Soon the demijohn of rum had been emptied into the glasses passing from hand to hand in the garden; Haabunai and Song of the Nightingale again evoked the thrumming beat of the great drums, and the dance began. This was a tragedy of the sea, a pantomine of danger and conflict and celebration. For centuries past the ancestors of these dancers had played it on the Forbidden Height. Even the language in which they chanted was archaic to this generation, its words and their meanings forgotten.

The women sat upon the grass in a row, and first, in dumb show, they lifted and carried from its house to the beach a long canoe. The straining muscles of their arms, the sway of their bodies, imitated the raising of the great boat, and the walking with its weight, the launching, the waiting for the breakers and the undertow that would enable them to pass the surf line, and then the paddling in rough water.

Meantime at a distance the men chanted in chorus, giving rhythmic time to the motions of the dancers and telling in the long-disused words the story of the drama. And the drums beat till their rolling thunder resounded far up the valley.

After the canoe was moving swiftly through the water the women rested. It seemed to me that the low continued chant of the men expressed a longing for freedom, for a return to nature, and a melancholy comment on the days of power and liberty gone forever. Though no person present understood the ancient language of the song, there was no need of words to interpret the exact meaning of the dance. Though no word had been uttered, the motions of the women would have clearly told the tale.

When they began again, the sea grew more agitated. Now the wail of the men reproduced the sound of waves beating on the canoe, and the whistling of the wind. The canoe was tossed high by the pounding sea; it slid dizzily down into the troughs of waves and rocked as the oarsmen fought to hold it steady. The squall had grown into a gale, roaring upon them while they tried to hold it steady. The canoe began to fill with water, it sank deeper and deeper, and in another moment the boatsmen were flung into the ocean. There they struggled with the great seas; they swam; they regained the canoe; they righted it, climbed into it. The storm subsided, the seas went down.

Again the women rested, their arms and bodies shining with perspiration. All this time they had remained immobile from the waist downward; their naked legs folded under them like those of statues. The chant of the men was quieter now, expressing a memory of the old gaiety now crushed by the inhibitions of the whites, by ridicule of island legends, and by the stern denunciations of priests and preachers. Yet it was full of suggestion of days gone by and the people who had once sailed the seas among these islands.

Again the dancers raised their arms, and the canoe sailed over sunny waters. At length it touched at an isle, it was carried through the breakers to a resting place on the sand. Its oarsmen rejoiced, they danced a dance of thanksgiving to their gods, and wreathed the ti leaves in their hair.

At this moment Haabunai, master of ceremonies, gave a cry of dismay and ceased to beat his drum. With an anguished glance at the assembled spectators, he dashed around the corner of the house, to reappear in an instant with his hands full of green leaves.

"Mon dieu!" cried the governor. "Mon salade! Mon salade!"

Haabunai, busied with his duties, had forgotten to provide the real and sacred ti. In despair at the last moment he had raided and utterly destroyed the governor's prized lettuce bed, the sole provision for salad-making in Atuona. He hastily divided the precious leaves among the dancers, and with wilting lettuce enwreathed in their tresses the oarsmen launched the canoe once more in the waves and returned to their own isle, praising the gods.

All relaxed now, to receive the praises of the governor and the brimming glasses once more offered by the diligent Haabunai and Song, aided by the gendarme.

A gruesome cannibal chant followed, accompanied by the booming of the drums, and then, warmed by the liquor that fired their brains, the dancers began the haka, the sexual dance. Inflamed by the rum, they flung themselves into it with such abandon as I have never seen, and I saw a kamaaina in Hawaii and have seen Caroline, Miri, and Mamoe, most skilled dancers of the Hawaiian Islands. With the continued passing of the cup, the hurahura soon became general. The men and women who had begun dancing in rows, in an organized way, now broke ranks and danced freely all over the lawn. Men sought out the women they liked, and women the men, challenging each other in frenzied and startling exposition of the ancient ways.

The ceaseless booming of the drums added incitement to the frenzy; the grounds of the governor's palace were a chaos of twisting brown bodies and agitated pareus, while from all sides rose cries, shouts, hysterical laughter, and the sound of clapping hands and thumping feet. Here and there dancers fell exhausted, until by elimination the dance resolved itself into a duet, all yielding the turf to Many Daughters, the little, lovely leper, and Kekela Avaua, chief of Paumau. These left the lawn and advanced to the veranda, where so contagious had become the enthusiasm that the governor was doing the hurahura opposite Bauda, and Ah Yu danced with Apporo, while Song, the prisoner, and Flag, the gendarme, madly emulated the star performers.

Kekela, who led the rout, was a figure at which to marvel. A very big man, perhaps six feet four inches in height, and all muscle, his contortions and the frenzied movements of his muscles exceeded all anatomical laws. Many Daughters, her big eyes shining, her red lips parted, followed and matched his every motion. Her entire trunk seemed to revolve on the pivot of her waist, her hips twisting in almost a spiral, and her arms akimbo accentuating and balancing her lascivious mobility.

The governor and the commissionaire, Ah Yu and Apporo, Monsieur Bapp with Song of the Nightingale and Flag, made the palace tremble while the thrum of the great drums maddened their blood.

Exhausted at last, they lay panting on the boards. Song was telling me that the liquor of the governor's giving surpassed all his illicit make, and that when his sentence expired he would remain at the palace as cook. Ah Yu, in broken English, sang a ditty he had heard forty years earlier in California, "Shoo-fle-fly-doan-bodder-me." Apporo, overcome by the rum and the dance, was lying among the rose-bushes. Many others were flung on the sward, and more rose again to the dance, singing and shouting and demanding more rum. The girls came forward to be kissed, as was the custom, and Madame Bapp drove them away with sharp words.

Soon the hullabaloo became too great for the dignity of the governor. He gave orders to clear the grounds, and Bauda issued commands from the veranda while Song and Flag lugged away the drums and drove the excited mob out of the garden and across the bridge. All in all, this Sunday was typical of Atuona under the new regime.

After a quiet bath in the pool below my cabin I got my own dinner, unassisted by Exploding Eggs, and went early to bed to forestall visitors. The crash of a falling cocoanut awakened me at midnight, and I saw on my paepae Apporo, Flower, Water, and Chief Kekela Avaua, asleep. The chief had hung his trousers over the railing, and was in his pareu, his pictured legs showing, while the others lay naked on my mats. There was no need to disturb them, for it is the good and honored custom of these hospitable islands to sleep wherever slumber overtakes one.

The night was fine, the stars looked down through the breadfruit-trees, and Temetiu, the giant mountain, was dark and handsome in the blue and gold sky. Two sheep were huddled together by my trail window, the horses were lying down in the brush, and a nightingale lilted a gay love song in the cocoanut-palms above the House of the Golden Bed.

Next morning all Atuona had a tight handkerchief bound over its forehead. I met twenty men and women with this sign of repentance upon their brows. Watercress, the chief of Atuona, who guards the governor's house, was by the roadside.

"You have drunk too much," I remarked, as I spied the rag about his head.

"Not too much, but a great deal," he rejoined.

"Faufau," I said further, which means that it is a bad thing.

"Hana paopao" he said sadly. "It is disagreeable to work. One likes to forget many things."

There was bitterness and sorrow in his tone. His father was a warrior, under the protection of Toatahu, the god of the chiefs, and led many a victorious foray when Watercress was a child. The son remembers the old days and feels deeply the degradation and ruin brought by the whites upon his people. A distinguished-looking man, dignified and haughty, he was one of half a dozen who were working out taxes by repairing the roads, and he was one of the few who worked steadily, saying little and seldom smiling.



CHAPTER XVII

A walk to the Forbidden Place; Hot Tears, the hunchback; the story of Behold the Servant of the Priest, told by Malicious Gossip in the cave of Enamoa.

It was a drowsy afternoon, and coming up the jungle trail to my cabin I saw Le Brunnec, the trader, accompanied by Mouth of God and Tahiapii, half-sister to Malicious Gossip.

Le Brunnec, a Breton, intelligent, honest, and light-hearted, owned the store below the governor's palace on the road to Atuona beach. He lived above it, alone save for a boy who cooked for him, and all the Marquesans were his friends. He had come this afternoon to take me for a walk up Atuona valley, and on the main road below my house Le Moine, Jimmy Kekela, Hot Tears, the hunchback, and Malicious Gossip awaited us.

We waded the river and found a trail that wandered along it crossed it now and then and hung in places on the high banks above it. The trail had been washed by freshets often and was rough and stony, overhung with trees and vines. Along it, a hundred feet or so from the river, were houses sparsely scattered in the almost continuous forest of cocoanut and breadfruit. Oranges and bananas, mangoes and limes, surrounded the cabins, most of which were built of rough planks and roofed with iron. Here and there I saw a native house of straw matting thatched with palm leaves, a sign of a poverty that could not reach the hideous, but admired, standard of the whites.

Many people sitting on their paepaes called to us, and one woman pointed to me and said that she wished to take my name and give me her own. This is their custom with one to whom they are attracted, but I affected not to understand. I did not want, so early in my residence in Atuona, to lose a name that had served me well for many years, and besides, if I took another I would have to abide by whatever it might be and be known by it. It would be pleasant to be called "Blue Sky" or "Killer of Sharks," but how about "Drowned in the Sea" or "Noise Inside"?

"Keep your name to yourself, mon ami," said Le Moine. "They expect much from you if you give them yours. They will give you heaps of useless presents, but you alone have the right to buy rum."

Following a curve in the stream, we came upon Teata (Miss Theater), the acknowledged beauty of Atuona, waist-deep in a pool, washing her gowns. She was a vision of loveliness, large-eyed, tawny, her hair a dark cascade about her fair face and bare shoulders, the crystal water lapping her slender thighs and curling into ripples about her, the heavy jungle growth on the banks making an emerald background to her beauty.

"They are like the ancient Greeks," said Le Moine, "with the grace of accustomed nudity and the poise of the barefooted. You must not judge them by the present standards of Europe, but by the statues of Greece or Egypt. M'a'mselle Theater there in the brook would have been renowned in the Golden Age of Pericles. I must paint her before she is older. They are good models, for they have no nerves and will sit all day in a pose, though they dislike standing, and must have their pipe or cigarette. You have seen Vanquished Often, in my own valley of Vait-hua, whom I have painted so much. Ah, there is beauty! One will not find her like in all the world. Paris knows nothing like her."

Teata waved her hand at us from the brook, and flung her heavy hair backward over her shoulder as she went on with her task. Looking back at her before the trail wound again into the forest, I saw that her features in repose were hard and semi-savage, the lines still beautiful, but cast in a severe and forbidding mold.

We climbed steadily, jumping from rock to rock and clinging to the bushes. A mile up the valley we came suddenly upon a plateau, and saw before us the remains of an ancient Pekia, or High Place, a grim and grisly monument of the days of evil gods and man-eating.

This, in the old days, was the paepae tapu, or Forbidden Height, the abode of dark and terrible spirits. Upon it once stood the temple and about it in the depths of night were enacted the rites of mystery, when the priests and elders fed on the "long pig that speaks," when the drums beat till dawn and wild dances maddened the blood.

When it was built, no man can say. Centuries have looked upon these black stones, grim as the ruins of Karnak, created by a mysterious genius, consecrated to something now gone out of the world forever. For ages hidden in the gloom of the forest, it was swept and polished by hands long since dust; it was held in reverence and dread. It was tapu, devoted to terrible deities, and none but the priests or the chiefs might approach it except on nights of ghastly feasting.



It stood in a grove of shadowy trees, which even at mid-afternoon cast a gloom upon the ponderous black rocks of the platform and the high seats where chiefs and wizards once sat devouring the corpses of their foes. Above them writhed and twisted the distorted limbs of a huge banian-tree, and below, among the gnarled roots, there was a deep, dark pit.

We paused in a clear space of green turf delicately shaded by mango-trees walled in with ferns and grass and flowering bushes, and gazed into the gloom. This was forbidden ground until the French came. No road led to it then; only a narrow and dusky trail, guarded by demons of Po and trod by humans only in the whispering darkness of the jungle night, brought the warriors with the burdens of living meat to the place of the gods. But the French, as if to mock the sacred things of the conquered, made two roads converge in this very spot, from which one wound its way over the mountains to Hanamenu and the other followed the river to an impasse in the hills.

"My forefathers and mothers ate their fill of 'long pig' here and danced away the night," said Hot Tears, the hunchback, as he lighted a cigarette and sat upon the stone pulpit that once had been a wizard's. His heavy face, crushed down upon his crooked chest, showed not the slightest trace of fear; a pale imp danced in each of his narrowed eyes as he looked up at me.

"That banian-tree, my grandfather said, held the toua, the cord of cocoanut fiber that held the living meat suspended above the baking pit. There, you see, among the roots—that was the oven, above which the prisoners hung. Here stood the great drums, and the servants of the priests beat them, till the darkness was filled with sound and all the valleys heard.

"Aue!" The hunchback leaped to the edge of the pit. He raised his thin arms in the air, and I seemed to see, amidst the contorted limbs of the aged banian, fifty feet above, the quivering bodies swaying. "The toua breaks! They fall. Here on the rocks. They are killed with blows of the u'u, thus! And thus the meat is cut, and wrapped in the meika aa. Light the fire! Pile in the wood! It roasts!"

His ghoulish laughter rose in the dark stillness of the jungle, and the hair stirred on my scalp. To my vision the high black seats were filled with shadowy figures, the light of candlenut torches fell on tattooed faces and gleaming eyes. When the hunchback moved from the tree of death, feigning to carry a platter, first to the great seats of the chiefs, then to the wide platform below, the flesh crawled on my bones.

"Ai! They dance! Ai! Ai! Ai! They danced, and they loved! All night the drums beat. The drums! The drums! The drums!" He flung his twisted body on the green and laughed madly, till the old banian itself answered him. For a moment he writhed in a silence even more ghastly than his laughter, then lay still.

"Au!" he said, turning over on his back. "My grandfather believed this Pekia to be the abode of demons." He paused. "As for me, I believe in none of them, or in any other gods." And he blew out his breath contemptuously.

Le Moine surveyed the scene critically.

"What a picture at night, with torches flickering, and the seats filled with men in red pareus! Mais, c'est terrible!"

He got off a hundred feet and squinted through a roll of paper.

"I wish I could paint it," he said. "It must be a big canvas, and all dark but the torches and a few faces. Mon dieu! Magnificent!"

Is cannibalism in the Marquesas a thing of the past? Do those grim warriors who survive the new regime ever relapse? Who can say? It is not probable, for the population of the valleys is so small and the movements of the people so limited that absence is quickly detected. Yet every once in awhile some one is missing.

"Haa mate. He has leaped into the sea. He was paopao. Life was too long."

Or, if the disappearance was in crossing from one valley to another, it is said that a rock or a fall of earth had swept the absent one over a cliff. These are reasonable explanations, yet there persist whispers of foul appetitites craving gratification and of old rites revived by the moke, the hermits who hide in the mountains.

Two such dissappearances had occurred during my brief stay in Atuona, and I had made little of the whispers. But now, with the hideous laughter of the hunchback still ringing in my ears, they slipped darkly through my mind, and I never felt the sunshine sweeter or tasted the mountain air with more delight than when we left that unholy place and were out on the trail again.

Our destination was a waterfall, with a pool in which we might bathe, and after leaving the Pekia we followed the stream, climbing higher and higher from the sea. In the Marquesas all the rivers begin in the high mountains, where from the precipices leap the torrents in times of rain. As the valleys are mere ravines at their heads, the waters collect in their depths and roll to the ocean, rippling gently on sunny days, but after a downpour raging, rolling huge boulders over and over and tearing away cliffs.

These streams are the life of the people in the upper valleys. In the old days of warfare many of these mountain dwellers never knew the sea; they were prevented from reaching it by the beach clansmen who claimed the fishing for their own and made it death for the hill people to venture down to the shore. All the people of a single valley, six or perhaps a dozen clans, united to war against other valleys, its people risking their lives if they trespassed beyond the hills. Yet under a wise and powerful chief a whole valley lived in amity and knew no class or clan divisions.

"We are going to Vaihae, The Waters of the Great Desire," said Malicious Gossip. "It was a sacred place once upon a time."

We climbed painfully, Le Moine and I suffering keenly from the sharp edges of the stones that cut even through the thick soles of our shoes. The others, who were barefooted, made nothing of them, walking as easily and lithely as panthers on the jagged trail. Soon we heard the crash of the Vaihae, and sliding down the mountain-side a hundred feet we came into a depths of a gorge a yard or two wide, a mere crack in the rocks, filled with the boom and roar of rushing water. The rain-swollen stream, cramped in the narrow passage, flung itself foaming high on the spray-wet cliffs, and dashed in a mighty torrent into a deep howl riven out of the solid granite twenty feet below.

We put off our clothes and leaped into the pool, enjoying intensely the coolness of the swirling water after the sweat of our climb. Malicious Gossip and her sister would not go in at first, but when I had climbed the face of a slippery rock twenty feet high to dive, and remained there gazing at the melancholy grandeur of the scene, Malicious Gossip put off her tunic and swam through the race, bringing me my camera untouched by the water. She was a naiad of the old mythologies as she slipped through the green current, her hair streaming over her shoulders and her body moving effortlessly as a fish. Once wetted, she remained in the water with us, and she told me there was a cave behind the waterfall, hidden by the glassy sheet of water.

"It is called Enamoa (Behold the Servant of the Priest) and it has a terrible history," said Malicious Gossip. "Follow me and we will enter it."

She swam across the pool and turning lithely in the water curved out of sight beneath the surface of the vortex. Kekela followed her, and I made several attempts, but each time was flung back, bruised and breathless. It was not until Kekela, finding a long stick in the cave, thrust it through the white foam, that by catching its end in the whirling water I was able to fight through the roaring and smashing deluge.

The cave was obscure and damp, its only light filtering through the moving curtain of green water. Black and crawling things squirmed at our feet, and darkness filled the recesses of the cavern. Malicious Gossip's body was a blur in the dimness, and her low soft voice was like an overtone of the deep organ notes of the torrent.

"The tale of the cave of Enamoa is not a legend," she said, "for it is more. It was a happening known to our grandfathers. There were two warriors who coveted a woman, and she was tapu to them. She was a taua vehine, a priestess of the old gods. But they coveted her, and they were friends, who shared their wives as they divided their popoi."

"Panalua," said Kekela. "That is 'dear friend custom.' We had it in Hawaii. Brothers shared their wives, and sisters their husbands."

"These two were name-brothers, and loved as though they were brothers by blood," said Malicious Gossip. "And their hearts were consumed with flame when they looked on this girl. It was evil of them, for it was against the will of the gods. She was of their own clan, and the priests had made her tapu until she had reached a certain age. Her brother was the servant of the priests, and she was consecrated to the gods. She was guarded by most sacred custom. It was forbidden to touch her or her food.

"Yet these warriors, toa they were, and renowned in battle, coveted her with a desire that ate their sleep. And at last when they had drunk the fiery namu enata till their brains were filled with flames, they lay in wait for her.

"She came down to this pool to bathe. The pool itself was tapu save for those consecrated to the gods, yet this wretched pair crept through the lantana there on the bank, and watched her. She stood on the rock above the pool and put off her pae, her cap of gauze, her long robe, and her pareu, all of finest tree-cloth, for in those days before the whites came our people were properly clothed. All naked then in the sunlight, she lifted her arms toward the sky and laughed, and sat down on a rock to bathe her feet.

"Suddenly the lustful warriors sprang upon her, and stopping her cries with her own pae they swam with her into this cave. Thought and breath had left her; she lay as one dead, and before they had attained their will they heard a sound of one approaching and singing on the rocks. They had no time to kill her, as they had intended, that she might not bring death to them. They left her and fled along the cliffs, barely escaping before the other man came.

"He had seen from the corner of his eye a sight of some one fleeing from the cave. He was curious, and swam to it. It was late in the day, for the priestess had come for the evening bath. The sun had hidden himself behind Temetiu and the cave was dark. The man came, then, stepping with care, and his feet found in the darkness a living body, warm and soft and perfumed with flowers.

"Then in the darkness, finding her very sweet, he yielded to the demon. But when he brought her at last through the falling water to the evening light, he cried aloud. He was the moa, the servant of the high priest, and this was his sister whom he loved.

"He screamed thrice, so that all the valley heard him, and then he flung her into the pool to drown. The people saw him fleeing to the heights. He never returned to them. He became a moke, a sorcerer, who lived alone in the forest, dreaded by all. He was heard shrieking in the night, and then the storms came. His eyes were seen through the leaves on jungle trails, and he who saw died.

"Then the people gave the cave a name, the name of Enamoa, Behold the Servant of the Priest. It was much larger then than now, as large as a grove. But one night the people heard the noise of the falling of great rocks, and in the morning the cave was small as now. The moke was never seen again. He had brought down the walls of the cave upon himself, because it had seen his sin."

Malicious Gossip, having finished her tale, slipped again beneath the green curtain of the waterfall. When I had fought through the blinding, crashing waters and floated with aching lungs on the surface of the pool, she was donning her tunic on the rocks above it, and soon, with our clothes over our wet bodies, we strolled back to Atuona, Tahiapii smoking Kekela's pipe.



CHAPTER XVIII

A search for rubber-trees on the plateau of Ahoa; a fight with the wild white dogs; story of an ancient migration, told by the wild cattle hunters in the Cave of the Spine of the Chinaman.

I went one day with Le Brunnec, the French trader, in search of rubber trees on the plateau of Ahao, above Hanamenu, on the other side of Hiva-oa Island.

Mounted on small, but sturdy, mountain ponies, we followed the trail across the river and up the steep mountain-side clad with impenetrable jungle, climbing ever higher and higher above deep gorges and dizzying precipices, until at noon we crossed the loftiest range and dipped downward to the wide plateau.

A thousand feet above the valley, level as a prairie, and indescribably wild and deserted, the plain stretched before us. At some distance to our right a long and narrow mound rose five hundred feet from the plateau, a hill that did not mar the vast level expanse, but seemed instead a great earthwork piled upon it by man. Its green terrace was a wild garden of flowers and fruit growing in luxuriant confusion, watered by a stream that leaped sparkling among tall ferns.

There was no breadfruit, for it will live only where man is there to tend it, and in all the extent of the tableland there was no human being or sign of habitation. Wild cattle and boars moved in droves among the scattered trees, or stood in the shallow stream watching us with curiosity as we passed. Thousands of guinea-pigs scampered before our horses' feet, and the free descendants of house-trained cats from the cities of Europe and America perched upon lofty branches to gaze down at our cavalcade.

I have seen the Garden of Allah, and the Garden of Eden,—if I can believe the Arab sheik whose camel I bought for the journey,—I have been in Nikko at its best, and known Johore and Kandy en fete, but for the hours in which I looked upon it this plateau of Ahao was the most exquisite spot upon the earth. The wilderness of its tropic beauty, the green of its leafage, the rich profusion and splendor of its flowers, the pale colors that shimmered along its far horizon, and the desolate grandeur of Temetiu's distant summit wrapped in thunderous clouds, gave it an aspect primitive, mysterious, and sublime.

Upon the trees hundreds of orchids hung like jewels, and vines were swung in garlands. Flowers of every hue spread a brilliant carpet beneath the horses' hoofs; the hart's-tongue, the manamana-o-hina, the papa-mako and the parasol-plant, with mosses of every description and myriads of ferns, covered the sward. Some were the giant tree-ferns, tall as trees, others uncurled snaky stems from masses of rusty-colored matting, and everywhere was spread the delicate lace of the uu-fenua, a maiden-hair beside which the florist's offering is clumsy and insignificant.

We made our own way through the tall grass and tangles of flowering shrubs, for there were no trails save those made by the great herds of wild cattle that wandered across the plain. Three thousand head at least I saw grazing on the luxuriant herbage, or pausing with lifted heads before they fled at our approach.

"They are descendants of a few left by shipmasters decades ago," said Le Brunnec. "Twenty years ago they roamed in immense herds all over the islands. I have chased them out of the trail to Hanamenu with a stick. Like the goats left by the American captain, Porter, on Nuka-hiva, they thrived and multiplied, but like the goats they are being massacred.

"Both cattle and goats were past reckoning when, with peace fully established and the population dwindling, the French permitted the Marquesans to buy guns. The natives hunt in gangs. Fifteen or twenty men, each with rifle or shot-gun, go on horseback to the grazing grounds. The beasts at the sound of the explosions rush to the highest point of the hills. Knowing their habits, the natives post themselves along the ridges and kill all they can. They eat or take away three or four, but they kill thirty or forty. They die in the brush, and their bones strew the ground."

I told him of the buffalo, antelope, and deer that formerly filled our woods and covered our prairies; of Alexander Wilson, who in Kentucky in 1811 estimated one flight of wild carrier pigeons as two thousand millions, and of there being not one of those birds now left in the world so far as is known.

Le Brunnec sighed, for he was a true sportsman, and would not kill even a pig if he could not consume most of its carcass. Often he half-lifted the shot-gun that lay across the pommel, but let it drop again, saying, "We will have a wild bird for supper."

We pitched our tent as the moon hung her lantern over the brow of the hill. Never was tent raised in a spot lonelier or lovelier. We chose for our camp the shelter of a moto tree, one of the most lordly of all the growths of these islands. Not ten of them were left in all the Marquesas, said Le Brunnec as I admired its towering column and magnificent spread of foliage. "The whites who used the axe in these isles would have made firewood of the ark of the covenant."

We made a fire before our tent and cooked a wild chicken he had shot, which, with pilot-biscuit and Bordeaux wine, made an excellent dinner. Darkness closed around us while we ate, the wide plateau stretched about us, mysterious in the light of the moon, and the night was cool and pleasant. We lay in lazy comfort, enjoying the fresh light air of that altitude and smoking "John's" mixture from Los Angeles, till sleepiness spilled the tobacco. Our numbed senses scarcely let us drag our mats into the tent before unconsciousness claimed us.

I was wakened by the blood-chilling howls of a wolf-pack in full cry, and a shout from Le Brunnec, "The dogs!"

He stood by the open flap of the tent, a black silhouette of man and gun. When I had clutched my own rifle and reached his side I saw in the moonlight a score of huge white beasts, some tangled in a snarling heap over the remains of our supper, others crouching on their haunches in a ring, facing us. One of them sprang as Le Brunnec fired, and its hot breath fanned my face before my own finger pressed the trigger.

The two wounded brutes struggled on the ground until a second shot finished them, and the rest made off to a little distance, where Le Brunnec kept them with an occasional shot while I brought up the terrified ponies, snorting and plunging. More wood thrown on the coals spread a circle of firelight about us, and Le Brunnec and I took turns in standing guard until morning, while the white dogs sat like sheeted ghosts around us and made the night hideous with howls. One or the other of us must have dozed, for during the night the beasts dragged away the two dead and picked their bones.

These, Le Brunnec said, were the sons and daughters of dogs once friendly to humanity, and like the wild cats we had seen, they bore mute testimony to the numbers of people who once lived on this plateau.

When dawn came the mountain rats were scurrying about the meadows, but the dogs had gone afar, leaving only the two heaps of bones and the wreckage of all outside the tent to tell of their foray. The sun flooded the mesa, disclosing myriad fern-fronds and mosses and colored petals waving in the light breeze as Le Brunnec and I went down to the stream to bathe.

Alas! I lolled there on the bank, thinking to gaze my fill at all this loveliness, and sat upon the puke, a feathery plant exquisite to the eye, but a veritable bunch of gadflies for pricking meanness. It is a sensitive shrub, retreating at man's approach, its petioles folding from sight, but with all its modesty it left me a stinging reminder that I had failed to respect its privacy.

At noon we came to the hill that rises from the plateau, and found at its base a cistern, the sole token we had seen of the domain of man, except the dogs and cats that had returned to the primitive. It was a basin cut in the solid rock, and doubtless had been the water supply of the tribes that dwelt here hemmed in by enemies. There was about it the vague semblance of an altar, and in the brush near it we saw the black remains of a mighty paepae like that giant Marai of Papara in Tahiti, which itself seemed kin to the great pyramid temple of Borobodo in Java. Melancholy memorials these of man, who is so like the gods, but who passes like a leaf in the wind.

Lolling in the stream that overflowed the edge of the ancient cistern, we discussed our plans. Le Brunnec was convinced that the eva, which we had found in considerable numbers, was a rubber-tree. He said that rubber was obtained from many trees, vines, roots, and plants, and that the sap of the eva, when dried and treated, had all the necessary bouncing qualities. We were to estimate the number of eva trees on the plateau and size up the value of the land for a plantation. Thus we might turn into gold that poison tree whose reddish-purple, alluring fruit has given so many Marquesans escape from life's bitterness, whose juice wounded or mutilated warriors drank to avoid pain or contempt.

Idling thus in the limpid water, we heard a voice and started up surprised. A group of natives looked down upon us from the hill above, and their leader was asking who were the strange haoe who had come to their valley.

Le Brunnec shouted his name—Proneka, in the native tongue—and after council they shouted down an invitation to breakfast. We had no guns, or, indeed, any other clothing than a towel, our horses being tethered at some distance, but we climbed the hill. Half way up the steep ascent we were confronted by a wild sow with eight piglets. Le Brunnec said that one of them would be appreciated by our hosts, but the mother, surmising his intention, put her litter behind her and stood at bay. To attempt the rape of the pork, naked, afoot, and unarmed, would have meant grievous wounds from those gnashing tusks, so we abandoned the gift and approached our hosts empty-handed.

We found them waiting for us in the Grotto of the Spine of the Chinaman, a shallow cave in the side of the hill. There were seven of them, naked as ourselves, thick-lipped, their eyes ringed with the blue ama-ink and their bodies scrolled with it. They had killed a bull the day before and had cooked the meat in bamboo tubes, steaming it in the earth until it was tender and tasty. We gorged upon it, and then rested in the cool cave while we smoked. They were curious to know why we were there, and asked if we were after beef. I disclaimed this intention, and said that I was wondering if Ahao had not held many people once.

"Ai! E mea tiatohu hoi! Do you not know of the Piina of Fiti-nui? Of the people that once were here? Aoe? Then I will tell you."

While the pipe went from mouth to mouth, Kitu, the leader of the hunters, related the following:

"The Piina of Fiti-nui had always lived here on the plateau of Ahao. The wise men chronicled a hundred and twenty generations since the clan began. That would be before Iholomoni built the temple in Iudea, that the priests of the new white gods tell us of. The High Place of the Piina of Fiti-nui was old before Iholomoni was born.

"But, old as was the clan, there came a time when it grew small in number. For longer than old remembered they had been at war with the Piina of Hana-uaua, who lived in the next valley below this plateau. These two peoples were kinsman, but the hate between them was bitter. The enemy gave the Piina of Fiti-nui no rest. Their popoi pits were opened and emptied, their women were stolen, and their men seized and eaten. Month after month and year after year the clan lost its strength.

"They had almost ceased to tattoo their bodies, for they asked what it served them when they were so soon to bake in the ovens of the Hana-uaua people. They could not defeat the Hana-uaua, for they were small in number and the Hana-uaua were great. The best fighters were dead. The gods only could save the last of the tribe from the veinahae, the vampire who seizes the dead.

"The taua went into the High Place and besought the gods, but they were deaf. They made no answer. Then in despair the chief, Atituahuei, set a time when, if the gods gave no counsel, he would lead every man of the tribe against the foe, and die while the war-clubs sang.

"Atituahuei went with the taua to the giant rock, Meae-Topaiho, the sacred stone shaped like a spear that stood between the lands of the warring peoples, and there he said this vow to the gods. And the people waited.

"They waited for the space of the waxing and waning of the moon, and the gods said nothing. Then the warriors made ready their u'u of polished ironwood, and filled their baskets with stones, and made ready the spears. On the darkest night of the moon the Piina of Fiti-nui was to go forth to fight and be killed by the Hana-uaua.

"But before the moon had gone, the taua came down from the High Place, and said that the gods had spoken. They commanded the people to depart from Ahao, and to sail beyond the Isle of Barking Dogs until they came to a new land. The gods would protect them from the waves. The gods had shown the taua a hidden valley, which ran to the beach, in which to build the canoes.

"For many months the Piina of Fiti-nui labored in secret in the hidden valley. They built five canoes, giant, double canoes, with high platforms and houses on them, the kind that are built no more. In these canoes they placed the women and children and the aged, and when all was ready, the men raided the village of the Piina of Hana-uaua, and in the darkness brought all their food to the canoes.

"At daybreak the Fiti-nui embarked in four of the canoes, but one they must leave behind for the daughter of the chief, who expected to be delivered of a child at any hour, and for the women of her family, who would not leave her. The hidden valley was filled with the sound of lamentation at the parting, but the gods had spoken, and they must go.

"When the four canoes were in the sea beyond the village of Hana-uaua, all their people beat their war-drums and blew the trumpets of shell. The people of Hana-uaua heard the noise, and said that strangers had come, but whether for a fight or a feast they did not know. They rushed to the shore, and there they saw on the sea the people of the Fiti-nui, who called to them and said that they were going far away.

"Then the Hana-uaua tribe wept. For they remembered that they were brothers, and though they had fought long, the warriors of Fiti-nui had been good fighters and brave. Also many Fiti-nui women had been taken by the men of Hana-uaua, and captured youths had been adopted, and the tribes were kin by many ties.

"The two tribes talked together across the waves, and the tribe of Hana-uaua begged their brothers not to go. They said that they would fight no more, that the prisoners who had not been eaten should be returned to their own valley, that the two clans would live forever in friendship.

"Then the people of Fiti-nui wept again, but they said that the gods had ordered them to sail away, and they must go.

"'But,' said the chief of the Fiti-nui, 'you will know that we have reached a new land safely when the Meae-Topaiho falls, when the great spear is broken by the gods, you will know that your brothers are in a new home.'

"Then they departed, the four canoes, but the daughter of the chief did not go, for her child was long in being born. She lived with the people of Hana-uaua in peace and comfort. And when the season of the breadfruit had come and gone, one night when the rain and the wind made the earth tremble and slip, the people of Hana-uaua heard a roaring and a crashing.

"'The gods are angry,' they said. But the daughter of the chief said, 'My people have found their home.' And in the morning they found that the Meae-Topaiho had fallen, the blade of the spear was broken, and the prophecy fulfilled.

"That was four generations ago, and ever since that time the people of Hana-uaua have looked for some sign from their brothers who went away. Their names were kept in the memories of the tribe. Ten years ago many men were brought here to work on the plantations, from Puka-Puka and Na-Puka in the Paumotas, and they talked with the people.

"Aue! They were the children's children of the Piina of Fiti-nui. In those low islands to which their fathers and mothers went, they kept the words and the names of old. They had kept the memory of the journey. And one old man was brought by his son, and he remembered all that his father had told him, and his father was the son of the chief, Atituahuei.

"These people did not look like our men. The many years had made them different. But they knew of the spear rock, and of the prophecy, and they were in truth the lost brothers of the Hana-uaua people.

"But the Hana-uaua people, too, were dying now. None was left of the blood of the chief's daughter. No man was left alive on the plateau of Ahao.

"Their popoi pits are the wallows of the wild boar; on their paepaes sit the wild white dogs. The horned cattle wander where they walked. Hee i te fenua ke! They are gone, and the stranger shall have their graves."



CHAPTER XIX

A feast to the men of Motopu; the making of kava, and its drinking; the story of the Girl Who Lost Her Strength.

The Vagabond, Kivi, who lived near the High Place, came down to my paepae one evening to bid me come to a feast given in Atuona Valley to the men of Motopu, who had been marvelously favored by the god of the sea.

Months of storms, said Kivi, had felled many a stately palm of Taka-Uka and washed thousands of ripe cocoanuts into the bay, whence the current that runs swift across the channel had swept the fruitage of the winds straight to the inlet of Motopu, on the island of Tahuata. The men of that village, with little effort to themselves, had reaped richly.

Now they were come, bringing back the copra dried and sacked. Seven hundred francs they had received for a ton of it from Kriech, the German merchant of Taka-Uka, from whose own groves it had been stolen by the storms.

On the morrow, their canoes laden with his goods, they would sail homeward. One day they had tarried to raft redwood planks of California from the schooner in the bay to the site of Kivi's new house. So that night in gratitude he would make merry for them. There would be much to eat, and there would be kava in plenty. He prayed that I would join them in this feast, which would bring back the good days of the kava-drinking, which were now almost forgotten.



I rose gladly from the palm-shaded mat on which I had lain vainly hoping for a breath of coolness in the close heat of the day, and girded the red pareu more neatly about my loins. Often I had heard of the kava-drinking days before the missionaries had insisted on outlawing that drink beloved of the natives. The traders had added their power to the virtuous protests of the priests, for kava cost the islanders nothing, while rum, absinthe, and opium could be sold them for profit. So kava-drinking had been suppressed, and after decades of knowing more powerful stimulants and narcotics, the natives had lost their taste for the gentler beverage of their forefathers.

The French law prohibited selling, exchanging, or giving to any Marquesan any alcoholic beverage. But the law was a dead letter, for only with rum and wine could work be urged upon the Marquesans, and I failed to reprove them even in my mind for their love of drink. One who has not seen a dying race cannot conceive of the prostration of spirit in which these people are perishing. That they are courteous and hospitable—and that to the white who has ruined them—shows faintly their former joy in life and their abounding generosity. Now that no hope is left them and their only future is death, one cannot blame them for seizing a few moment's forgetfulness.

Some years earlier, in the first bitterness of hopeless subjugation, whole populations were given over to drunkenness. In many valleys the chiefs lead in the making of the illicit namu enata, or cocoanut-brandy. In the Philippines, where millions of gallons of cocoanut-brandy are made, it is called tuba, but usually its name is arrack throughout tropical Asia. Fresh from the flower spathes of the cocoanut-tree, namu tastes like a very light, creamy beer or mead. It is delicious and refreshing, and only slightly intoxicating. Allowed to ferment and become sour, it is all gall. Its drinking then is divided into two episodes—swallowing and intoxication. There is no interval. "Forty-rod" whiskey is mild compared to it.

I had seen the preparation of namu, which is very simple. The native mounts the tree and makes incisions in the flowers, of which each palm bears from three to six. He attaches a calabash under them and lets the juice drip all day and night. The process is slow, as the juice falls drop by drop. This operation may be repeated indefinitely with no injury to the tree. In countries where the liquor is gathered to sell in large quantities, the natives tie bamboo poles from tree to tree, so that an agile man will run through the forest tending the calabashes, emptying them into larger receptacles, and lowering these to the ground, all without descending from his lofty height.

The namu when stale causes the Marquesans to revert to wickedest savagery, and has incited many murders. Under the eye of the gendarme its making ceases, but a hundred valleys have no white policemen, and the half score of people remaining amid their hundreds of ruined paepaes give themselves over to intoxication. I have seen a valley immersed in it, men and women madly dancing the ancient nude dances in indescribable orgies of abandonment and bestiality.

Namu enata means literally "man booze." The Persian-Arabic word, nam, or narm-keffi, means "the liquid from the palm flower." From this one might think that Asia had taught the Marquesans the art of making namu during their prehistoric pilgrimage to the islands, but the discoverers and early white residents in Polynesia saw no drunkenness save that of the kava-drinking. It was the European, or the Asiatic brought by the white, who introduced comparatively recently the more vicious cocoanut-brandy, as well as rum and opium, and it is these drinks that have been a potent factor in killing the natives.

It has ever been thus with men of other races subjugated by the whites. Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography tells that when he was a commissioner to the Indians at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he and his fellow-commissioners agreed that they would allow the Indians no rum until the treaty they earnestly sought was concluded, and that then they should have plenty.

He pictures an all-night debauch of the red men after they had signed the treaty, and concludes: "And, indeed, if it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means. It has annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the sea-coast."

It was not for me to speculate upon the designs of Providence with respect to the Marquesans. Kava had been the drink ordained by the old gods before the white men came. Its making was now almost a lost art; I knew no white man who had ever drunk from the kava-bowl. So it was with some eagerness that I followed Kivi down the trail.

Broken Plate, a sturdy savage in English cloth cap and whale's-teeth earrings, stood waiting for us in the road below the House of the Golden Bed, and together the three of us went in search of the kava bush. While we followed the narrow trail up the mountain-side, peering through masses of tangled vines and shrubs for the large, heart-shaped leaves and jointed stalks we sought, Kivi spoke with passion of the degenerate days in which he lived.

Let others secretly make incisions in the flower of the cocoanut and hang calabashes to catch the juice, said he. Or let them crook the hinges of the knee that rum might follow fawning on the whites. Not he! The drink of his fathers, the drink of his youth, was good enough for him! Agilely he caught aside a leafy branch overhanging the trail, and in the flecks of sunshine and shade his naked, strong brown limbs were like the smooth stems of an aged manzanita tree.

He had not the scaly skin or the bloodshot eyes of the kava debauchee, whose excesses paint upon their victim their own vivid signs. I remembered a figure caught by the rays of my flashlight one might on a dark trail—a withered creature whose whole face and body had turned a dull green, and at the memory of that grisly phantom I shuddered. But Broken Plate, on the trail ahead, called back to us that he had found a goodly bush, and without more words we clambered to it.

The kava, a variety of the pepper-plant, grows to more than six feet in height, and the specimen we had found thrust above our heads its many jointed branches rustling with large, flat leaves. The decoction, Kivi explained, comes from the root, and we set to work to dig it.

It was huge, like a gigantic yam, and after we had torn it from the stubborn soil it taxed the strength and agility of two of us to carry it to the paepae of Broken Plate, where the feast was to be. A dozen older women, skilled in grating the breadfruit for popoi making, awaited us there, squatting in a ring on the low platform. The root, well washed in the river, was laid on the stones, and the women attacked it with cowry-shells, scraping it into particles like slaw. It was of the hardness of ginger, and filled a large tanoa, or wooden trough of ironwood.

The scraping had hardly well begun, while Broken Plate and I rested from our labors, smoking pandanus-leaf cigarettes in the shade, when up the road came half a dozen of the most beautiful young girls of the village, clothed in all their finery.

Teata, with all the arrogance of the acclaimed beauty, walked first, wearing a tight-fitting gown with insertions of fishnet, evidently copied from some stray fashion-book. She wore it as her only garment, and through the wide meshes of the novel lace appeared her skin, of the tint of the fresh-cooked breadfruit. She passed us with a coquettish toss of her shapely head and took her place among her envious companions.

They sat on mats around the iron-wood trough and chewed the grated root, which, after thorough mastication, they spat out into banana-leaf cups. This chewing of the Aram-root is the very being of kava as a beverage, for it is a ferment in the saliva that separates alkaloid and sugar and liberates the narcotic principle. Only the healthiest and loveliest of the girls are chosen to munch the root, that delectable and honored privilege being refused to those whose teeth are not perfect and upon whose cheeks the roses do not bloom.

Nevertheless, as I smoked at ease in my pareu upon the paepae of my simple hosts I felt some misgivings rise in me. Yet why cavil at the vehicle by which one arrives at Nirvana? Had I not tasted the chicha beer of the Andes, and found it good? And vague analogies and surmises floated before me in the curls of smoke that rose in the clear evening light.

What hidden clue to the remotest beginnings of the human race lies in the fact that two peoples, so far apart as the Marquesans and the South American Indians, use the same method of making their native beverage? In the Andes corn takes the place of the kava root, and young girls, descendants of the ancient Incas, chew the grains, sitting in a circle and with a certain ceremoniousness, as among these Marquesans. The Marquesas Islands are on the same parallel of latitude as Peru. Were these two peoples once one race, living on that long-sunken continent in which Darwin believed?

Dusk fell slowly while I pondered on the mysteries in which our life is rooted, and on the unknown beginnings and forgotten significances of all human customs. The iron-wood trough was filled with the masticated root, and in groups and in couples the girls slipped away to bathe in the river. There they were met by arriving guests, and the sound of laughter and splashing came up to us as darkness closed upon the paepae and the torches were lit.

Lights were coming out like stars up the dark valley as each household made its vesper fire to roast breadfruit or broil fish, and lanterns were hung upon the bamboo palisades that marked the limits of property or confined favorite pigs. A cool breeze rose and rustled the fronds of cocoanut and bamboo, bringing from forest depths a clean, earthy odor.

The last bather came from the brook, refreshed by the cooling waters and adorned with flowers. All were in a merry mood for food and fun. Half a dozen flaring torches illuminated their happy, tattooed faces and dusky bodies, and caught color from the vivid blossoms in their hair. The ring of light made blacker the rustling cocoanut grove, the lofty trees of which closed in upon us on every side.

Under the gaze of many sparkling eyes Kivi pierced green cocoanuts brought him fresh from the climbing, and poured the cool wine of them over the masticated kava. He mixed it thoroughly and then with his hands formed balls of the oozy mass, from which he squeezed the juice into another tanoa glazed a deep, rich blue by its frequent saturation in kava. When this trough was quite full of a muddy liquid, he deftly clarified it by sweeping through it a net of cocoanut fiber. All the while he chanted in a deep resonant voice the ancient song of the ceremony.

"U haanoho ia te kai, a tapapa ia te kai!" he called with solemnity when the last rite was performed. "Come to supper; all is ready."

"Menike," he said to me, "You know that to drink kava you must be of empty stomach. After eating, kava will make you sick. If you do not eat as soon as you have drunk it, you will not enjoy it. Take it now, and then eat, quickly."

He dipped a shell in the trough, tossed a few drops over his shoulder to propitiate the god of the kava-drinking, and placed the shell in my hands.

Ugh! The liquor tasted like earth and water, sweetish for a moment and then acrid and pungent. It was hard to get down, but all the men took theirs at a gulp, and when Kivi gave me another shellful, I followed their pattern.

"Kai! Kai. Eat! Eat!" Kivi shouted then. The women hurried forward with the food, and we fell to with a will. Pig and popoi, shark sweetbreads, roasted breadfruit and sweet potatoes, fruits and cocoanut-milk leaped from the broad leaf platters to wide-open mouths. Hardly a word was spoken. The business of eating proceeded rapidly, in silence, save for the night-rustling of the palms and the soft sound of the women's hastening bare feet.

Only, as he saw any slackening, Kivi repeated vigorously, "Kai! Kai!"

I sat with my back against the wall of the house of Broken Plate, as I ate quickly at the mandate of my host, and soon I felt the need of this support. The feast finished, the guests reclined upon the mats. Women and children were devouring the remnants left upon the leaf platters. The torches had been extinguished, all but one. Its flickering gleam fell upon the aged face of Kivi, and the whites of his eyes caught and reflected the light. The tattooing that framed them appeared like black holes from which the sparks glinted uncannily, and the kava mounting to his brain or to mine gave those sparks a ghastliness that fascinated me in my keen, somnolent state.

From the shadows where the women crouched the face of Teata rose like an eerie flower. She had adorned the two long black plaits of her hair with the brilliant phosphorescence of Ear of the Ghost Woman, the strange fungus found on old trees, a favored evening adornment of the island belles. The handsome flowers glowed about her bodiless head like giant butterflies, congruous jewels for such a temptress of such a frolic. The mysterious light added a gleam to her velvet cheek and neck that made her seem like the ghost-woman of old legend, created to lead the unwary to intoxicated death.

The palaver came to me out of the darkness, like voices from a phonograph-horn, thin and far away. One told the tale of Tahiapepae, the Girl Who Lost Her Strength.

Famine had come upon Atuona Valley. Children died of hunger on the paepaes, and the breasts of mothers shrunk so that they gave forth no milk. Therefore the warriors set forth in the great canoes for Motopu. Meat was the cry, and there was no other meat than puaa oa, the "long pig."

Then in the darkness the hungry fighting men of Atuona silently beached their canoes and crept upon the sleeping village of Motopu. Seven were killed before they could fly to the hills, and one was captured alive, a slender, beautiful girl of ten years, whom they tied hands and feet and threw into the canoe with the slain ones.

Back they came from their triumph, and landed on the shore here, within spear's-throw from the paepae of Broken Plate. Their people met them with drum-beating and with chanting, bringing rose-wood poles for carrying the meat. The living girl was slung over the shoulder of the leader, still bound and weeping, and in single file heroes and their people marched up the trail past the Catholic mission. Tohoaa, Great Sea Slug, chief of Atuona and grandfather of Flag, the gendarme, was foremost, and over his massive shoulder hung the Girl Who Had Lost Her Strength.

Then from the mission came Pere Orens, crucifix in hand. Tall he stood in his garment of black, facing the Great Sea Slug, and lifting on high his hand with the crucifix in it. Pere Orens had been made tapu by Great Sea Slug, to whom he had explained the wonders of the world, and given many presents. To touch him was death, for Great Sea Slug had given him a feast and put upon him the white tapa, emblem of sacredness.

Powerful was the god of Pere Orens, and could work magic. In his pocket he carried always a small god, that day and night said "Mika! Mika!" and moved tiny arms around and around a plate of white metal. This man stood now before the Great Sea Slug, and the chief paused, while his hungry people came closer that they might hear what befell.

"Where are you going?" said Pere Orens.

"To Pekia, the High Place, to cook and eat," said Great Sea Slug. Then for a space Pere Orens remained silent, holding high the crucifix, and the chief heard from his pocket the voice of the small god speaking.

"Give to me that small piece of living meat," said Pere Orens then.

"Me mamai oe. If it is your pleasure, take it," said Great Sea Slug. "It is a trifle. We have enough, and there is more in Motopu."

With these words he placed his burden upon the shoulder of the priest, and heading his band again led them past the mission, over the river and to the High Place, where all night long the drums beat at the feasting.

But The Girl Who Lost Her Strength remained in the house of Pere Orens, who cut her bonds, fed her, and nursed her to strength again. Baptized and instructed in the religion of her savior, she was secretly returned to her surviving relatives. There she lived to a good age, and died four years ago, grateful always to the God that had preserved her from the oven.

He who spoke was her son, and here at the kava bowl together were the men of Motopu and the men of Atuona, enemies no longer.

The voice of the Motopu man died away. A ringing came in my ears as when one puts a seashell to them and hears the drowsy murmur of the tides. My cigarette fell from my fingers. A sirocco blew upon me, hot, stifling. Kivi laughed, and dimly I heard his inquiry:

"Veavea? Is it hot?"

"E, mahanahana. I am very warm," I struggled to reply.

My voice sounded as that of another. I leaned harder against the wall and closed my eyes.

"He goes fast," said Broken Plate, gladly.

A peace passing the understanding of the kava-ignorant was upon me. Life was a slumbrous calm; not dull inertia, but a separated activity, as if the spirit roamed in a garden of beauty, and the body, all suffering, all feeling past, resigned itself to quietude.

I heard faintly the chants of the men as they began improvising the after-feasting entertainment. I was perfectly aware of being lifted by several women to within the house, and of being laid upon mats that were as soft to my body as the waters of a quiet sea. It was as if angels bore me on a cloud. All toil, all effort was over; I should never return to care and duty. Dimly I saw a peri waving a fan, making a breeze scented with ineffable fragrance.

I was then a giant, prone in an endless ease, who stretched from the waterfall at the topmost point of the valley to the shore of the sea, and about me ran in many futile excitements the natives of Atuona, small creatures whose concerns were naught to me.

That vision melted after eons, and I was in the Oti dance in the Paumotas, where those old women who pose and move by the music of the drums, in the light of the burning cocoanut husks, leap into the air and remain so long that the white man thinks he sees the law of gravitation overcome, remaining fixed in space three or four feet from the ground while one's heart beats madly and one's brain throbs in bewilderment. I was among these aged women; I surpassed them all, and floated at will upon the ether in an eternal witches' dance of more than human delight.

The orchestra of nature began a symphony of celestial sounds. The rustling of the palm-leaves, the purling of the brook, and the song of the komoko, nightingale of the Marquesas, mingled in music sweeter to my kava-ravished ears than ever the harp of Apollo upon Mount Olympus. The chants of the natives were a choir of voices melodious beyond human imaginings. Life was good to its innermost core; there was no struggle, no pain, only an eternal harmony of joy.

* * * * *

I slept eight hours, and when I awoke I saw, in the bright oblong of sunlight outside the open door, Kivi squeezing some of the root of evil for a hair of the hound that had bitten him.



CHAPTER XX

A journey to Taaoa; Kahuiti, the cannibal chief, and his story of an old war caused by an unfaithful woman.

It was a chance remark from Mouth of God that led me to take a journey over the hills to the valley of Taaoa, south of Atuona. Malicious Gossip and her husband, squatting one evening on my mats in the light of the stars, spoke of the Marquesan custom in naming children.

"When a babe is born," said Mouth of God, "all the intimates of his parents, their relatives and friends, bestow a name upon the infant. All these names refer to experiences of the child's ancestors, or of the namers, or of their ancestors. My wife's names—a few of them—are Tavahi Teikimoetetua Tehaupiimouna. These words are separate, having no relation one to another, and they mean Malicious Gossip, She Sleeps with God, The Golden Dews of the Mountain.

"My first three names are Vahatetua Heeafia Timeteo. Vahatetua is Mouth of God; Heeafia, One Who Looks About, and Timeteo is Marquesan for Timothee, the Bible writer.

"My uncle, the Catechist, is Tioakoekoe, Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted on a Stick, and his brother is called Pootuhatuha, meaning Sliced and Distributed. That is because their father, Tufetu, was killed at the Stinking Springs in Taaoa, and was cooked and sent all over that valley. You should see that man who killed him, Kahuiti! He is a great man, and strong still, though old. He likes the 'long pig' still, also. It is not long since he dug up the corpse of one buried, and ate it in the forest."

When I said that I should indeed like to see that man, Mouth of God said that he would send a word of introduction that should insure for me the friendliness of the chief who had devoured his grandfather. Mouth of God bore the diner no ill-will. The eating was a thing accomplished in the past; the teachings of that stern Calvinist, his mother, forbade that he should eat Kahuiti in retaliation, therefore their relations were amicable.

The following morning, attended by the faithful Exploding Eggs, I set out toward Taaoa Valley. The way was all up and down, five miles, wading through marshy places and streams, parting the jungle, caught by the thorns and dripping with sweat. Miles of it was through cocoanut forests owned by the mission.

The road followed the sea and climbed over a lofty little cape, Otupoto, from which the coast of Hiva-oa, as it curves eastward, was unrolled, the valleys mysterious caverns in the torn, convulsed panorama, gloomy gullies suggestive of the old bloody days. Above them the mountains caught the light and shone green or black under the cloudless blue sky. Seven valleys we counted, the distant ones mere faint shadows in the expanse of varied green, divided by the rocky headlands. To the right, as we faced the sea, was the point of Teaehoa jutting out into the great blue plain of the ocean, and landward we looked down on the Valley of Taaoa.

This was the middle place, the scene of Tufetu's violent end. A great splotch of red gleamed as a blot of blood on the green floor of the hollow.

"Vai piau!" said Exploding Eggs. He made a sign of lifting water in his hands, of tasting and spitting it out. The Stinking Springs where Tufetu was slain!

They were in a fantastic gorge, through which ran a road blasted from solid rock, stained brown and blue by the minerals in the water that bubbled there and had carved the stone in eccentric patterns. Bicarbonate of soda and sulphur thickened the heavy air and encrusted the edges of the spring with yellow scum. A fitting scene for a deadly battle, amid smells of sulphur and brimstone! But it was no place in which to linger on a tropic day.

Taaoa Valley was narrow and deep, buried in perpetual gloom by the shadows of the mountains. Perhaps thirty houses lined the banks of a swift and rocky torrent. As we approached them we were met by a sturdy Taaoan, bare save for the pareu and handsomely tattooed. His name, he said, was Strong in Battle, and I, a stranger, must see first of all a tree of wonder that lay in the forest nearby.

Through brush and swamp we searched for it, past scores of ruined paepaes, homes of the long-dead thousands. We found it at length, a mighty tree felled to the earth and lying half-buried in vine and shrub.

"This tree is older than our people," said Strong in Battle, mournfully regarding its prostrate length. "No man ever remembered its beginning. It was like a house upon a hill, so high and big. Our forefathers worshipped their gods under it. The white men cut it to make planks. That was fifty years ago, but the wood never dies. There is no wood like it in the Marquesas. The wise men say that it will endure till the last of our race is gone."

I felt the end of the great trunk, where the marks of the axe and saw still showed, and struck it with my fist. The wood did indeed seem hard as iron, though it seemed not to be petrified. So far as I could ascertain from the fallen trunk, it was of a species I had never seen.

"Twenty years ago I brought a man of Peretane (England) here to see this tree, and he cut off a piece to take away. No white man has looked on it since that time," said Strong in Battle. He brought an axe from a man who was dubbing out a canoe from a breadfruit log, and hacked away a chip for me.

We returned to the village and entered an enclosure in which a group of women were squatting around a popoi bowl.

"What does the Menike seek?" they asked.

"He wants to see the footprint of Hoouiti," said my guide.

On one of the stones of the paepae was a footprint, perfect from heel to toe, and evidently not artificially made.

"Hoouiti stood here when he hurled his spear across the island," said Strong in Battle. "He was not a big man, as you see by his foot's mark."

"Fifteen kilometers! A long hurling of a spear," said I.

"Aue! he was very strong. He lived on this paepae. These whom you see are his children's children. Would you like to meet my wife's father-in-law, Kahuiti? He has eaten many people. He talks well."

Eo! Would I! I vowed that I would be honored by the acquaintance of any of the relatives of my host, and specially I desired to converse with old, wise men of good taste.

"That man, Kahauiti, has seen life," said Strong in Battle. "I am married to the sister of Great Night Moth, who was a very brave and active man, but now foolish. But Kahauiti! O! O! O! Ai! Ai! Ai! There he is."

I never solved the puzzle of my informant's relation to the man who was his wife's father-in-law, for suddenly I saw the man himself, and knew that I was meeting a personage. Kahauiti was on the veranda of a small hut, sitting Turk fashion, and chatting with another old man. Both of them were striking-looking, but, all in all, I thought Kahauiti the most distinguished man in appearance that I had seen, be it in New York or Cairo, London or Pekin.

He had that indefinable, yet certain, air of superiority, of assured position and knowledge, that stamps a few men in the world—a Yuan Shih Kai, Rabindranath Tagore, Sitting Bull, and Porfirio Diaz. He wore only a pareu, and was tattooed from toenails to hair-roots. A solid mass of coloring extended from his neck to the hip on the left side, as though he wore half of a blue shirt. The tahuna who had done the work seemed to have drawn outlines and then blocked in the half of his torso. But remembering that every pin-point of color had meant the thrust of a bone needle propelled by the blow of a mallet, I realized that Kahauiti had endured much for his decorations. No iron or Victoria Cross could cost more suffering.

The bare half of his bosom, cooperish-red, contrasted with this cobalt, and his face was striped alternately with this natural color and with blue. Two inches of the ama ink ran across the eyes from ear to ear, covering every inch of lid and eyebrow, and from this seeming bandage his eyes gleamed with quick and alert intelligence. Other stripes crossed the face from temple to chin, the lowest joining the field of blue that stretched to his waist.

His beard, long, heavy, and snow-white, swept downward over the indigo flesh and was gathered into a knot on his massive chest. It was the beard of a prophet or a seer, and when Kahauiti rose to his full height, six feet and a half, he was as majestic as a man in diadem and royal robes. He had a giant form, like one of Buonarroti's ancients, muscular and supple, graceful and erect.

When I was presented as a Menike who loved the Marquesans and who, having heard of Kahauiti, would drink of his fountain of recollections, the old man looked at me intently. His eyes twinkled and he opened his mouth in a broad smile, showing all his teeth, sound and white. His smile was kindly, disarming, of a real sweetness that conquered me immediately, so that, foolishly perhaps, I would have trusted him if he had suggested a stroll in the jungle.

He took my extended hand, but did not shake it. So new is handshaking and so foreign to their ideas of greeting, that they merely touch fingers, with the pressure a rich man gives a poor relation, or a king, a commoner. His affability was that of a monarch to a courtier, but when he began to talk he soon became simple and merry.

Motioning me to a seat on the mat before him, he squatted again in a dignified manner, and resumed his task of plaiting a rope of faufee bark, a rope an inch thick and perfectly made.

"Mouth of God, of the family of Sliced and Distributed and Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted On A Stick, has told me of the slaying of Tufetu, their ancestor," I ventured, to steer our bark of conversation into the channel I sought.

At the names of the first three, Kahauiti smiled, but when Tufetu was mentioned, he broke into a roar. I had evidently recalled proud memories. On his haunches, he slid nearer to me.

"Afu! Afu! Afu!" he said, the sound that in his tongue means the groan of the dying. "You came by the Fatueki?".

"I tasted the water and smelled the smell," I answered.

"It was there that Tufetu died," he observed. "I struck the blow, and I ate his arm, his right arm, for he was brave and strong. That was a war!"

"What caused that war?" I asked the merry cannibal.

"A woman, haa teketeka, an unfaithful woman, as always," replied Kahauiti. "Do you have trouble over women in your island? Yes. It is the same the world over. There was peace between Atuona and Taaoa before this trouble. When I was a boy we were good friends. We visited across the hills. Many children were adopted, and Taaoa men took women from Atuona, and Atuona men from here. Some of these women had two or three or five men. One husband was the father of her children in title and pride, though he might be no father at all. The others shared the mat with her at her will, but had no possession or happiness in the offspring.



"Now Pepehi (Beaten to Death) was of Taaoa, but lived in Atuona with a woman. He had followed her over the hills and lived in her house. He was father to her children. There was a man of Atuona, Kaheutahi, who was husband to her, but of lower rank. He was not father to her children. Therefore one night he swung his war-club upon the head of Beaten to Death, and later invited a number of friends to the feast."

Kahuiti smiled gently upon me. Take off his tattooing, make him white, and clothe him! With his masterful carriage, his soft, cultivated voice, and his attitude of absolutism, he might have been Leopold, King of the Belgians, a great ambassador, a man of power in finance. Nevertheless, I thought of the death by the Stinking Springs. How could one explain his benign, open-souled deportment and his cheery laugh, with such damnable appetites and actions? Yet generals send ten thousand men to certain and agonized death to gain a point toward a goal; that is the custom of generals, by which they gain honor among their people.

"Killed by the war-club of Kaheutahi and eaten by his friends, Beaten to Death was but a ghost, and Kaheutahi took his place and became father of the children of the house. He said they were his in fact, but men were ever boastful."

The other old man, who said nothing, but was all attention, lit a pipe and passed it to Kahuiti, who puffed it a moment and passed it to Strong in Battle. The tale lapsed for a smoking spell.

"Beaten to Death perished by the club? He was well named," said I. "His father was a prophet."

Kahuiti began to chant in a weird monotone.

"Va! Va! A tahi a ta! Va! A tahi va! A ua va! A tou va!" was his chant. "Thus said the war-club as it crashed on the skull of Beaten to Death. That is the speech of the war-club when it strikes. The bones of Beaten to Death were fishhooks before we knew of his death. All Taaoa was angry. The family of Beaten to Death demanded vengeance. The priest went into the High Place, and when he came out he ran all day up and down the valley, until he fell foaming. War was the cry of the gods, war against Atuona.

"But there was too much peace between us, too many men with Atuona women, too many Atuona children adopted by Taaoa women. The peace was happy, and there was no great warrior to urge."

"You had brave men and strong men then," I said, with a sigh for the things I had missed by coming late.

"Tuitui! You put weeds in my mouth!" exclaimed Kahuiti. "I cannot talk with your words. Ue te etau! By the great god of the dead! I am born before the French beached a canoe in the Marquesas. Our gods were gods then, but they turned to wood and stone when the tree-guns of the Farani roared and threw iron balls and fire into our valleys. The Christian god was greater than our gods, and a bigger killer of men."

"But Beaten to Death—?" I urged.

"Beaten to Death was in the stomachs of the men of Atuona, and they laughed at us. Our High Priest said that the Euututuki, the most private god of the priests, commanded us to avenge the eating of Beaten to Death. But the season of preserving the mei in pits was upon us. Also the women of Atuona among us said that there should be peace, and the women of Taaoa who had taken as their own many children from Atuona. Therefore we begged the most high gods to excuse us."

"Women had much power then," I said.

Kahuiti chuckled.

"The French god and the priests of the Farani have taken it from them," he commented. "I have known the day when women ruled. She had her husbands,—two, four, five. She commanded. She would send two to the fishing, one to gathering cocoanuts or wood, one she would keep to amuse her. They came and went as she said. That was mea pe! Sickening! Pee! There are not enough men to make a woman happy. Many brave men have died to please their woman, but—" He blew out his breath in contempt.

Strong in Battle said aside, in French:

"He was never second in the house. Kahauiti despised such men. He was first always."

"So the slaying of Beaten to Death was unavenged?" I asked.

"Epo! Do not drink the cocoanut till you have descended the tree! I have said the warriors were withheld by the women, and there was no great man to lead. Yet the drums beat at night, and the fighting men came. You know how the drums speak?"

His face clouded, and his eyes flashed against their foil of tattooing.

"'Ohe te pepe! Ohe te pepe! Ohe te pepe!' said the drum called Peepee. 'Titiutiuti! Titiutiuti!' said the drum called Umi. Aue! Then the warriors came! They stood in the High Place at the head of the valley. Mehitete, the chief, spoke to them. He said that they should go to Atuona, and bring back bodies for feasting. Many nights the drums beat, and the chief talked much, but there was no war.

"The High Priest went to the Pekia again, and when he came away he ran without stopping for two days and a night, till he fell without breath, as one dead, and foam was on his mouth. The gods were angry. Still there was no war.

"Then came Tomefitu from Vait-hua. He was chief of that valley, having been adopted by a woman of Vait-hua, but his father and his mother were of Taaoa. He had heard of the slaying of Beaten to Death, his kinsman, and he was hot in the bowels. Aue! The thunder of the heavens was as the voice of Tomefitu when angered. The earth groaned where he walked. He knew the Farani and their tricks. He had guns from the whalers, and he was afraid of nothing save the Ghost Woman of the Night. Again the warriors came to the High Place, and now there were many drums."

Kahuiti sprang to his feet. He struck the corner post of the hut with his fist. His eyes burned.

"'Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe! Teputuhe! Teputuhe! Teputuhe! Tuti! Tuti! Tutuituiti!"

"That was what the war drums said. The sound of them rolled from the Pekia, and every man who could throw a spear or hold a war-club came to their call."

Kahuiti's soul was rapt in the story. His voice had the deep tone of the violoncello, powerful, vibrant, and colorful. He had lived in that strange past, and the things he recalled were precious memories.

The sound of the drums, as he echoed them in the curious tone-words of Marquesan, thrilled me through. I heard the booming of the ten-foot war-drums, their profound and far-reaching call like the roaring of lions in the jungle. I saw the warriors with their spears of cocoanut-wood and their deadly clubs of ironwood carved and shining with oil, their baskets of polished stones slung about their waists, and their slings of fiber, dancing in the sacred grove of the Pekia, its shadows lighted by the blaze of the flickering candlenuts and the scented sandalwood.

"'I am The Wind That Lays Low The Mighty Tree. I am The Wave That Fills The Canoe and Delivers The People To The Sharks!' said Tomefitu. 'The flesh of my kinsman fills the bellies of the men of Atuona, and the gods say war!

"'There is war!' said Tomefitu. 'We must bring offerings to the gods. Five men will go with me to Otoputo and bring back the gifts. I will bring back to you the bodies of six of the Atuona pigs. Prepare! When we have eaten, the chiefs of Atuona will come to Taaoa, and then you will fight!

"'Make ready with dancing. Polish spears and gather stones for the slings. Koe, who is my man, will be obeyed while I am gone. I have spoken,' said Tomefitu. That night Tomefitu and I, with four others, went silently to Otoputo, the dividing rock that looks down on the right into the valley of Taaoa and on the left into Atuona. There we lay among rocks and bushes and spied upon the feet of the enemy. That man who separated himself from others and came our way to seek food, or to visit at the house of a friend, him we secretly fell upon, and slew.

"Thus we did to the six named by Tomefitu, and as we killed them, we sent them back by others to the High Place. There the warriors feasted upon them and gained strength for battle.

"Then, missing so many of their clan, the head men of Atuona came to Otoputo, and shouted to us to give word of the absent. We shouted back, saying that those men had been roasted upon the fire and eaten, and that thus we would do to all men of Atuona. And we laughed at them."

Kahuiti emitted a hearty guffaw at thought of the trick played upon those devoured enemies.

"But Tufetu, the grandfather of my friend Mouth of God?" I persisted.

"Epo! There was war. The men of Atuona gathered at Otupoto, and rushed down upon us. We met them at the Stinking Springs, and there I killed Tufetu, uncle of Sliced and Distributed and Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted On A Stick. I pierced him through with my spear at a cocoanut-tree's length away. I was the best spear-thrower of Taaoa. We drove the Atuonans through the gorge of the Stinking Springs and over the divide, and I ate the right arm of Tufetu that had wielded the war-club. That gives a man the strength of his enemy."

He turned again to plaiting the rope of faufee.

"O ia aneihe, I have finished," he said. "Will you drink kava?"

"No, I will not drink kava," I said sternly. "Kahuiti, is it not good that the eating of men is stopped?"

The majestic chief looked at me, his deep brown eyes looking child-like in their band of blue ink. For ten seconds he stared at me fixedly, and then smiled uncertainly, as may have Peter the fisherman when he was chided for cutting off the ear of one of Judas' soldiers. He was of the old order, and the new had left him unchanged. He did not reply to my question, but sipped his bowl of kava.



CHAPTER XXI

The crime of Huahine for love of Weaver of Mats; story of Tahia's white man who was eaten; the disaster that befell Honi, the white man who used his harpoon against his friends.

During my absence in Taaoa there had been crime and scandal in my own valley. Andre Bauda met me on the beach road as I returned and told me the tale. The giant Tahitian sailor of the schooner Papeite, Huahine, was in the local jail, charged with desertion; a serious offense, to which his plea was love of a woman, and that woman Weaver of Mats, who had her four names tattooed on her right arm.

Huahine, seeing her upon the beach, had felt a flame of love that nerved him to risk hungry shark and battering surf. Carried from her even in the moment of meeting, he had resisted temptation until the schooner was sailing outside the Bay of Traitors, running before a breeze to the port of Tai-o-hae, and then he had flung himself naked into the sea and taken the straight course back to Atuona, reaching his sweetheart after a seven-hour's struggle with current and breaker. Flag, the gendarme, found him in her hut, and brought him to the calaboose.

The following morning I attended his trial. He came before his judge elegantly dressed, for, besides a red pareu about his middle, he wore a pink silk shawl over his shoulders. Both were the gift of Weaver of Mats, as he had come to her without scrip or scrap. He needed little clothing, as his skin was very brown and his strong body magnificent.

He was an acceptable prisoner to Bauda, who had charge of the making and repair of roads and bridges, so Huahine was quickly sentenced and put to work with others who were paying their taxes by labor. Weaver of Mats moved with him to the prison, where they lived together happily, cooking their food in the garden and sleeping on mats beneath the palms.

On all the paepaes it was said that Huahine would probably be sent to Tahiti, as there are strict laws against deserting ships and against vagabondage in the Marquesas. Meantime the prisoner was happy. Many a Tahitian and white sailor gazes toward these islands as a haven from trouble, and in Huahine's exploit I read the story of many a poor white who in the early days cast away home and friends and arduous toil to dwell here in a breadfruity harem.

"There is a tale told long ago by a man of Hanamenu to a traveler named Christian," I said to Haabunai, the carver, while we sat rolling pandanus cigarettes in the cool of the evening. "It runs thus:

"Some thirty years ago a sailor from a trading schooner that had put into the bay for sandalwood was badly treated by his skipper, who refused him shore-leave. So, his bowels hot with anger, this sailor determined to desert his hard and unthanked toil, wed some island heiress, and live happy ever after. Therefore one evening he swam ashore, found a maid to his liking, and was hidden by her until the ship departed.

"Now Tahia was a good wife, and loved her beautiful white man; all that a wife could do she did, cooking his food, bathing his feet, rolling cigarettes for him all day long as he lay upon the mats. But her father in time became troubled, and there was grumbling among the people, for the white man would not work.

"He would not climb the palm to bring down the nuts; he lay and laughed on his paepae in the Meinui, the season of breadfruit, when all were busy; and when they brought him rusty old muskets to care for, he turned his back upon them. Sometimes he fished, going out in a canoe that Tahia paddled, and making her fix the bait on the hook, but he caught few fish.

"'Aue te hanahana, aua ho'i te kaikai,' said his father-in-law. 'He who will not labor, neither shall he eat.' But the white man laughed and ate and labored not.

"A season passed and another, and there came a time of little rain. The bananas were few, and the breadfruit were not plentiful. One evening, therefore, the old men met in conference, and this was their decision: 'Rats are becoming a nuisance, and we will abate them.'

"Next morning the father sent Tahia on an errand to another valley. Then men began to dig a large oven in the earth before Tahia's house, where the white man lay on the mats at ease. Presently he looked and wondered and looked again. And at length he rose and came down to the oven, saying, 'What's up?'