the maids of the isle came to bathe, and were several timesalarmed by our intrusion. Not for them are the bright cold riversof Tahiti or Upolu, not for them to splash and laugh in the hour ofthe dusk with a villageful of gay companions; but to steal heresolitary, to crouch in a place like a cow-wallow, and wash (if thatcan be called washing) in lukewarm mud, brown as their own skins. Other, but still rare, encounters occur to my memory. I wasseveral times arrested by a tender sound in the bush of voicestalking, soft as flutes and with quiet intonations. Hope told aflattering tale; I put aside the leaves; and behold! in place ofthe expected dryads, a pair of all too solid ladies squatting overa clay pipe in the ungraceful ridi. The beauty of the voice andthe eye was all that remained to those vast dames; but that of thevoice was indeed exquisite. It is strange I should have neverheard a more winning sound of speech, yet the dialect should be oneremarkable for violent, ugly, and outlandish vocables; so thatTembinok' himself declared it made him weary, and professed to findrepose in talking English. 

The state of this folk, of whom I saw so little, I can merely guessat. The king himself explains the situation with some art. 'No; Ino pay them, ' he once said. 'I give them tobacco. They work forme ALL THE SAME BROTHERS. ' It is true there was a brother once inArden! But we prefer the shorter word. They bear every servilemark, --levity like a child's, incurable idleness, incuriouscontent. The insolence of the cook was a trait of his own; not sohis levity, which he shared with the innocent Uncle Parker. Withequal unconcern both gambolled under the shadow of the gallows, andtook liberties with death that might have surprised a carelessstudent of man's nature. I wrote of Parker that he behaved like aboy of ten: what was he else, being a slave of sixty? He hadpassed all his years in school, fed, clad, thought for, commanded;and had grown familiar and coquetted with the fear of punishment. By terror you may drive men long, but not far. Here, in Apemama, they work at the constant and the instant peril of their lives; andare plunged in a kind of lethargy of laziness. It is common to seeone go afield in his stiff mat ungirt, so that he walks elbows-inlike a trussed fowl; and whatsoever his right hand findeth to do, the other must be off duty holding on his clothes. It is common tosee two men carrying between them on a pole a single bucket ofwater. To make two bites of a cherry is good enough: to make twoburthens of a soldier's kit, for a distance of perhaps half afurlong, passes measure. Woman, being the less childish animal, isless relaxed by servile conditions. Even in the king's absence, even when they were alone, I have seen Apemama women work withconstancy. But the outside to be hoped for in a man is that he mayattack his task in little languid fits, and lounge between-whiles. So I have seen a painter, with his pipe going, and a friend by thestudio fireside. You might suppose the race to lack civility, evenvitality, until you saw them in the dance. Night after night, andsometimes day after day, they rolled out their choruses in thegreat Speak House--solemn andantes and adagios, led by the clappedhand, and delivered with an energy that shook the roof. The timewas not so slow, though it was slow for the islands; but I havechosen rather to indicate the effect upon the hearer. Their musichad a church-like character from near at hand, and seemed toEuropean ears more regular than the run of island music. Twice Ihave heard a discord regularly solved. From farther off, heard atEquator Town for instance, the measures rose and fell andcrepitated like the barking of hounds in a distant kennel. 

The slaves are certainly not overworked--children of ten do morewithout fatigue--and the Apemama labourers have holidays, when thesinging begins early in the afternoon. The diet is hard; copra anda sweetmeat of pounded pandanus are the only dishes I observedoutside the palace; but there seems no defect in quantity, and theking shares with them his turtles. Three came in a boat from Kuriaduring our stay; one was kept for the palace, one sent to us, onepresented to the village. It is the habit of the islanders to cookthe turtle in its carapace; we had been promised the shells, and weasked a tapu on this foolish practice. The face of Tembinok'darkened and he answered nothing. Hesitation in the question ofthe well I could understand, for water is scarce on a low island;that he should refuse to interfere upon a point of cookery was morethan I had dreamed of; and I gathered (rightly or wrongly) that hewas scrupulous of touching in the least degree the private life andhabits of his slaves. So that even here, in full despotism, publicopinion has weight; even here, in the midst of slavery, freedom hasa corner. 

Orderly, sober, and innocent, life flows in the isle from day today as in a model plantation under a model planter. It isimpossible to doubt the beneficence of that stern rule. A curiouspoliteness, a soft and gracious manner, something effeminate andcourtly, distinguishes the islanders of Apemama; it is talked of byall the traders, it was felt even by residents so little beloved asourselves, and noticeable even in the cook, and even in thatscoundrel's hours of insolence. The king, with his manly and plainbearing, stood out alone; you might say he was the only GilbertIslander in Apemama. Violence, so common in Butaritari, seemsunknown. So are theft and drunkenness. I am assured theexperiment has been made of leaving sovereigns on the beach beforethe village; they lay there untouched. In all our time on theisland I was but once asked for drink. This was by a mightyplausible fellow, wearing European clothes and speaking excellentEnglish--Tamaiti his name, or, as the whites have now corrupted it, 'Tom White': one of the king's supercargoes at three pounds amonth and a percentage, a medical man besides, and in his privatehours a wizard. He found me one day in the outskirts of thevillage, in a secluded place, hot and private, where the taro-pitsare deep and the plants high. Here he buttonholed me, and, lookingabout him like a conspirator, inquired if I had gin. 

I told him I had. He remarked that gin was forbidden, lauded theprohibition a while, and then went on to explain that he was adoctor, or 'dogstar' as he pronounced the word, that gin wasnecessary to him for his medical infusions, that he was quite outof it, and that he would be obliged to me for some in a bottle. Itold him I had passed the king my word on landing; but since hiscase was so exceptional, I would go down to the palace at once, andhad no doubt that Tembinok' would set me free. Tom White wasimmediately overwhelmed with embarrassment and terror, besought mein the most moving terms not to betray him, and fled myneighbourhood. He had none of the cook's valour; it was weeksbefore he dared to meet my eye; and then only by the order of theking and on particular business. 

The more I viewed and admired this triumph of firm rule, the more Iwas haunted and troubled by a problem, the problem (perhaps) of to-morrow for ourselves. Here was a people protected from all seriousmisfortune, relieved of all serious anxieties, and deprived of whatwe call our liberty. Did they like it? and what was theirsentiment toward the ruler? The first question I could not ofcourse ask, nor perhaps the natives answer. Even the second wasdelicate; yet at last, and under charming and strangecircumstances, I found my opportunity to put it and a man to reply. It was near the full of the moon, with a delicious breeze; the islewas bright as day--to sleep would have been sacrilege; and I walkedin the bush, playing my pipe. It must have been the sound of whatI am pleased to call my music that attracted in my directionanother wanderer of the night. This was a young man attired in afine mat, and with a garland on his hair, for he was new come fromdancing and singing in the public hall; and his body, his face, andhis eyes were all of an enchanting beauty. Every here and there inthe Gilberts youths are to be found of this absurd perfection; Ihave seen five of us pass half an hour in admiration of a boy atMariki; and Te Kop (my friend in the fine mat and garland) I hadalready several times remarked, and long ago set down as theloveliest animal in Apemama. The philtre of admiration must bevery strong, or these natives specially susceptible to its effects, for I have scarce ever admired a person in the islands but what hehas sought my particular acquaintance. So it was with Te Kop. Heled me to the ocean side; and for an hour or two we sat smoking andtalking on the resplendent sand and under the ineffable brightnessof the moon. My friend showed himself very sensible of the beautyand amenity of the hour. 'Good night! Good wind!' he keptexclaiming, and as he said the words he seemed to hug myself. Ihad long before invented such reiterated expressions of delight fora character (Felipe, in the story of Olalla) intended to be partlybestial. But there was nothing bestial in Te Kop; only a childishpleasure in the moment. He was no less pleased with his companion, or was good enough to say so; honoured me, before he left, bycalling me Te Kop; apostrophised me as 'My name!' with anintonation exquisitely tender, laying his hand at the same timeswiftly on my knee; and after we had risen, and our paths began toseparate in the bush, twice cried to me with a sort of gentleecstasy, 'I like you too much!' From the beginning he had made nosecret of his terror of the king; would not sit down nor speakabove a whisper till he had put the whole breadth of the islebetween himself and his monarch, then harmlessly asleep; and eventhere, even within a stone-cast of the outer sea, our talk coveredby the sound of the surf and the rattle of the wind among thepalms, continued to speak guardedly, softening his silver voice(which rang loud enough in the chorus) and looking about him like aman in fear of spies. The strange thing is that I should havebeheld him no more. In any other island in the whole South Seas, if I had advanced half as far with any native, he would have beenat my door next morning, bringing and expecting gifts. But Te Kopvanished in the bush for ever. My house, of course, wasunapproachable; but he knew where to find me on the ocean beach, where I went daily. I was the Kaupoi, the rich man; my tobacco andtrade were known to be endless: he was sure of a present. I am ata loss how to explain his behaviour, unless it be supposed that herecalled with terror and regret a passage in our interview. Hereit is:

'The king, he good man?' I asked. 

'Suppose he like you, he good man, ' replied Te Kop: 'no like, nogood. '

That is one way of putting it, of course. Te Kop himself wasprobably no favourite, for he scarce appealed to my judgment as atype of industry. And there must be many others whom the king (toadhere to the formula) does not like. Do these unfortunates likethe king? Or is not rather the repulsion mutual? and theconscientious Tembinok', like the conscientious Braxfield beforehim, and many other conscientious rulers and judges before either, surrounded by a considerable body of 'grumbletonians'? Take thecook, for instance, when he passed us by, blue with rage andterror. He was very wroth with me; I think by all the oldprinciples of human nature he was not very well pleased with hissovereign. It was the rich man he sought to waylay: I think itmust have been by the turn of a hair that it was not the king hewaylaid instead. And the king gives, or seems to give, plenty ofopportunities; day and night he goes abroad alone, whether armed ornot I can but guess; and the taro-patches, where his business mustso often carry him, seem designed for assassination. The case ofthe cook was heavy indeed to my conscience. I did not like to killmy enemy at second-hand; but had I a right to conceal from theking, who had trusted me, the dangerous secret character of hisattendant? And suppose the king should fall, what would be thefate of the king's friends? It was our opinion at the time that weshould pay dear for the closing of the well; that our breath was inthe king's nostrils; that if the king should by any chance bebludgeoned in a taro-patch, the philosophical and musicalinhabitants of Equator Town might lay aside their pleasantinstruments, and betake themselves to what defence they had, with avery dim prospect of success. These speculations were forced uponus by an incident which I am ashamed to betray. The schooner H. L. Haseltine (since capsized at sea, with the loss of eleven lives)put into Apemama in a good hour for us, who had near exhausted oursupplies. The king, after his habit, spent day after day on board;the gin proved unhappily to his taste; he brought a store of itashore with him; and for some time the sole tyrant of the isle washalf-seas-over. He was not drunk--the man is not a drunkard, hehas always stores of liquor at hand, which he uses withmoderation, --but he was muzzy, dull, and confused. He came one dayto lunch with us, and while the cloth was being laid fell asleep inhis chair. His confusion, when he awoke and found he had beendetected, was equalled by our uneasiness. When he was gone we satand spoke of his peril, which we thought to be in some degree ourown; of how easily the man might be surprised in such a state bygrumbletonians; of the strange scenes that would follow--the royaltreasures and stores at the mercy of the rabble, the palaceoverrun, the garrison of women turned adrift. And as we talked wewere startled by a gun-shot and a sudden, barbaric outcry. Ibelieve we all changed colour; but it was only the king firing at adog and the chorus striking up in the Speak House. A day or twolater I learned the king was very sick; went down, diagnosed thecase; and took at once the highest medical degree by the exhibitionof bicarbonate of soda. Within the hour Richard was himself again;and I found him at the unfinished house, enjoying the doublepleasure of directing Rubam and making a dinner of cocoa-nutdumplings, and all eagerness to have the formula of this new sortof pain-killer--for pain-killer in the islands is the generic nameof medicine. So ended the king's modest spree and our anxiety. 

On the face of things, I ought to say, loyalty appeared unshaken. When the schooner at last returned for us, after much experience ofbaffling winds, she brought a rumour that Tebureimoa had declaredwar on Apemama. Tembinok' became a new man; his face radiant; hisattitude, as I saw him preside over a council of chiefs in one ofthe palace maniap's, eager as a boy's; his voice sounding abroad, shrill and jubilant, over half the compound. War is what he wants, and here was his chance. The English captain, when he flung hisarms in the lagoon, had forbidden him (except in one case) allmilitary adventures in the future: here was the case arrived. Allmorning the council sat; men were drilled, arms were bought, thesound of firing disturbed the afternoon; the king devised andcommunicated to me his plan of campaign, which was highly elaborateand ingenious, but perhaps a trifle fine-spun for the rough andrandom vicissitudes of war. And in all this bustle the temper ofthe people appeared excellent, an unwonted animation in every face, and even Uncle Parker burning with military zeal. 

Of course it was a false alarm. Tebureimoa had other fish to fry. The ambassador who accompanied us on our return to Butaritari foundhim retired to a small island on the reef, in a huff with the OldMen, a tiff with the traders, and more fear of insurrection at homethan appetite for wars abroad. The plenipotentiary had been placedunder my protection; and we solemnly saluted when we met. Heproved an excellent fisherman, and caught bonito over the ship'sside. He pulled a good oar, and made himself useful for a wholefiery afternoon, towing the becalmed Equator off Mariki. He wentto his post and did no good. He returned home again, having doneno harm. O si sic omnes!

CHAPTER VI--THE KING OF APEMAMA: DEVIL-WORK

The ocean beach of Apemama was our daily resort. The coast isbroken by shallow bays. The reef is detached, elevated, andincludes a lagoon about knee-deep, the unrestful spending-basin ofthe surf. The beach is now of fine sand, now of broken coral. Thetrend of the coast being convex, scarce a quarter of a mile of itis to be seen at once; the land being so low, the horizon appearswithin a stone-cast; and the narrow prospect enhances the sense ofprivacy. Man avoids the place--even his footprints are uncommon;but a great number of birds hover and pipe there fishing, and leavecrooked tracks upon the sand. Apart from these, the only sound(and I was going to say the only society), is that of the breakerson the reef. 

On each projection of the coast, the bank of coral clinkersimmediately above the beach has been levelled, and a pillar built, perhaps breast-high. These are not sepulchral; all the dead beingburied on the inhabited side of the island, close to men's houses, and (what is worse) to their wells. I was told they were toprotect the isle against inroads from the sea--divine or diabolicalmartellos, probably sacred to Taburik, God of Thunder. 

The bay immediately opposite Equator Town, which we called Fu Bay, in honour of our cook, was thus fortified on either horn. It waswell sheltered by the reef, the enclosed water clear and tranquil, the enclosing beach curved like a horseshoe, and both steep andbroad. The path debouched about the midst of the re-entrant angle, the woods stopping some distance inland. In front, between thefringe of the wood and the crown of the beach, there had beendesigned a regular figure, like the court for some new variety oftennis, with borders of round stones imbedded, and pointed at theangles with low posts, likewise of stone. This was the king's PrayPlace. When he prayed, what he prayed for, and to whom headdressed his supplications I could never learn. The ground wastapu. 

In the angle, by the mouth of the path, stood a deserted maniap'. Near by there had been a house before our coming, which was nowtransported and figured for the moment in Equator Town. It hadbeen, and it would be again when we departed, the residence of theguardian and wizard of the spot--Tamaiti. Here, in this loneplace, within sound of the sea, he had his dwelling and uncannyduties. I cannot call to mind another case of a man living on theocean side of any open atoll; and Tamaiti must have had strongnerves, the greater confidence in his own spells, or, what Ibelieve to be the truth, an enviable scepticism. Whether Tamaitihad any guardianship of the Pray Place I never heard. But his ownparticular chapel stood farther back in the fringe of the wood. Itwas a tree of respectable growth. Around it there was drawn acircle of stones like those that enclosed the Pray Place; in front, facing towards the sea, a stone of a much greater size, andsomewhat hollowed, like a piscina, stood close against the trunk;in front of that again a conical pile of gravel. In the hollow ofwhat I have called the piscina (though it proved to be a magicseat) lay an offering of green cocoa-nuts; and when you looked upyou found the boughs of the tree to be laden with strange fruit:palm-branches elaborately plaited, and beautiful models of canoes, finished and rigged to the least detail. The whole had theappearance of a mid-summer and sylvan Christmas-tree al fresco. Yet we were already well enough acquainted in the Gilberts torecognise it, at the first sight, for a piece of wizardry, or, asthey say in the group, of Devil-work. 

The plaited palms were what we recognised. We had seen them beforeon Apaiang, the most christianised of all these islands; whereexcellent Mr. Bingham lived and laboured and has left goldenmemories; whence all the education in the northern Gilberts tracesits descent; and where we were boarded by little native Sunday-school misses in clean frocks, with demure faces, and singing hymnsas to the manner born. 

Our experience of Devil-work at Apaiang had been as follows:- Itchanced we were benighted at the house of Captain Tierney. My wifeand I lodged with a Chinaman some half a mile away; and thitherCaptain Reid and a native boy escorted us by torch-light. On theway the torch went out, and we took shelter in a small and lonelyChristian chapel to rekindle it. Stuck in the rafters of thechapel was a branch of knotted palm. 'What is that?' I asked. 'O, that's Devil-work, ' said the Captain. 'And what is Devil-work?' Iinquired. 'If you like, I'll show you some when we get toJohnnie's, ' he replied. 'Johnnie's' was a quaint little house uponthe crest of the beach, raised some three feet on posts, approachedby stairs; part walled, part trellised. Trophies of advertisement-photographs were hung up within for decoration. There was a tableand a recess-bed, in which Mrs. Stevenson slept; while I camped onthe matted floor with Johnnie, Mrs. Johnnie, her sister, and thedevil's own regiment of cockroaches. Hither was summoned an oldwitch, who looked the part to horror. The lamp was set on thefloor; the crone squatted on the threshold, a green palm-branch inher hand, the light striking full on her aged features and pickingout behind her, from the black night, timorous faces of spectators. Our sorceress began with a chanted incantation; it was in the oldtongue, for which I had no interpreter; but ever and again thereran among the crowd outside that laugh which every traveller in theislands learns so soon to recognise, --the laugh of terror. Doubtless these half-Christian folk were shocked, these half-heathen folk alarmed. Chench or Taburik thus invoked, we put ourquestions; the witch knotted the leaves, here a leaf and there aleaf, plainly on some arithmetical system; studied the result withgreat apparent contention of mind; and gave the answers. SidneyColvin was in robust health and gone a journey; and we should havea fair wind upon the morrow: that was the result of ourconsultation, for which we paid a dollar. The next day dawnedcloudless and breathless; but I think Captain Reid placed a secretreliance on the sibyl, for the schooner was got ready for sea. Byeight the lagoon was flawed with long cat's-paws, and the palmstossed and rustled; before ten we were clear of the passage andskimming under all plain sail, with bubbling scuppers. So we hadthe breeze, which was well worth a dollar in itself; but thebulletin about my friend in England proved, some six months later, when I got my mail, to have been groundless. Perhaps London liesbeyond the horizon of the island gods. 

Tembinok', in his first dealings, showed himself sternly aversefrom superstition: and had not the Equator delayed, we might haveleft the island and still supposed him an agnostic. It chanced oneday, however, that he came to our maniap', and found Mrs. Stevensonin the midst of a game of patience. She explained the game as wellas she was able, and wound up jocularly by telling him this was herdevil-work, and if she won, the Equator would arrive next day. Tembinok' must have drawn a long breath; we were not so high-and-dry after all; he need no longer dissemble, and he plunged at onceinto confessions. He made devil-work every day, he told us, toknow if ships were coming in; and thereafter brought us regularreports of the results. It was surprising how regularly he waswrong; but he always had an explanation ready. There had been someschooner in the offing out of view; but either she was not boundfor Apemama, or had changed her course, or lay becalmed. I used toregard the king with veneration as he thus publicly deceivedhimself. I saw behind him all the fathers of the Church, all thephilosophers and men of science of the past; before him, all thosethat are to come; himself in the midst; the whole visionary seriesbowed over the same task of welding incongruities. To the endTembinok' spoke reluctantly of the island gods and their worship, and I learned but little. Taburik is the god of thunder, and dealsin wind and weather. A while since there were wizards who couldcall him down in the form of lightning. 'My patha he tell me hesee: you think he lie?' Tienti--pronounced something like'Chench, ' and identified by his majesty with the devil--sends andremoves bodily sickness. He is whistled for in the Paumotuanmanner, and is said to appear; but the king has never seen him. The doctors treat disease by the aid of Chench: eclectic Tembinok'at the same time administering 'pain-killer' from his medicine-chest, so as to give the sufferer both chances. 'I think mo'betta, ' observed his majesty, with more than his usual self-approval. Apparently the gods are not jealous, and placidly enjoyboth shrine and priest in common. On Tamaiti's medicine-tree, forinstance, the model canoes are hung up ex voto for a prosperousvoyage, and must therefore be dedicated to Taburik, god of theweather; but the stone in front is the place of sick folk come topacify Chench. 

It chanced, by great good luck, that even as we spoke of theseaffairs, I found myself threatened with a cold. I do not suppose Iwas ever glad of a cold before, or shall ever be again; but theopportunity to see the sorcerers at work was priceless, and Icalled in the faculty of Apemama. They came in a body, all intheir Sunday's best and hung with wreaths and shells, the insigniaof the devil-worker. Tamaiti I knew already: Terutak' I saw forthe first time--a tall, lank, raw-boned, serious North-Seafisherman turned brown; and there was a third in their companywhose name I never heard, and who played to Tamaiti the part offamulus. Tamaiti took me in hand first, and led me, conversingagreeably, to the shores of Fu Bay. The famulus climbed a tree forsome green cocoa-nuts. Tamaiti himself disappeared a while in thebush and returned with coco tinder, dry leaves, and a spray ofwaxberry. I was placed on the stone, with my back to the tree andmy face to windward; between me and the gravel-heap one of thegreen nuts was set; and then Tamaiti (having previously bared hisfeet, for he had come in canvas shoes, which tortured him) joinedme within the magic circle, hollowed out the top of the gravel-heap, built his fire in the bottom, and applied a match: it wasone of Bryant and May's. The flame was slow to catch, and theirreverent sorcerer filled in the time with talk of foreign places--of London, and 'companies, ' and how much money they had; of SanFrancisco, and the nefarious fogs, 'all the same smoke, ' which hadbeen so nearly the occasion of his death. I tried vainly to leadhim to the matter in hand. 'Everybody make medicine, ' he saidlightly. And when I asked him if he were himself a goodpractitioner--'No savvy, ' he replied, more lightly still. Atlength the leaves burst in a flame, which he continued to feed; athick, light smoke blew in my face, and the flames streamed againstand scorched my clothes. He in the meanwhile addressed, oraffected to address, the evil spirit, his lips moving fast, butwithout sound; at the same time he waved in the air and twicestruck me on the breast with his green spray. So soon as theleaves were consumed the ashes were buried, the green spray wasimbedded in the gravel, and the ceremony was at an end. 

A reader of the Arabian Nights felt quite at home. Here was thesuffumigation; here was the muttering wizard; here was the desertplace to which Aladdin was decoyed by the false uncle. But theymanage these things better in fiction. The effect was marred bythe levity of the magician, entertaining his patient with smalltalk like an affable dentist, and by the incongruous presence ofMr. Osbourne with a camera. As for my cold, it was neither betternor worse. 

I was now handed over to Terutak', the leading practitioner ormedical baronet of Apemama. His place is on the lagoon side of theisland, hard by the palace. A rail of light wood, some two feethigh, encloses an oblong piece of gravel like the king's PrayPlace; in the midst is a green tree; below, a stone table bears apair of boxes covered with a fine mat; and in front of these anoffering of food, a cocoa-nut, a piece of taro or a fish, is placeddaily. On two sides the enclosure is lined with maniap's; and oneof our party, who had been there to sketch, had remarked a dailyconcourse of people and an extraordinary number of sick children;for this is in fact the infirmary of Apemama. The doctor andmyself entered the sacred place alone; the boxes and the mat weredisplaced; and I was enthroned in their stead upon the stone, facing once more to the east. For a while the sorcerer remainedunseen behind me, making passes in the air with a branch of palm. Then he struck lightly on the brim of my straw hat; and this blowhe continued to repeat at intervals, sometimes brushing instead myarm and shoulder. I have had people try to mesmerise me a dozentimes, and never with the least result. But at the first tap--on aquarter no more vital than my hat-brim, and from nothing morevirtuous than a switch of palm wielded by a man I could not evensee--sleep rushed upon me like an armed man. My sinews fainted, myeyes closed, my brain hummed, with drowsiness. I resisted, atfirst instinctively, then with a certain flurry of despair, in theend successfully; if that were indeed success which enabled me toscramble to my feet, to stumble home somnambulous, to cast myselfat once upon my bed, and sink at once into a dreamless stupor. When I awoke my cold was gone. So I leave a matter that I do notunderstand. 

Meanwhile my appetite for curiosities (not usually very keen) hadbeen strangely whetted by the sacred boxes. They were of pandanuswood, oblong in shape, with an effect of pillaring along the sideslike straw work, lightly fringed with hair or fibre and standing onfour legs. The outside was neat as a toy; the inside a mystery Iwas resolved to penetrate. But there was a lion in the path. Imight not approach Terutak', since I had promised to buy nothing inthe island; I dared not have recourse to the king, for I hadalready received from him more gifts than I knew how to repay. Inthis dilemma (the schooner being at last returned) we hit on adevice. Captain Reid came forward in my stead, professed anunbridled passion for the boxes, and asked and obtained leave tobargain for them with the wizard. That same afternoon the captainand I made haste to the infirmary, entered the enclosure, raisedthe mat, and had begun to examine the boxes at our leisure, whenTerutak's wife bounced out of one of the nigh houses, fell upon us, swept up the treasures, and was gone. There was never a moreabsolute surprise. She came, she took, she vanished, we had not aguess whither; and we remained, with foolish looks and laughter onthe empty field. Such was the fit prologue of our memorablebargaining. 

Presently Terutak' came, bringing Tamaiti along with him, bothsmiling; and we four squatted without the rail. In the threemaniap's of the infirmary a certain audience was gathered: thefamily of a sick child under treatment, the king's sister playingcards, a pretty girl, who swore I was the image of her father; inall perhaps a score. Terutak's wife had returned (even as she hadvanished) unseen, and now sat, breathless and watchful, by herhusband's side. Perhaps some rumour of our quest had gone abroad, or perhaps we had given the alert by our unseemly freedom:certain, at least, that in the faces of all present, expectationand alarm were mingled. 

Captain Reid announced, without preface or disguise, that I wascome to purchase; Terutak', with sudden gravity, refused to sell. He was pressed; he persisted. It was explained we only wanted one:no matter, two were necessary for the healing of the sick. He wasrallied, he was reasoned with: in vain. He sat there, serious andstill, and refused. All this was only a preliminary skirmish;hitherto no sum of money had been mentioned; but now the captainbrought his great guns to bear. He named a pound, then two, thenthree. Out of the maniap's one person after another came to jointhe group, some with mere excitement, others with consternation intheir faces. The pretty girl crept to my side; it was then that--surely with the most artless flattery--she informed me of mylikeness to her father. Tamaiti the infidel sat with hanging headand every mark of dejection. Terutak' streamed with sweat, his eyewas glazed, his face wore a painful rictus, his chest heaved likethat of one spent with running. The man must have been by naturecovetous; and I doubt if ever I saw moral agony more tragicallydisplayed. His wife by his side passionately encouraged hisresistance. 

And now came the charge of the old guard. The captain, making askip, named the surprising figure of five pounds. At the word themaniap's were emptied. The king's sister flung down her cards andcame to the front to listen, a cloud on her brow. The pretty girlbeat her breast and cried with wearisome iteration that if the boxwere hers I should have it. Terutak's wife was beside herself withpious fear, her face discomposed, her voice (which scarce ceasedfrom warning and encouragement) shrill as a whistle. Even Terutak'lost that image-like immobility which he had hitherto maintained. He rocked on his mat, threw up his closed knees alternately, andstruck himself on the breast after the manner of dancers. But hecame gold out of the furnace; and with what voice was left himcontinued to reject the bribe. 

And now came a timely interjection. 'Money will not heal thesick, ' observed the king's sister sententiously; and as soon as Iheard the remark translated my eyes were unsealed, and I began toblush for my employment. Here was a sick child, and I sought, inthe view of its parents, to remove the medicine-box. Here was thepriest of a religion, and I (a heathen millionaire) was corruptinghim to sacrilege. Here was a greedy man, torn in twain betwixtgreed and conscience; and I sat by and relished, and lustfullyrenewed his torments. Ave, Caesar! Smothered in a corner, dormantbut not dead, we have all the one touch of nature: an infantpassion for the sand and blood of the arena. So I brought to anend my first and last experience of the joys of the millionaire, and departed amid silent awe. Nowhere else can I expect to stirthe depths of human nature by an offer of five pounds; nowhereelse, even at the expense of millions, could I hope to see the evilof riches stand so legibly exposed. Of all the bystanders, nonebut the king's sister retained any memory of the gravity and dangerof the thing in hand. Their eyes glowed, the girl beat her breast, in senseless animal excitement. Nothing was offered them; theystood neither to gain nor to lose; at the mere name and wind ofthese great sums Satan possessed them. 

From this singular interview I went straight to the palace; foundthe king; confessed what I had been doing; begged him, in my name, to compliment Terutak' on his virtue, and to have a similar boxmade for me against the return of the schooner. Tembinok', Rubam, and one of the Daily Papers--him we used to call 'the FacetiaeColumn'--laboured for a while of some idea, which was at lastintelligibly delivered. They feared I thought the box would cureme; whereas, without the wizard, it was useless; and when I wasthreatened with another cold I should do better to rely on pain-killer. I explained I merely wished to keep it in my 'outch' as athing made in Apemama and these honest men were much relieved. 

Late the same evening, my wife, crossing the isle to windward, wasaware of singing in the bush. Nothing is more common in that hourand place than the jubilant carol of the toddy-cutter, swinginghigh overhead, beholding below him the narrow ribbon of the isle, the surrounding field of ocean, and the fires of the sunset. Butthis was of a graver character, and seemed to proceed from theground-level. Advancing a little in the thicket, Mrs. Stevensonsaw a clear space, a fine mat spread in the midst, and on the mat awreath of white flowers and one of the devil-work boxes. A woman--whom we guess to have been Mrs. Terutak'--sat in front, nowdrooping over the box like a mother over a cradle, now lifting herface and directing her song to heaven. A passing toddy-cutter toldmy wife that she was praying. Probably she did not so much pray asdeprecate; and perhaps even the ceremony was one of disenchantment. For the box was already doomed; it was to pass from its greenmedicine-tree, reverend precinct, and devout attendants; to behandled by the profane; to cross three seas; to come to land underthe foolscap of St. Paul's; to be domesticated within the hail ofLillie Bridge; there to be dusted by the British housemaid, and totake perhaps the roar of London for the voice of the outer seaalong the reef. Before even we had finished dinner Chench hadbegun his journey, and one of the newspapers had already placed thebox upon my table as the gift of Tembinok'. 

I made haste to the palace, thanked the king, but offered torestore the box, for I could not bear that the sick of the islandshould be made to suffer. I was amazed by his reply. Terutak', itappeared, had still three or four in reserve against an accident;and his reluctance, and the dread painted at first on every face, was not in the least occasioned by the prospect of medicaldestitution, but by the immediate divinity of Chench. How muchmore did I respect the king's command, which had been able toextort in a moment and for nothing a sacrilegious favour that I hadin vain solicited with millions! But now I had a difficult task infront of me; it was not in my view that Terutak' should suffer byhis virtue; and I must persuade the king to share my opinion, tolet me enrich one of his subjects, and (what was yet more delicate)to pay for my present. Nothing shows the king in a more becominglight than the fact that I succeeded. He demurred at theprinciple; he exclaimed, when he heard it, at the sum. 'Plentymoney!' cried he, with contemptuous displeasure. But hisresistance was never serious; and when he had blown off his ill-humour--'A' right, ' said he. 'You give him. Mo' betta. '

Armed with this permission, I made straight for the infirmary. Thenight was now come, cool, dark, and starry. On a mat hard by aclear fire of wood and coco shell, Terutak' lay beside his wife. Both were smiling; the agony was over, the king's command hadreconciled (I must suppose) their agitating scruples; and I wasbidden to sit by them and share the circulating pipe. I was alittle moved myself when I placed five gold sovereigns in thewizard's hand; but there was no sign of emotion in Terutak' as hereturned them, pointed to the palace, and named Tembinok'. It wasa changed scene when I had managed to explain. Terutak', long, dour Scots fisherman as he was, expressed his satisfaction withinbounds; but the wife beamed; and there was an old gentlemanpresent--her father, I suppose--who seemed nigh translated. Hiseyes stood out of his head; 'Kaupoi, Kaupoi--rich, rich!' ran onhis lips like a refrain; and he could not meet my eye but what hegurgled into foolish laughter. 

I might now go home, leaving that fire-lit family party gloatingover their new millions, and consider my strange day. I had triedand rewarded the virtue of Terutak'. I had played the millionaire, had behaved abominably, and then in some degree repaired mythoughtlessness. And now I had my box, and could open it and lookwithin. It contained a miniature sleeping-mat and a white shell. Tamaiti, interrogated next day as to the shell, explained it wasnot exactly Chench, but a cell, or body, which he would at timesinhabit. Asked why there was a sleeping-mat, he retortedindignantly, 'Why have you mats?' And this was the scepticalTamaiti! But island scepticism is never deeper than the lips. 

CHAPTER VII--THE KING OF APEMAMA

Thus all things on the island, even the priests of the gods, obeythe word of Tembinok'. He can give and take, and slay, and allaythe scruples of the conscientious, and do all things (apparently)but interfere in the cookery of a turtle. 'I got power' is hisfavourite word; it interlards his conversation; the thought hauntshim and is ever fresh; and when be has asked and meditates offoreign countries, he looks up with a smile and reminds you, '_I_got POWER. ' Nor is his delight only in the possession, but in theexercise. He rejoices in the crooked and violent paths of kingshiplike a strong man to run a race, or like an artist in his art. Tofeel, to use his power, to embellish his island and the picture ofthe island life after a private ideal, to milk the islandvigorously, to extend his singular museum--these employdelightfully the sum of his abilities. I never saw a man morepatently in the right trade. 

It would be natural to suppose this monarchy inherited intactthrough generations. And so far from that, it is a thing ofyesterday. I was already a boy at school while Apemama was yetrepublican, ruled by a noisy council of Old Men, and torn withincurable feuds. And Tembinok' is no Bourbon; rather the son of aNapoleon. Of course he is well-born. No man need aspire high inthe isles of the Pacific unless his pedigree be long and in theupper regions mythical. And our king counts cousinship with mostof the high families in the archipelago, and traces his descent toa shark and a heroic woman. Directed by an oracle, she swam beyondsight of land to meet her revolting paramour, and received at seathe seed of a predestined family. 'I think lie, ' is the king'semphatic commentary; yet he is proud of the legend. From thisillustrious beginning the fortunes of the race must have declined;and Tenkoruti, the grandfather of Tembinok', was the chief of avillage at the north end of the island. Kuria and Aranuka were yetindependent; Apemama itself the arena of devastating feuds. Through this perturbed period of history the figure of Tenkorutistalks memorable. In war he was swift and bloody; several townsfell to his spear, and the inhabitants were butchered to a man. Incivil life this arrogance was unheard of. When the council of OldMen was summoned, he went to the Speak House, delivered his mind, and left without waiting to be answered. Wisdom had spoken: letothers opine according to their folly. He was feared and hated, and this was his pleasure. He was no poet; he cared not for artsor knowledge. 'My gran'patha one thing savvy, savvy pight, 'observed the king. In some lull of their own disputes the Old Menof Apemama adventured on the conquest of Apemama; and this unlickedCaius Marcius was elected general of the united troops. Successattended him; the islands were reduced, and Tenkoruti returned tohis own government, glorious and detested. He died about 1860, inthe seventieth year of his age and the full odour of unpopularity. He was tall and lean, says his grandson, looked extremely old, and'walked all the same young man. ' The same observer gave me asignificant detail. The survivors of that rough epoch were alldefaced with spearmarks; there was none on the body of this skilfulfighter. 'I see old man, no got a spear, ' said the king. 

Tenkoruti left two sons, Tembaitake and Tembinatake. Tembaitake, our king's father, was short, middling stout, a poet, a goodgenealogist, and something of a fighter; it seems he took himselfseriously, and was perhaps scarce conscious that he was in allthings the creature and nursling of his brother. There was noshadow of dispute between the pair: the greater man filled withalacrity and content the second place; held the breach in war, andall the portfolios in the time of peace; and, when his brotherrated him, listened in silence, looking on the ground. LikeTenkoruti, he was tall and lean and a swift talker--a rare trait inthe islands. He possessed every accomplishment. He knew sorcery, he was the best genealogist of his day, he was a poet, he coulddance and make canoes and armour; and the famous mast of Apemama, which ran one joint higher than the mainmast of a full-rigged ship, was of his conception and design. But these were avocations, andthe man's trade was war. 'When my uncle go make wa', he laugh, 'said Tembinok'. He forbade the use of field fortification, thatprotractor of native hostilities; his men must fight in the open, and win or be beaten out of hand; his own activity inspired hisfollowers; and the swiftness of his blows beat down, in onelifetime, the resistance of three islands. He made his brothersovereign, he left his nephew absolute. 'My uncle make allsmooth, ' said Tembinok'. 'I mo' king than my patha: I got power, 'he said, with formidable relish. 

Such is the portrait of the uncle drawn by the nephew. I can setbeside it another by a different artist, who has often--I may sayalways--delighted me with his romantic taste in narrative, but notalways--and I may say not often--persuaded me of his exactitude. Ihave already denied myself the use of so much excellent matter fromthe same source, that I begin to think it time to reward goodresolution; and his account of Tembinatake agrees so well with theking's, that it may very well be (what I hope it is) the record ofa fact, and not (what I suspect) the pleasing exercise of animagination more than sailorly. A. , for so I had perhaps bettercall him, was walking up the island after dusk, when he came on alighted village of some size, was directed to the chief's house, and asked leave to rest and smoke a pipe. 'You will sit down, andsmoke a pipe, and wash, and eat, and sleep, ' replied the chief, 'and to-morrow you will go again. ' Food was brought, prayers wereheld (for this was in the brief day of Christianity), and the chiefhimself prayed with eloquence and seeming sincerity. All eveningA. Sat and admired the man by the firelight. He was six feet high, lean, with the appearance of many years, and an extraordinary airof breeding and command. 'He looked like a man who would kill youlaughing, ' said A. , in singular echo of one of the king'sexpressions. And again: 'I had been reading the Musketeer books, and he reminded me of Aramis. ' Such is the portrait ofTembinatake, drawn by an expert romancer. 

We had heard many tales of 'my patha'; never a word of my uncletill two days before we left. As the time approached for ourdeparture Tembinok' became greatly changed; a softer, a moremelancholy, and, in particular, a more confidential man appeared inhis stead. To my wife he contrived laboriously to explain thatthough he knew he must lose his father in the course of nature, hehad not minded nor realised it till the moment came; and that nowhe was to lose us he repeated the experience. We showed fireworksone evening on the terrace. It was a heavy business; the sense ofseparation was in all our minds, and the talk languished. The kingwas specially affected, sat disconsolate on his mat, and oftensighed. Of a sudden one of the wives stepped forth from a cluster, came and kissed him in silence, and silently went again. It wasjust such a caress as we might give to a disconsolate child, andthe king received it with a child's simplicity. Presently after wesaid good-night and withdrew; but Tembinok' detained Mr. Osbourne, patting the mat by his side and saying: 'Sit down. I feel bad, Ilike talk. ' Osbourne sat down by him. 'You like some beer?' saidhe; and one of the wives produced a bottle. The king did notpartake, but sat sighing and smoking a meerschaum pipe. 'I verysorry you go, ' he said at last. 'Miss Stlevens he good man, womanhe good man, boy he good man; all good man. Woman he smart all thesame man. My woman' (glancing towards his wives) 'he good woman, no very smart. I think Miss Stlevens he is chiep all the samecap'n man-o-wa'. I think Miss Stlevens he rich man all the sameme. All go schoona. I very sorry. My patha he go, my uncle hego, my cutcheons he go, Miss Stlevens he go: all go. You no seeking cry before. King all the same man: feel bad, he cry. I verysorry. '

In the morning it was the common topic in the village that the kinghad wept. To me he said: 'Last night I no can 'peak: too muchhere, ' laying his hand upon his bosom. 'Now you go away all thesame my pamily. My brothers, my uncle go away. All the same. 'This was said with a dejection almost passionate. And it was thefirst time I had heard him name his uncle, or indeed employ theword. The same day he sent me a present of two corselets, made inthe island fashion of plaited fibre, heavy and strong. One hadbeen worn by Tenkoruti, one by Tembaitake; and the gift beinggratefully received, he sent me, on the return of his messengers, athird--that of Tembinatake. My curiosity was roused; I begged forinformation as to the three wearers; and the king entered withgusto into the details already given. Here was a strange thing, that he should have talked so much of his family, and not oncementioned that relative of whom he was plainly the most proud. Nay, more: he had hitherto boasted of his father; thenceforth hehad little to say of him; and the qualities for which he hadpraised him in the past were now attributed where they were due, --to the uncle. A confusion might be natural enough among islanders, who call all the sons of their grandfather by the common name offather. But this was not the case with Tembinok'. Now the ice wasbroken the word uncle was perpetually in his mouth; he who had beenso ready to confound was now careful to distinguish; and the fathersank gradually into a self-complacent ordinary man, while the unclerose to his true stature as the hero and founder of the race. 

The more I heard and the more I considered, the more this mysteryof Tembinok's behaviour puzzled and attracted me. And theexplanation, when it came, was one to strike the imagination of adramatist. Tembinok' had two brothers. One, detected in privatetrading, was banished, then forgiven, lives to this day in theisland, and is the father of the heir-apparent, Paul. The otherfell beyond forgiveness. I have heard it was a love-affair withone of the king's wives, and the thing is highly possible in thatromantic archipelago. War was attempted to be levied; butTembinok' was too swift for the rebels, and the guilty brotherescaped in a canoe. He did not go alone. Tembinatake had a handin the rebellion, and the man who had gained a kingdom for aweakling brother was banished by that brother's son. The fugitivescame to shore in other islands, but Tembinok' remains to this dayignorant of their fate. 

So far history. And now a moment for conjecture. Tembinok'confused habitually, not only the attributes and merits of hisfather and his uncle, but their diverse personal appearance. Before he had even spoken, or thought to speak, of Tembinatake, hehad told me often of a tall, lean father, skilled in war, and hisown schoolmaster in genealogy and island arts. How if both werefathers, one natural, one adoptive? How if the heir of Tembaitake, like the heir of Tembinok' himself, were not a son, but an adoptednephew? How if the founder of the monarchy, while he worked forhis brother, worked at the same time for the child of his loins?How if on the death of Tembaitake, the two stronger natures, fatherand son, king and kingmaker, clashed, and Tembinok', when he droveout his uncle, drove out the author of his days? Here is at leasta tragedy four-square. 

The king took us on board in his own gig, dressed for the occasionin the naval uniform. He had little to say, he refusedrefreshments, shook us briefly by the hand, and went ashore again. That night the palm-tops of Apemama had dipped behind the sea, andthe schooner sailed solitary under the stars.