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

We found lobsters among the rocks, too, and on some beaches a strange kind of lobsterish delicacy called in Tahiti varo, a kind of mantis-shrimp that looks like a superlatively villainous centipede. They grow from six to twelve inches long and a couple of inches wide, with legs or feelers all along their sides, like the teeth of a pocket-comb. Their shells are translucent yellow with black markings; the female wears a red stripe down her back and carries red eggs beneath her. Both she and her mate, with their thousand crawling legs, their hideous heads and tails, have a most repulsive appearance. If one did not know they are excellent food and most innocent in their habits, one would flee precipitately at sight of them.

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

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

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

Catching varo calls for much patience and dexterity. I never succeeded in landing one, but Teata would often skip back to the sands of the beach with a string of them. Six would make a good meal, with bread and wine, and they are most enjoyable hot, though also most dangerous.

"Begin their eating by sucking one cold," warned Exploding Eggs when presiding over my first feast upon the twelve-inch centipedes. "If he does not grip you inwardly, you may then eat them hot and in great numbers."

Many white men can not eat the varo. Some lose appetite at its appearance, its likeness to a gigantic thousand-leg, and others find that it rests uneasy within them, as though each claw, or tooth of the comb, viciously stabbed their interiors. I found them excellent when wrapped in leaves of the hotu-tree and fried in brown butter, and they were very good when broiled over a fire on the beach. One takes the beastie in his fingers and sucks out the meat. Beginners should keep their eyes closed during this operation.



CHAPTER XXXV

Court day in Atuona; the case of Daughter of the Pigeon and the sewing-machine; the story of the perfidy of Drink of Beer and the death of Earth Worm who tried to kill the governor.

The Marquesan was guaranteed his day in court. There was one judge in the archipelago and one doctor, and they were the same, being united in the august person of M. L'Hermier des Plantes, who was also the pharmacist. The jolly governor, in his twenties, with medical experience in an African army post and in barracks in France, was irked by his judicial and administrative duties, though little troubled by his medical functions, since he had few drugs and knew that unless these were swallowed by the patient in his presence they would be tried upon the pigs or worn as an amulet around the neck. Faithful to his orders, however, the judge sat upon the woolsack Saturdays, unless it was raining or he wished to shoot kuku.

One Saturday morning, being invited to breakfast at the palace, I strolled down to observe the workings of justice. Court was called to order in the archives room of the governor's house. The judge sat at a large table, resplendent in army blue and gold, with cavalry boots and spurs, his whiskers shining, his demeanor grave and stern. Bauda, clerk of the court, sat at his right, and Peterano, a native catechist, stood opposite him attired in blue overalls and a necklace of small green nuts, ready to act as interpreter.

Each defendant, plaintiff, prisoner, and witness was sworn impressively, though no Bible was used; which reminded me that in Hongkong I saw a defendant refuse to handle a Bible in court, and when the irate English judge demanded his reasons, calmly replied that the witness who had just laid down the book had the plague, and it was so proved.

The first case was that of a Chinese, member of the Shan-Shan syndicate which owned a store in Atuona. He was charged with shooting kukus without a license. There were not many of these small green doves left in the islands, and the governor, whose favorite sport and delicacy they were, was righteously angered at the Chinaman's infraction of the law. He fined the culprit twenty dollars, and confiscated to the realm the murderous rifle which had aided the crime.

The Shan-Shan man was stunned, and expostulated so long that he was led out by Flag, the gendarme, after being informed that he might appeal to Tahiti. He was forcibly put off the veranda, struggling to explain that he had not shot the gun, but had merely carried it as a reserve weapon in case he should meet a Chinese with whom he had a feud.

A sailor of the schooner Roberta, who had stolen a case of absinthe from Captain Capriata's storeroom aboard and destroyed the peace of a valley to which he took it as a present to a feminine friend, was fined five dollars and sentenced to four months' work on the roads.

The criminal docket done, civil cases were called. The barefooted bailiff, Flag, stole out on the veranda occasionally to take a cigarette from the inhabitants of the valley of Taaoa, who crowded the lawn around the veranda steps. All save Kahuiti, they had come over the mountains to attend in a body a trial in which two of them figured—the case of Santos vs. Tahiaupehe (Daughter of the Pigeon).

Santos was a small man, born in Guam, and had been ten years in Taaoa, having deserted from a ship. He and I talked on the veranda in Spanish, and he explained the desperate plight into which love had dragged him. He adored Tahaiupehe, the belle of Taaoa. For months he had poured at her feet all his earnings, and faithfully he had labored at copra-making to gain money for her. He had lavished upon her all his material wealth and the fierce passion of his Malay heart, only to find her disdainful, untrue, and, at last, a runaway. While he was in the forest, he said, climbing cocoanut-trees to provide her with luxuries, she had fled his hut, carrying with her a certain "Singaire" and a trunk. He was in court to regain this property.

"Ben Santos me Tahaiupehe mave! A mai i nei!" cried Flag, pompously. The pair entered the court, but all others were excluded except me. As a distinguished visitor, waiting to breakfast with the judge and the clerk, I had a seat.

The Daughter of the Pigeon, comely and voluptuous, wore an expression of brazen bitterness such as I have seen on the faces of few women. A procuress in Whitechapel and a woman in America who had poisoned half a dozen of her kin had that same look; sneering, desperate, contemptuous, altogether evil. I wondered what experiences had written those lines on the handsome face of Daughter of the Pigeon.

Ben Santos was sworn. Through the interpreter he told his sad tale of devotion and desertion and asked for his property. The Singaire had been bought of the German store. He had bought it that Daughter of the Pigeon might mend his garments, since she had refused to do so without it. He had not given it to her at all, but allowed her the use of it in consideration of "love and affection" he swore.

Daughter of the Pigeon glared at the unhappy little man with an intensity of hatred that alarmed me for his life. She took the stand, malevolently handsome in finery of pink tunic, gold ear-rings, and necklace of red peppers, barefooted, bare-armed, barbaric. She spat out her words.

"This man made love to me and lived with me. He gave me the sewing-machine and the trunk. He is a runt and a pig, and I am tired of him. I left his hut and went to the house of my father. I took my Singaire and my trunk."

"Ben Santos," inquired the judge, with a critical glance at Daughter of the Pigeon, "What return did you make to this woman for keeping your house?"

"I provided her food and her dresses," stammered the little man.

"Food hangs from trees, and dresses are a few yards of stuff," said the surgical Solomon. "The fair ones of the Marquesas do not give themselves to men of your plainness for popoi and muslin robes. You are a foreigner. You expect too much. The preponderance of probability, added to the weight of testimony, causes the court to believe that this woman is the real owner of the sewing-machine and the trunk. It is so adjudged."

"La mujer es una diabola, pero me gusto mucho," said Santos to me, and sighed deeply. "The woman is a devil, but I like her very much."



The unfortunate Malay got upon his horse and, his soul deep in the swamp of jealousy, departed to resume his copra-making.

Court adjourned. The judge, the clerk, and the interpreter, Daughter of the Pigeon, and I toasted the blind goddess in rum, the sun being very hot on the iron roof. Bauda and I stayed to breakfast at eleven o'clock, and the governor permitted me to look through the dossier of Daughter of the Pigeon. This record is kept of all Marquesans or others resident in the islands; each governor adds his facts and prejudices and each newcoming official finds the history and reputation of each of his charges set down for his perusal. In this record of Daughter of the Pigeon I found the reason for the malevolent character depicted by her face.

The men of the hills have a terrible custom of capturing any woman of another valley who goes alone in their district. Grelet's first companion was caught one night by forty, who for punishment built the ten kilometres of road between Haniapa and Atuona. Many Daughters, the beautiful little leper, when thirteen years old was a victim of seventeen men, some of whom were imprisoned. Daughter of the Pigeon had had a fearful experience of this kind. It had seared her soul, and Santos was paying for his sex.

In feud times this custom was a form of retaliation, as the slaying of men and eating them. It has survived as a sport. Lest horror should spend itself upon these natives of the islands, I mention that in every state in our union similar records blacken our history. War's pages from the first glimmerings to the last foul moment reek with this deviltry. British and French at Badajoz and Tarragona, in Spain, left fearful memories. Occident and Orient alike are guilty. This crime smutches the chronicle of every invasion. It is part of the degradation of slums in all our cities, a sport of hoodlum gangs everywhere. In the Marquesas it is a recognized, though forbidden, game, and has its retaliatory side. Time was when troops of women have revenged it in strange, savage ways.

This unsubmissive and aggressive attitude of Marquesan women was brought home to me this very afternoon after the trial, when Daughter of the Pigeon came galloping up to my cabin. She reined in her horse like a cowboy who had lassoed a steer and, throwing the bridle over the branch of an orange-tree, tripped into my living-room, where I was writing.

Without a word she put her arms around me, and in a moment I was enacting the part of Joseph when he fled from Potiphar's wife. With some muscular exertion I got her out of the house at the cost of my shirt. Puafaufe (Drink of Beer), a chief of Taaoa, appeared at this moment, while I was still struggling with her upon my paepae.

"Makimaki okioki i te! An ungovernable creature!" he commented, shaking his head, and looking on with interest as she again attacked me vigorously, to the danger of my remaining shreds of garments. Chivalry is not a primitive emotion, but it dies hard in the civilized brain, and I was attempting the impossible. Fending her off as best I could, I conjured the chief by the red stripe on the sleeve of his white jacket, his badge of office, to rescue me, for Madame Bapp was now on her paepae, craning her fat neck, and I had no mind to be laughed at by my own tint.

The chief, however, maintained the impartial attitude of the bystander at a street fight. Smothered in the embraces of Daughter of the Pigeon, covered with embarrassment, I struggled and cursed, and had desperately decided to fling her bodily over the eight-foot wall of the paepae into the jungle, when another arrival dashed up the trail. This was the brother of Daughter of the Pigeon.

It was evident that my cabin had been appointed as a rendezvous, though I had no acquaintance with any of my three visitors. A suspicion was born in my dull brain. To make it surety, I grasped my feminine wooer by wrists and throat and thrust her into the arms of the chief with a stern injunction to hold her. Then, without hint of my intention, I hastened into the house and brought forth the demijohn and cocoanut-shells.

The amorous fury of Daughter of the Pigeon melted into gratitude, and after two drinks apiece the company galloped away, leaving me to repair tattered garments and thank my stars for my supply of namu.

But the end of court-day was not yet. I had barely fallen into my first slumber that night when I was awakened by the disconsolate Shan-Shan man, who came humbly to present me with a half-pound doughnut of his own making, and to beg my intercession with the governor for the return of his gun. He reiterated tearfully that he had not meant to shoot kukus with it, that he had not done so, that he desired it only in order to be able to take a pot-shot at the offending countryman in the village. He urged desperately that the other Chinese still possessed a gun well oiled and loaded. He asserted even with tears that he had all respect and admiration for the white man's law. But he wanted his gun, and he wanted it quickly.

I calmed him with the twice-convenient namu, and after promising to explain the situation to the governor, I sat for some time on my paepae in the moonlight, talking with the unhappy convict. Without prompting he divulged to me that my suspicions had been correct; Drink of Beer had himself instigated the raid of the bold Daughter of the Pigeon upon my rum. Drink of Beer, it appeared, was known in the islands for many feats of successful duplicity. One had nearly cost the life of Jean Richard, a young Frenchman who worked for the German trader in Taka-Uka.

"Earth Worm was a man of Taaoa," said my guest, sitting cross-legged on my mats, his long-nailed, yellow fingers folded in his lap. "He was nephew of Pohue-toa, eater of many men. Earth Worm was arrested by Drink of Beer and brought before the former governor, Lailheugue, known as Little Pig.

"Drink of Beer said that Earth Worm had made namu enata, the juice of the flower of the palm that makes men mad. Earth Worm swore that he had done no wrong. He swore that Drink of Beer had allowed him, for a price, to make the namu enata, and that Drink of Beer had said this was according to the law. But when he failed to pay again, Drink of Beer had arrested him.

"Drink of Beer said this not true. He wore the red stripe on his sleeve; therefore the governor Little Pig said that Earth Worm lied, and sent him to prison for a year.

"Now Earth Worm was an informed man, a son of many chiefs, and himself resolved in his ways. He said that he would speak before the courts of Tahiti, and he would not go in shame to the prison. At this time that governor was finished with his work here and was departing on a ship to Tahiti, and Earth Worm with hate in his heart, embarked on that ship, saying nothing, but thinking much.

"He lived forward with the crew, and said nothing, but thought. Others spoke to him, saying that he would not profit by the journey to Tahiti where the word of the governor was powerful, but he did not reply. The men of the crew wished Earth Worm to kill the governor, for every Marquesan hated him, and he had done a terrible thing for which he deserved death.

"There had been an aged gendarme who fell ill because of a curse laid on him by a tahuna. He was dying. This governor took from his box in the house of medicines a sharp small knife, and with it he cut the veins of a Marquesan who had done some small wrong against the law and lay in jail. He bound this man by the arm to the gendarme who was dying, and through the cut the blood ran into the gendarme's veins. His heart sucked the blood from the body of the Marquesan like a vampire bat of the forest, and he lay bound, feeling the blood go from him. The village knew that this was being done, and could do nothing but hate and fear, for it was the governor who had done it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XXXVI

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

Le Brunnec, the trader, was opening a roll of Tahiti tobacco five feet long, five inches in diameter at the center, and tapering toward the ends. It was bound, as is all Tahiti tobacco, in a purau rope, which had to be unwound and which weighed two pounds. The eleven pounds of tobacco were hard as wood, the leaves cemented by moisture. Le Brunnec hacked it with an axe into suitable portions to sell for three francs a pound, the profit on which is a franc.

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

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

"That man," said Le Brunnec, "is the worst devil in the Marquesas." Between blows of the axe, the trader told me something of his history:

The madman was Mohuho, whose name means Great Moth of the Night. He is the chief whom Lying Bill saw shoot three men in Tahuata for sheer wantonness. He was then chief of Tahuata, and the power in that island, in Hiva-oa and Fatu-hiva. He slew every one who opposed him. He was the scourge of the islands. He harried valley after valley for lust of blood and the terrible pride of the destroyer. It was his boast that he had killed sixty people by his own hand, otherwise than in battle.

He was a man of ceaseless energy, a builder of roads, of houses, and canoes. At Hapatone he had constructed several miles of excellent road with the enforced labor of every man in the valley for a year. It is all lined with temanu trees, is almost solid stone, and endures. Its blocks are cemented with blood, for Great Moth of the Night drove men to the work with bullets.

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

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

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

In Hana-teio a man in a cocoanut-tree gathering nuts was ordered to come down by Great Night Moth who was passing on a boar hunt. The man became confused. His limbs did not cling to the tree as usual. He was fearful and could make no motion.

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

The poor wretch could not obey. He saw the gun and knew the chief. Great Night Moth brought him down a corpse.

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

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

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

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

"The demon was Male Package. You know the precipice there is near the sky, and at the very height is a puta faiti, a narrow place. There Male Package lay in wait, armed with his spear and club, and hidden in the grass. He was hungry for meat, for Long Pig, and when he saw some one he fancied, he threw his spear or struck them down with the u'u. He took the corpse on his back and carried it to his hut in the upper valley of Hana-menu as I would carry a sack of copra. There he ate what he would, alone.

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

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

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

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

"Ah, that is to be told," said Many Pieces. "He was his son, yes. Shall I tell you the tale of how he escaped death at the hands of his father? Ea! I remember the time well. Menike, you have seen the rivers big and the cocoanut-trees felled by the flood, but you have not seen the ave one, the time of no food, when the ground is as dry as the center of a dead tree, and hunger is in the valleys like the ghost-women that move as mist. There have been many such periods for the island peoples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That is horrible, horrible!" said Le Brunnec. "Maybe this Great Night Moth could not but be bad with such a father. All these chiefs, the hereditary ones, are rotten. Their children are often insane. They have degenerated. After the whalers came and gave them whiskey, and the traders absinthe and drugs, they learned the vices of the white man, which are worse for them than for us."

"Do you think the eating of men began by the ave one, the famine?" I put the question to Many Pieces of Tattooing, who was about to leave the store with Great Night Moth.

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

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

"I will not!" said the Frenchman, hastily. "Tavatini is a good customer. He has money on deposit with me. He eats biscuits and beef. He might be offended and buy of the Germans."

Many Pieces of Tattooing nudged Great Night Moth, and they advanced to their horses, which were tied to the store building. The madman mounted with the ease of a cowboy, and they rode off at speed.



CHAPTER XXXVII

A visit to the hermit of Taha-Uka valley; the vengeance that made the Scallamera lepers; and the hatred of Mohuto.

Le Verogose, a Breton planter who lived in Taka-Uka Valley, was full of camaraderie, esteeming friendship a genuine tie, and given to many friendly impulses. He had a two-room cabin set high on the slope of the river bank, unadorned, but clean, and though his busy, hardworking days gave him little time for social intercourse, he occasionally invited me there to dinner with him and his wife.

One Sunday he dined me handsomely on eels stewed in white wine, tame duck, and codfish balls, and after the dance, in which his wife, Ghost Girl, Malicious Gossip, Water, and the host joined, we sat for some time singing "Malbrouck se va t'en guerre," "La Carmagnole," and other songs of France. Stirred by the memories of home, these melodies awakened, Le Vergose remembered a countryman who lived nearby.

"There is a hermit who lives a thousand feet up the valley," said he. "We might take him half a litre of rum. He is a Breton of Brest who has been here many years. He eats nothing but bananas, for he lives in a banana grove, and he is able only to totter to the river for water. He never moves from his little hut except to pick a few bananas. He lives alone. Hardly any one sees him from year to year. I think he would be glad to have a visitor."

A wet and slippery trail through the forest along the river bank led toward the hermit's grove. Toiling up it, sliding and clutching the boughs that overhung and almost obliterated it, we passed a small native house of straw, almost hidden by the trees, and were hailed by the voice of a woman.

"I hea? Where do you go?" The words were sharp, with a tone almost of anxiety, of fear.

"We go to see Hemeury Francois," replied Le Vergose.

The woman who had spoken came half-way down the worn and dirty steps of her paepae. She was old, but with an age more of bitter and devastating emotion than of years. Her haggard face, drawn and seamed with cruel lines, showed still the traces of a beauty that had been hard and handsome rather than lovely. She said nothing more, but stood watching our progress, her tall figure absolutely motionless in its dark tunic, her eyes curiously intent upon us. I felt relief when the thick curtains of leaves shut us from her view.

"That is Mohuto," said Le Vergose. "She is a solitary, too. All her people have died, and she has become hard and bitter. That is a strange thing, for an islander. But she was beautiful once. Perhaps she broods upon that."

We entered the banana-grove, an acre or two of huge plants, thirty feet high, so close together that the sun could not touch the soil. The earth was dank and dark, almost a swamp, and the trees were like yellowish-green ghosts in the gloom. Their great soft leaves shut out the sky, and from their limp edges there was a ceaseless drip of moisture. A horde of mosquitos, black and small, emerged from the shadows, thousands upon thousands, and smote us upon every exposed part. In a few minutes our faces were smeared with blood from their killing. Curses in Breton, in Marquesan, and American rent the stillness.

In this dismal, noisome spot was a wretched hut built of purau saplings, as crude a dwelling as the shelter a trapper builds for a few days' habitation. It was ten feet long and four wide, shaky and rotten. Inside it was like the lair of a wild beast, a bed of moldy leaves. A line stretched just below the thatched roof held a few discolored newspapers.

On the heap of leaves sat the remnant of a man, a crooked skeleton in dirty rags, his face a parchment of wrinkles framed by a mass of whitening hair. He looked ages old, his eyes small holes, red rimmed, his hands, in which he held a shaking piece of paper, foul claws. His flesh, through his rags, was the deadly white of the morgue. He looked a Thing no soul should animate.

"Ah! Hemeury Francois," said Le Vergose in the Breton dialect that recalled their childhood home, "I have brought an American to see you. You can talk your English to him."

"By damn, yes," croaked the hermit, in the voice of a raven loosed from a deserted house. But he made no movement until Le Vergose held before his bone-like nose a pint of strong Tahiti rum. Far back in his eyes, away beyond the visible organs, there came a gleam of greater consciousness, a realization of life around him. His mouth, like a rent in an old, battered purse, gaped, and though no teeth were there, the vacuity seemed to smile feebly.

He felt about the litter of paper and leaves and found a dirty cocoanut-shell and a calabash of water. Shaking and gasping, he poured the bottle of rum into the shell, mixed water with it and lifted the precious elixir tremblingly to his lips. He made two choking swallows, and dropped the shell—empty.

His eyes, that had been lost in their raw sockets, scanned me. Then in mixed French and English he began to talk of himself. From his rags he produced a rude diary blocked off on scraps of paper, a minute record of the river and the weather, covering many years.

"Torrent, torrent, torrent." That word was repeated many tunes. Hause appeared often, signifying that the brook had risen. Every day he had noted its state. The river had become his god. Alone among those shadowing, dripping banana-plants, with no human companionship, he had made his study of the moods of the stream a worship. Pages and pages were inscribed with lines upon its state.

"Bacchus," I saw repeated on the dates July 13, 14, 15.

"Another god on the altar then?" I asked. "Mais, oui," he answered in his rusty voice. "The Fall of the Bastile. Le Vergose sent me a bottle of rum to honor the Republic."

What he had just drunk was seething in him. Little by little he commanded that long disused throat, he recalled from the depths of his uncertain mind words and phrases. In short, jerky sentences, mostly French, he spun his tale.

"Brest is my home, in Finnistere. I have been many years in these seas. I forget how many. How many years—? Sacre! I was on the Mongol. She was two thousand tons, clipper, and with skysails. The captain was Freeman. We brought coals from Boston to San Francisco. That was long ago. I was young. I was young and handsome. And strong. Yes, I was strong and young.

"That was it—the Mongol. A clipper-ship from Boston, two thousand tons, and with skysails. Around the Horn it almost blew the sticks out of that Mongol. We froze; we worked day and night. It was terrible. The seas almost drowned us. Ah, how we cursed! Tonnerre de dieu! Had we known it we were in Paradise. The inferno—we were coming to the inferno."

It took him long to tell it. He wanted to talk, but weakness overcame him often, and the words were almost hushed by his breath that came short and wheezing.

"One day we opened the hatches to get coal for the galley. The smell of gas arose. The coal was making gas. No fire. Just gas. If there was fire we never knew it. We felt no heat. We could find no fire. But every day the gas got worse.

"It filled the ship. The watch below could not sleep because of it. If we went aloft, still we smelled it. The food tasted of gas. Our lungs were pressed down by it. Day after day we sailed, and the gas sailed with us.

"The bo'sn fell in a fit. A man on the t'gallant yard fell to the deck and was killed. Three did not awake one morning. We threw their bodies over the side. The mate spat blood and called on God as he leaped into the sea. The smell of the gas never left us.

"The captain called us by the poop-rail, and said we must abandon the ship any time.

"We were twenty men all told. We had four whale-boats and a yawl. Plenty for all of us. We provisioned and watered the boats. But we stayed by the Mongol. We were far from any port and we dared not go adrift in open boats.

"Then came a calm. The gas could not lift. It settled down on us. It lay on us like a weight. It never left us for a moment. Men lay in the scuppers and vomited. Food went untouched. No man could walk without staggering. At last we took to the boats. Two thousand miles from the Marquesas. We lit a fuse, and pushed off. Half a mile away the Mongol blew up.

"We suffered. Mon dieu, how we suffered in those boats! But the gas was gone. We struck Vait-hua on the island of Tahuata. It was heaven. Rivers and trees and women. Women! Sacre! How I loved them!

"I came to Taha-Uka with Mathieu Scallamera. We worked for Captain Hart in the cotton, driving the Chinese and natives. Bill Pincher was a boy, and he worked there, too. In the moonlight on the beach there were dances. The women danced naked on the beaches in the moonlight. And there was rum. Mohuto danced. Ah, she was beautiful, beautiful! She was a devil.

"Scallamera and I built a house, and put on the door a lock of wood. It was a big lock, but it had no key. The natives stole everything. We could keep nothing. Scallamera was angry. One day he hid in the house while I went to work. When a hand was thrust through the opening to undo the lock, Scallamera took his brush knife and cut it off. He threw it through the hole and said, 'That will steal no more.'"

The hermit laughed, a laugh like the snarl of a toothless old tiger.

"That was a joke. Scallamera laughed. By gar! But that without a hand lived long. He gave back all that he had taken. He smiled at Scallamera, and laughed, too. He worked without pay for Scallamera. He became a friend to the man who had cut off his hand. A year went by and two years and three and that man gave Scallamera a piece of land by Vai-ae. He helped Scallamera to build a house upon it.

"Land from hell it was, land cursed seven times. Did not Scallamera become a leper and die of it horribly? And all his twelve children by that Henriette? It was the ground. It had been leprous since the Chinese came. Oh, it was a fine return for the cut-off hand!"

Gasping and choking, the ghastly creature paused for breath, and in the shuddering silence the banana-leaves ceaselessly dripped, and the hum of innumerable mosquito-wings was sharp and thin.

"I did not become a leper. I was young and strong. I was never sick. I worked all day, and at night I was with the women. Ah, the beautiful, beautiful women! With souls of fiends from hell. Mohuto is not dead yet. She lives too long. She lives and sits on the path below, and watches. She should be killed, but I have no strength.

"I was young and strong, and loved too many women. How could I know the devil behind her eyes when she came wooing me again? I had left her. She was with child, and ugly. I loved beautiful women. But she was beautiful again when the child was dead. I was with another. What was her name? I have forgotten her name. Is there no more rum? I remember when I have rum.

"So I went again to Mohuto. The devil from hell! There was poison in her embraces. Why does she not die? She knew too much. She was too wise. It was I who died. No, I did not die. I became old before my time, but I am living yet. The Catholic mission gave me this land. I planted bananas. I have never been away. How long ago? Je ne sais pas. Twenty years? Forty? I do not see any one. But I know that Mohuto sits on the path below and waits. I will live long yet."

He was like a two-days' old corpse. He rose to his feet, staggered, and lay down on the heap of soggy leaves. The mosquitos circled in swarms above him. They were devouring us, but the hermit they never lighted on. Le Vergose and I fled from the hut and the grove.

"He is an example like those in Balzac or the religious books," said the Breton, crossing himself. "I have been here many years, and never before did I come here, and again. Jamais de la vie! I must begin to go to church again."

We said nothing more as we slid and slipped downward on the wet trail, but when we came again to the straw hut hidden in the trees Mohuto was still on the paepae, watching us, and I paused to speak to her.

"You knew Hemeury Francois when he was young?"

She put her hand over her eyes, and spat.

"He was my first lover. I had a child by him. He was handsome once." Her eyes, full of malevolence, turned to the dark grove. "He dies very slowly."

The memory of her face was with me when at midnight I went alone to my valley. On my pillows I heard again the cracked voice of the hermit, and saw the blue-white skin upon his shaking bones. He could not believe in Po, the Marquesan god of Darkness, or in the Veinehae, the Ghost-Woman who watches the dying; nor did I believe in them or in Satan, but about me in my Golden Bed until midnight was long past the spirits that hate the light moaned and creaked the hut.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

Last days in Atuona; My Darling Hope's letter from her son.

Exploding Eggs was building my fire of cocoanut-husks as usual in the morning to cook my coffee and eggs, when a whistle split the sultry air. Far from the bay it came, shrill and demanding; my call to civilization.

Long expected, the first liner was in the Isles of the Cannibals. France had begun to make good her promise to expand her trade in Oceania, and the isolation of the dying Marquesans and empty valleys was ended. The steamship Saint Francois, from Bordeaux by way of Tahiti, had come to visit this group and pick up cargo for Papeite and French ports.

Strange was the sight of her in Taha-Uka Bay where never her like had been, but stranger still, two aboard her, the only two not French, were known to me. Here thousands of miles from where I had seen them, unconnected in any way with each other, were a pair of human beings I had known, one in China, and the other in the United States, both American citizens, and sent by fate to replace me as objects of interest to the natives.

They came up from the beach together, one a small black man, the other tall and golden brown, led by Malicious Gossip to see the American who lived in these far-away islands. The black lingered to talk at a distance, but the golden-brown one advanced.

His figure was the bulky one of the trained athlete, stocky and tremendously powerful, his hide that of an extreme blond burned by months of a tropic sun upon salt water. His hair was an aureole, yellow as a sunflower, a bush of it on a bullet-head. And, incredible almost—as if made of putty by a joker—his nose stuck out like the first joint of a thumb, the oddest nose ever on a man. His little eyes were blue and bright. Barefooted, bare-headed, in the sleeveless shirt and short trousers of a life-guard, with an embroidered V on the front of the upper garment, he was radiantly healthy and happy, a civilized being returned to nature's ways.

Though he did not recognize me, I knew him instantly for a trainer and beach-patrol of Southern California, a diver for planted shells at Catalina Island, whom I had first seen plunging from the rafters of a swimming-tank, and I remembered that he had flattened his nose by striking the bottom, and that a skilful surgeon had saved him its remnant.

He had with him a bundle in a towel, and setting it down on my paepae, introduced himself nonchalantly as Broken Bronck, "Late manager of the stable of native fighters of the Count de M—— of the island of Tahaa, near Tahiti."

"I'm here to stay," he said carelessly. "I have a few francs, and I hear they're pretty hospitable in the Markeesies. I came on the deck of the Saint Francois, and I've brung my things ashore."

He undid the towel, and there rolled out another bathing-suit and a set of boxing gloves. These were his sole possessions, he said.

"I hear they're nutty on prizefighting like in Tahiti, and I'll teach 'em boxing," he explained.

The Marquesan ladies who speedily assembled could not take their eyes from him. They asked me a score of questions about him, and were not surprised that I knew him, or even that I called the negro by name when he sauntered up. We must all be from the same valley, or at least from the same island, they thought, for were we not all Americans?

I kept Broken Bronck to luncheon, and gave him what few household furnishings I had not promised to Exploding Eggs or to Apporo, who with the promise of the Golden Bed about to be realized—for I announced my going—camped upon it, hardly believing that at last she was to own the coveted marvel. Some keepsakes I gave to Malicious Gossip, Mouth of God, Many Daughters, Water, Titihuti, and others, and drank a last shell of namu with these friends.

News of my packing reached far and wide. I had not estimated so optimistically the esteem in which they held me, these companions of many months, but they trooped from the farthest hills to say farewell. Good-byes even to the sons and daughters of cannibals are sorrowful. I had come to think much of these simple, savage neighbors. Some of them I shall never forget.

Mauitetai, a middle-aged woman with a kindly face, was long on my paepae. Her name would be in English My Darling Hope, and it well fitted her mood, for she was all aglow with wonder and joy at receiving a letter from her son, who three years before had gone upon a ship and disappeared from her ken. The letter had come upon the Saint Francois, and it brought My Darling Hope into intimate relations with me, for I uncovered to her that her wandering boy had become a resident of my own country, and revealed some of the mysteries of our polity.

The letter was in Marquesan, which I translate into English, seeking to keep the flavor of the original, though poorly succeeding:

"I write to you, me, Pahorai Calizte, and put on this paper greetings to you, my mother, Mauitetai, who are in Atuona.

"Kaoha nui tuu kui, Mauitetai, mother of me. Great love to you.

"I have found in Philadelphia work for me; good work.

"I have found a woman for me. She is Jeanette, an artist, a maker of tattooings on cloth. I am very happy. I have found a house to live in. I am happy I have this woman. She is rich. I am poor. It is for that I write to you, to make it known to you that she is rich, and I am poor. By this paper you will know that I have pledged my word to this woman. I found her and I won her by my work and by my strength and my endeavor.

"She is moi kanahau; as beautiful as the flowers of the hutu in my own beloved valley of Atuona. She is not of America. She is of Chile. She has paid many piasters for the coming here. She has paid forty piasters. She has been at home in Las Palmas, in the islands of small golden birds.

"I will write you more in this paper. I seek your permission to marry Jeanette. She asks it, as I do. Send me your word by the government that carries words on paper.

"It is three years since I have known of you. That is long.

"Give me that word I ask for this woman. I cannot go to marry in Atuona. That is what my heart wants, but it is far and the money is great. The woman would pay and would come with me. I say no. I am proud. I have shame. I am a Marquesan.

"I live with that woman now. I am not married. It is forbidden. The American mutoi (policeman) may take hold of me. Five months I am with this woman of mine. The mutoi has a war-club that is hard as stone.

"Give me quickly the paper to marry her. I await your word.

"My word is done. I am at Philadelphia, New York Hotel. A.P.A. Dieu. Coot pae, mama."

Mauitetai had read the letter many times. It was wonderful to hear from her son after three years and pleasant to know he had found a woman. She must be a haoe, a white woman. Were the women of that island, Chile, white?

I said that they ran the color scale, from blond to brown, from European to Indian, but that this Jeanette who was a tattooer, a maker of pictures on canvas, no doubt an artist of merit, must be pale as a moonbeam. Those red peppers that were hot on the tongue came from Chile, I said, and there were heaps of gold there in the mountains.

My Darling Hope would know what kind of a valley was Philadelphia.

It was the Valley of Brotherly Love. It was a very big valley, with two streams, and a bay. No, it was not near Tahiti. It was a breadfruit season away from Atuona, at the very least.

What could a hotel be? The New York hotel in which her poor son lived?

I did not know that hotel, I told her, but a hotel was a house in which many persons paid to live, and some hotels had more rooms than there were houses in all the Marquesas.

What! In one house, under one roof? By my tribe, it was true.

Did I know this woman? I was from that island and I had been in that valley. I must have seen her.

I replied that I knew a Jeanette who answered the description beautiful, but that she was not from Chile.

Now, My Darling Hope knit her brow. Why would the mutoi take hold of her son, as he feared?

I soothed her anxiety. The mutoi walked up and down in front of the hotel, but he would not bother her son as long as her son could get a few piasters now and then to hand to him. The woman was rich, and would not miss a trifling sum, five or ten piasters a month for the mutoi.

But why was it forbidden for her son to live with Jeanette, being not married to her?

That was our law, but it was seldom enforced. The mutois were fat men who carried war-clubs and struck the poor with them, but her son was tapu because of Jeanette's money.

She was at ease now, she said. Her son could not marry without her permission. No Marquesan had ever done so. She would send the word by the next schooner, or I might take it with me to my own island and hand it to her son. He could then marry.

I had done her a great kindness, but one thing more. Neither she nor Titihuti nor Water could make out what Pahorai Calizte meant by "Coot Pae, Mama." "A.P.A. Dieu." was his commendation of her to God, but Coot Pae was not Marquesan, neither was it French. She pronounced the words in the Marquesan way, and I knew at once. Coot pae is pronounced Coot Pye, and Coot Pye was Pahorai Calizte's way of imitating the American for Apae Kaoha. "Good-by, mama," was his quite Philadelphia closing of his letter to his mother.

I addressed an envelop to her son with The Iron Fingers That Make Words, and gave it to My Darling Hope. A tear came in her eye. She rubbed my bare back affectionately and caressed my nose with hers as she smelled me solemnly. Then she went up the valley to enlighten the hill people.



CHAPTER XXXIX

The chants of departure; night falls on the Land of the War Fleet.

On the eve of my going all the youth and beauty of Atuona crowded my paepae. Water brought his ukulele, a Hawaiian taro-patch guitar, and sang his repertoire of ballads of Hawaii—"Aloha Oe," "Hawaii Ponoi," and "One, Two, Three, Four." Urged by all, I gave them for the last time my vocal masterpiece, "All Night Long He Calls Her Snooky-Ukums!" and was rewarded by a clamor of applauding cries. Marquesans think our singing strange—and no wonder! Theirs is a prolonged chant, a monotone without tune, with no high notes and little variance. But loving distraction, they listened with deep amusement to my rendering of American airs, as we might listen to Chinese falsettos.

They repaid me by reciting legends of their clans, and Titihuti chanted her genealogy, a record kept by memory in all families. Water, her son, who had learned to write, set it down on paper for me. It named the ancestors in pairs, father and mother, and Titihuti remembered thirty-eight generations, which covered perhaps a thousand years.

We sat in a respectful circle about her while she chanted it. An Amazon in height and weight, nearly six feet tall, body and head cast in heroic mold, she stood erect, her scarlet tunic gathered to display her symmetrical legs, tattooed in thought-kindling patterns, the feet and ankles as if encased in elegant Oriental sandals. Her red-gold hair, a flame in the flickering light of the torches, was wreathed with bright-green, glossy leaves, necklaces of peppers and small colored nuts rose and fell with her deep breathing.

Her voice was melodious, pitched low, and vibrating with the peculiar tone of the chant, a tone impossible of imitation to one who has not learned it as a child. Her eyes were kindled with pride of ancestry as she called the roll of experiences and achievements of the line that had bred her, and her clear-cut Greek features mirrored every emotion she felt, emotions of glory and pride, of sorrow and abasement at the fall of her race, of stoic fortitude in the dull present and hopeless future of her people. With one shapely arm upraised, she uttered the names, trumpet-calls to memory and imagination:

Enata (Men) Vehine (Women) Na tupa efitu Metui te vehine Tupa oa ia fai Puha Momoo O tupa haaituani O haiko O nuku Oui aei O hutu Moeakau O oko Oinu vaa O moota O niniauo O tiu Moafitu otemau Fekei O mauniua O tuoa Hotaei O meae Oa tua hae O tehu eo Kei pana O ahunia Tui haa O taa tini Kei pana Nohea Tou mata Tua kina Papa ohe Tepiu Punoa Tui feaa Tuhina Naani Eiva Eio Hoki Teani nui nei O tapu ohi Ani hetiti Opu tini O kou aehitini O take oho O taupo O te heva Tui pahu Otiu hoku O hupe Oahu tupua O papuaei O honu feti Pepene tona Honu tona Haheinutu O taoho Kotio nui Taihaupu Motu haa Mu eiamau Hope taupo Tuhi pahu Taupo tini Anitia fitu Ana tete Pa efitu Kihiputona Tahio paha oho Taua kahiepo Honu tona Mahea tete Titihuti Aino tete tika Tua vahiane Kui motua Titihuti

Loud sang the names themselves, proclaiming the merits of their bearers or their fathers in heraldic words, in titles like banners on castle walls, flying the standard of ideals and attainments of men and women long since dust.

Masters of Sea and Land, Commander of the Stars, Orderers of the Waxing and Waning of the Moon, Ten Thousand Ocean Tides, Man of Fair Countenance, Caller to Myriads, Climber to the Ninth Heaven, Man of Understanding, Player of the Game of Life, Doer of Deeds of Daring, Ten Thousand Cocoanut Leaves, The Enclosure of the Whale's Tooth, Man of the Forbidden Place, The Whole Blue Sky, Player of the War Drum, The Long Stayer; these were the names that called down the centuries, bringing back to Titihuti and to us who sat at her feet in the glow of the torches the fame and glory of her people through ages past.

How compare such names with John Smith or Henry Wilson? Yet we ourselves, did we remember it, have come from ancestors bearing names as resonant. Nero was Ahenobarbus, the Red-Bearded, to his contemporaries of Rome, at the time when Titihuti's forefathers were brave and great beneath the cocoanut-palms of Atuona. Our lists of early European kings carry names as full of meaning as theirs; Charles the Hammer, Edward the Confessor, Charles the Bold, Richard the Lion-Hearted, Hereward the Wake.

Titihuti, having gravely finished her chant, stood for a moment in silence. Then, "Aue!" she said with a sigh. "No one will remember when I am gone. Water, my son, nor Keke, my daughter, have learned these names of their forefathers and mothers who were noble and renowned. What does it matter? We will all be gone soon, and the cocoanut-groves of our islands will know us no more. We come, we do not know whence, and we go, we do not know where. Only the sea endures, and it does not remember."

She sat on the mat beside me, and pressed my hand. I had been adopted as her son, and she was sorry to see me departing to the unknown island from which I had come, and from which, she knew, I would never return. She was mournful; she said that her heart was heavy. But I praised lavishly her beautifully tattooed legs, and complimented the decoration of her hair until she smiled again, and when from the shadowy edges of the ring of torch-light voices began an old chant of feasting, she took it up with the others.

There were Marquesans who could recite one hundred and forty-five generations of their families, covering more than thirty-six hundred years. Enough to make family trees that go back to the Norman conquest appear insignificant. I had known an old Maori priest who traced his ancestry to Rangi and Papa, through one hundred and eighty-two generations, 4,550 years. The Easter Islanders spoke of fifty-seven generations, and in Raratonga ninety pairs of ancestors are recited. The pride of the white man melts before such records.

Such incidents as the sack of Jerusalem, the Crusades, or Cassar's assassination, are recent events compared to the beginnings of some of these families, whose last descendants have died or are dying to-day.

I took Titihuti's words with me as I went down the trail from my little blue cabin at the foot of Temetiu for the last time: "We come, we do not know whence, and we go, we do not know where. Only the sea endures, and it does not remember."

Great Fern, Haabuani, Exploding Eggs, and Water carried my bags and boxes to the shore, while I said adieux to the governor, Bauda, and Le Brunnec. When I reached the beach all the people of the valley were gathered there. They sat upon the sand, men and women and children, and intoned my farewell ode—my pae me io te:

"Apae! Kaoha! te Menike! Mau oti oe anao nei i te apua Kahito" o a'Tahiti. Ei e tihe to metao iau e hoa iriti oei an ote vei mata to taua. E avei atu."

"O, farewell to you, American! You go to far-distant Tahiti! There you will stay, but you will weep for me. Ever I shall be here, and the tears fall like the river flows. O friend and lover, the time has come. Farewell!"

The sky was ominous and the boats of the Saint Francois were running a heavy surf. I waded waist-deep through the breakers to climb into one. Malicious Gossip, Ghost Girl and the little leper lass, Many Daughters, were sobbing, their dresses lifted to their eyes.

"Hee poihoo!" cried the steersman. The men in the breakers shoved hard, and leaped in, and we were gone.

My last hour in the Marquesas had come. I should never return. The beauty, the depressingness of these islands is overwhelming. Why could not this idyllic, fierce, laughter-loving people have stayed savage and strong, wicked and clean? The artists alone have known the flower destroyed here, the possible growth into greatness and purity that was choked in the smoke of white lust and greed.

At eight o'clock at night we were ready to depart.

The bell in the engine-room rang, the captain shouted orders from the bridge, the anchors were hoisted aboard. The propeller began to turn. The searchlight of the Saint Francois played upon the rocky stairway of Taha-Uka, penciled for a moment the dark line of the cliffs, swept the half circle into Atuona Inlet, and lingered on the white cross of Calvary where Gauguin lies.

The gentle rain in the shaft of light looked like quicksilver. The smoke from the funnel mixed in the heavy air with the mist and the light, and formed a fantastic beam of vapor from the ship to the shore. Up this stream of quivering, scintillating irradiation, as brilliant as flashing water in the sun, flew from the land thousands of gauze-winged insects, the great moths of the night, wondrous, shimmering bits of life, seeming all fire in the strange atmosphere. Drawn from their homes in the dark groves by this marvelous illumination, they climbed higher and higher in the dazzling splendor until they reached its source, where they crumpled and died. They seemed the souls of the island folk.

They pass mute, falling like the breadfruit in their dark groves. Soon none will be left to tell their departed glories. Their skulls perhaps shall speak to the stranger who comes a few decades hence, of a manly people, once magnificently perfect in body, masters of their seas, unexcelled in the record of humanity in beauty, vigor, and valor.

To-day, insignificant in numbers, unsung in history, they go to the abode of their dark spirits, calmly and without protest. A race goes out in wretchedness, a race worth saving, a race superb in manhood when the whites came. Nothing will remain of them but their ruined monuments, the relics of their temples and High Places, remnants of the mysterious past of one of the strangest people of time.

The Saint Francois surged past the Roberta, the old sea-wolf, worn and patched, but sturdy in the gleam of the searchlight. Capriata, the old Corsican, stood on his deck watching us go.

I walked aft and took my last view of the Marquesas. The tops of the mountains were jagged shadows against the sky, dark and mournful. The arc-light swung to shine upon the mouth of the bay, and the Land of the War Fleet was blotted out in the black night.

Some day when deeper poverty falls on Asia or the fortunes of war give all the South Seas to the Samurai, these islands will again be peopled. But never again will they know such beautiful children of nature, passionate and brave, as have been destroyed here. They shall have passed as did the old Greeks, but they will have left no written record save the feeble and misunderstanding observations of a few alien visitors.

Apai! Kaoha e!

THE END