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Title: The pearl lagoon

Author: Charles Nordhoff

Illustrator: Anton Otto Fischer

Release date: July 18, 2022 [eBook #68550]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Little, Brown and Company

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PEARL LAGOON ***






[Frontispiece: _I had my first look at the helmsman._]




  THE

  PEARL LAGOON

  _By_

  CHARLES NORDHOFF



  _ILLUSTRATED BY_
  ANTON OTTO FISCHER



  BOSTON
  LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY




  COPYRIGHT 1924 BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS



  THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS PUBLICATIONS
  ARE PUBLISHED BY
  LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
  IN ASSOCIATION WITH
  THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY



  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




  _To_

  _WALTER AND SARAH C. W. NORDHOFF_

  DEAR PARENTS AND UNDERSTANDING FRIENDS
  WHOSE GRANDCHILDREN, I HOPE,
  WILL ONE DAY READ
  THIS BOOK




PREFACE

For some months past, my daily stint at the typewriter has been cheered
by an ambitious hope: that this story might prove entertaining to the
young--the finest of all audiences.  They are too wise even to glance
at so dull a thing as a preface, but to you older people, who are
responsible for what the young ones read, I have a word to say.

I make no claim, in the pages which follow, to have done more than
muster the familiar marionettes and put them through their paces before
your eyes.  In one respect, nevertheless, I venture to commit myself.
I know the islands fairly well--white man and native; skipper, trader,
and pearl-diver; the sea, the lagoons, the small and lonely bits of
land; and I can vouch for the genuineness of the story's atmosphere.

As for the story, there is nothing in it which has not happened, or
might not happen to-day--for Romance, like the sea itself, is ever old
and ever new.

C. N.

TAHITI, 1924




  CONTENTS

  I.  The Coming of the Schooner
  II.  The Pearls of Iriatai
  III.  Aboard the Tara
  IV.  At Faatemu
  V.  Iriatai
  VI.  The End of the Shark--the Beginning of the Diving
  VII.  South Sea Fishermen
  VIII.  I Turn Pearl-Diver
  IX.  The Cave of the Shark-God
  X.  The Cholita Comes to Iriatai
  XI.  Piracy
  XII.  Boarders!
  XIII.  Tahiti




ILLUSTRATIONS

_I had my first look at the helmsman_ . . . . . . Frontispiece

"_You're Charlie, eh?_" _he said, when he had looked me up and down
with a smile that took me back to the evenings by our fireside, ten
years before_

_The shark reared almost vertically beneath the swimmer and, opened his
great jaws_

_Next moment the wave burst over the gunwale, and we were struggling in
the sea_




THE PEARL LAGOON



  _O Kahiki, land of the far-reaching ocean,
  Land where Olopana dwelt!
  Within is the land, outside is the sun!
  Indistinct are the sun and the land when approaching.
  Perhaps you have seen it?
  I have seen it.
  I have surely seen Kahiki._




I

THE COMING OF THE SCHOONER

We lived on the coast of California, on the Spanish grant my
grandfather had purchased from the mission which still stands, deserted
and crumbling, in the Santa Brigida Valley.  Our house, built long
before the Civil War, overlooked the lower end of the valley, from a
knoll above the salt marshes at the river-mouth.  The house was built
in the form of a hollow square, surrounding a paved court.  The walls
were of adobe,--sun-dried bricks of clay, mixed with a little
straw,--four feet thick, and pierced by small grated windows, designed
for loopholes more than for the admittance of light and air.  The beams
and rafters were of roughhewn pine, carried down from the mountains by
the Santa Brigida Indians, a tribe long since extinct, and the same
patient workers had moulded and baked the old red tiles of the roof.

My father and my uncle Harry Selden had been brought up to the
half-Spanish life of old California.  For ten miles along the coast and
six miles inland the land was theirs, and in those days three thousand
head of cattle, bearing my grandfather's brand, grazed on the mesas and
filed down in long lines to drink.  When the brothers were young, the
grizzly still lingered in the hills, the tracks of deer and mountain
lion were everywhere, the quail trotted in thousands along the
river-bottom, and in the winter months the plains along the seacoast
were clamorous with flocks of wild geese, feeding on the rich grass.
But times were changing, and little by little, civilization was
creeping in.  A church and a schoolhouse were built in the township
north of us; taxes were raised; and finally a party of surveyors
appeared, running a line for the new railway.  My grandfather abhorred
the idea of a railway passing through his land; he made a bitter fight
and would not give in till his own lawyer showed him that if he refused
to accept what was offered for the right of way, the law would force
him to do so for the public good.  He died a short time after the
trains began to run.

The brothers were young men at that time, and as their mother had been
dead for many years, their friends supposed that they would carry on
the ranch in a sort of family partnership.  But Uncle Harry, in his
love of a wild and independent life, was my grandfather over again.  He
announced that he had had enough of civilization, persuaded my father
to buy out his share of the Santa Brigida, and bade his brother and his
friends good-bye.  I remember, when I was very small, how eagerly we
looked forward to the letters my father used to read aloud to us:
accounts of African gold-mining; of wanderings in Central America and
Mexico; of great cattle-ranches--estancias, Uncle Harry called them--in
the Argentine; of voyages along the barren Chilean coast: of storms and
shipwrecks among distant archipelagoes.  In the end he settled as a
trader, a buyer of copra and pearl-shell, in the South Seas.

As for my father, he was content to marry and to stay at home, but he
clung to his cattle stubbornly, refusing to farm or to sell an acre of
his land and growing poorer with each year that passed.  He often said
that we would never starve and that our land was constantly increasing
in value, but at such times my mother used to rise from her chair with
a sigh and walk out alone among her roses in the court.  She was a
patient woman and she loved my father dearly, but I knew that the sale
of only a few acres among all our thousands would have provided her
with many things she craved.  What with dry years and low prices, our
taxes ate up nearly all the profits from the cattle.  We could never
afford a motor-car or the occasional trips to San Francisco of which
our neighbors' children gave me glowing accounts, yet outside of such
luxuries, I must own that we had little need of ready money.  Our own
fat steers provided us and our men with beef; my mother was
superintendent of a garden which furnished more vegetables than we
could eat; and in the fall and winter game was still plentiful enough
to be a real resource.

Our circumstances had made me a rather serious boy, fond of solitude
and given to endless day-dreams--dreams of returning from vague
gold-mines or speculations in land with a fortune, to be invested in
the ranch and to provide my mother with travel, and rest, and pretty
clothes.  On my rides to school along a five-mile stretch of coast,
where the pearly fog billowed about the hills and the Pacific broke
lazily beyond the dunes, I lived in a world of pure fancy, from which
the sight of San Isidro, with its single dusty street, its stores, and
hideous frame schoolhouse, recalled me daily with an unpleasant start.
All through the week I lived only for the coming Saturday, when I would
be free to shoot, or fish in the surf, or ride out with our men to
track down some band of half-wild steers, hidden in the thick oak scrub
of the foothills.

It was on a Saturday that my uncle came.  I was fifteen that winter,
and ten years had gone by since he had visited us last, but I had not
forgotten his lean powerful figure, or the black eyes lighting up a
face tanned to an unfading brown, or the stories he had told a
wondering youngster of five, sitting on his knee by the fireplace.

The month was February, as I remember it, for the wild mustard was tall
and green on the hills and scattered cock-quail were perched on the
fence-posts, filling the air with the long sweet whistle of their
mating-time.  We were early risers, all of us, and at dawn, as I was
eating the breakfast my mother had prepared, she asked me if I would
take my gun and try for some wild duck on the marshes.  There would be
guests from San Isidro to-morrow, and a few brace of duck would be a
treat for people from the town.  I assented joyfully, for such a
request meant that ammunition would be furnished from my father's
store, and I loved nothing more than the long lazy hours in a blind,
where one could watch the strings of wild fowl trailing across the sky.

I had good sport that morning, hidden close to a shallow pool behind
the dunes.  As I waded across the marsh, carrying my gun and
half-a-dozen wooden decoys, a cloud of teal rose quacking from the
grass and headed seaward on beating wings.  The redhead were beginning
to fly northward from their wintering grounds on the lonely Mexican
lagoons; small flocks of them, led by drakes with heads glinting like
burnished copper in the sunlight, rose from the creeks ahead of me and
sped away, low over the sand hills.  At the place that I had chosen for
my shooting, I unwound the anchor-lines of the decoys, tossed them far
out into the pool, and built myself a rough shelter of pickle-weed,
strung on stakes pounded into the mud.  I found an old piece of board
for a seat, loaded my gun, laid out a box of cartridges within easy
reach, and settled myself luxuriously to wait.

Next moment I glanced upward and crouched down lower than before,
cocking my old-fashioned hammer-gun.  High in the air above the marsh,
a flock of sprig was descending in great spiral curves, the wind
humming musically through the rigid flight-feathers of their wings.
Lower and lower they swung, while my pulse raced as I peeped over the
edge of the blind.  I could see the snowy breasts of the drakes, the
feathers of their long forked tails, and their heads turning this way
and that as they scanned the marsh warily for signs of danger.  They
had seen the decoys, and as they swept past me, still out of range, I
called to them, imitating the feeble quack of the hen bird.  Then,
while I held my breath, they turned again, low over the pool, and came
sailing straight at me--necks up and feet dropping to settle among the
decoys.  My hands were trembling a little, but I took careful aim at
the old white-breasted leader, pulled the trigger, and saw him crumple
and strike the water with a mighty splash.  Wild with alarm, another
drake came towering above my head, and leaning backward till I nearly
fell off my seat, I let drive with the left barrel and watched him fold
his wings and come down plunging to the grass.

I can recall that warm winter morning as if it were yesterday: the
steady thunder of the breakers, the perfume of the salt marsh, the
wisps of cloud drifting across a soft blue sky.  Flock after flock of
wild fowl came speeding in from the sea, circled the marsh, set their
wings to alight, bounded upward, scattering, at the reports of my gun,
and headed back for the ocean--fast-vanishing dots above the dunes.
Once a wedge of geese passed at a great height overhead, flying
northward with slow steady wing-beats, thrilling me with the hoarse
music of their voices.  My life seemed cramped and narrow as I gazed at
these free rovers of the sky, travelers beyond the far rim of the
horizon north and south.

The warm sun and the drowsy chirping and buzzing of insects in the
grass brought on a nap that caught me unaware.  It must have been
mid-day when I awoke with a little start, to sit up and rub my eyes,
wondering for an instant where I was.  Unloading my gun, I waded out
after the decoys and strung my dead birds on a thong of leather.  Then,
yielding to a habit of those days, I climbed to the top of a sand hill,
for a look at the beach.  Next moment I nearly shouted aloud in the
excitement of what I saw.

Close inshore, not far beyond the outer line of breaking seas, a
two-masted schooner was rounding into the wind.  She was painted white
and her sails shivered crisply in the light air.  One needed small
knowledge of ships to appreciate the beauty of the little vessel: the
high sharp bows, the graceful sweep of sheer, the slender masts, the
taut lines of shroud and stay.  The sight of a ship was rare along our
stretch of coast.  At long intervals we saw a trail of smoke far out to
sea,--the steamer trading between San Francisco and the west coast of
Mexico,--but this was the first time within my memory that a vessel of
any kind had passed so close to shore.  And she was not merely passing,
for I saw now that her crew was sliding a long double-ended boat over
the rail.  Three men sprang into the whaleboat: a pair of oarsmen who
seated themselves and began to pull toward shore, and a man in blue,
who stood in the stern, holding a steering-sweep with one hand and
waving good-bye to a gigantic figure at the schooner's wheel.  The
giant raised his hand in an answering wave; the schooner bore off, her
sails filled, and she headed out to sea, heeling gracefully to the
breeze.

There had been a storm in the north and the swell was high that day.
Even from my perch on the dune, the approaching boat was invisible each
time it swung down into the trough.  It was just beyond the breakers
now, and as it rose on the crest of a wave I saw that the oarsmen had
ceased to pull and that the man with the steering-sweep had turned his
head and was watching the rearing seas astern.  The ground swell, as I
have said, was very high, rolling shoreward a good ten feet from trough
to ridge, and I began to wonder how these three men would win the beach
through the turmoil of white water ahead of them.  Rearing and tossing
as the water shoaled, three or four great waves passed under the boat
and crashed forward, racing toward the beach in walls of foam.  Then,
clear above the thunder of the surf, I heard a vibrant shout--a command
in some strange foreign tongue.  The men on the seats tugged with a
sudden desperate effort at their oars; the man astern, with a single
heave of his sweep, turned the boat straight in toward where I lay.  He
was smoking a cigar, and I felt a thrill of admiration at the easy,
careless way he stood at his post.  A tremendous comber, with patches
of foam beginning to appear along its crest, lifted the boat high in
air and swept it forward tilting on the brink of a foaming wall.  The
wave tumbled and crashed and came rushing far up the beach.

The boat grounded with a gentle shock and the two oarsmen leaped
overboard to hold her against the strong backwash.  They were brown
men, I saw: great brawny fellows more than six feet tall, with
handsome, good-natured faces and teeth that flashed when they smiled.
The steersman sprang out on the damp sand and gave an order, at which
his men dropped a pair of light rollers on the beach and began to drag
the boat up beyond highwater mark.  Then he came strolling toward the
sand hill where I lay hidden in the grass.

He was dressed in blue serge--a double-breasted coat with brass
buttons--and a blue yachting-cap with a white crown.  His age must have
been forty or forty-five, but he was straight as an Indian and carried
himself like a boy.  His face, of a humorous and rather reckless cast,
was tanned almost to the shade of the brown sailors toiling with the
boat, and his black eyes were the most brilliant I have ever seen.

His eyes betrayed him.  He tossed away the burned-down cigar, folded
his arms, and came walking slowly toward my hiding-place, gazing about
him with a half-smile on his lips, as if this lonely beach recalled a
train of pleasant memories.  I was peering down over a clump of rank
salt grass when he glanced up and looked directly into my eyes.

"Uncle Harry!" I shouted as I came sliding and tumbling down the steep
face of the dune.  His strong hands seized me and lifted me to my feet.

"You're Charlie, eh?" he said, when he had looked me up and down with a
smile that took me back to evenings by our fireside, ten years before.
"You've done well to remember me all this time!  By Jove!  I'd never
have known you in the world!  Here, let's have another look.  A chip of
the old block, I reckon--you're going to have your grandfather's mouth.
Well, I never liked a soft man.  How are you all?  Did you sight me
from the house?  Been shooting, eh--let's see your birds."

[Illustration: "_You're Charlie, eh?_" _he said, when he had looked me
up and down with a smile that took me back to the evenings by our
fireside, ten years before._]

I led him across the dunes to where I had left my gun and string of
duck.  At his request I undid the thong about their necks and laid them
out on the sand, while he took them up one by one, spreading a wing to
admire the changing colors of the speculum, or smoothing the feathers
of a glossy head.  At last he sighed, as he cut the end of a fresh
cigar and looked up at me.

"Ah, Charlie, it takes me back," he remarked.  "Many and many a time
I've shot over this pond!  I had an old muzzle-loader, twice the weight
of that gun of yours.  On a Friday night your grandfather used to say:
'Which one of you is going down to the marsh to-morrow to get me a mess
of duck?' and I always landed the job.  Your daddy liked to work with
the cattle; he reckoned shooting was a chore, like splitting kindling,
or driving the milk-cows in from pasture.  But it's time for _kaikai_,
and I'm keen to see Ben and Mary after all these years.  And
Marion--she'll be seventeen now, eh?  I'll bring my boys up to the
house for a bite; the swell was too high to drop anchor, so I told the
mate to stand off and on till I came out."

He turned toward the beach and called the sailors in his strong vibrant
voice: "_E Ivi!  E Ofai e!_" A moment later I saw the two brown men
trotting across the dunes.  Their feet were bare and they wore sailor
jackets and trousers of dungaree.  Their round caps bore the schooner's
name, Tara, woven in silver thread upon the bands.

"Good lads," remarked my uncle, as they drew near.  "Paumotu boys from
Rangiroa--they've been with me since the Tara was built.  Shake hands
with them before we start."  He spoke to the sailors in their own
tongue, telling them that I was his brother's son, and they smiled as
they gazed at me with the frank curiosity of savages.  At a word from
Uncle Harry, one of them picked up my gun and birds, and I led the way
around the marsh to the Santa Brigida road.

We had not walked more than half a mile when we met my father, who had
sighted the schooner and was now riding down to the beach.

"Harry!" he exclaimed, his bearded face transformed by an expression I
had never seen; and in an instant he was off his horse and wringing my
uncle's hand.  "It's like you to drop in this way, without an hour's
warning, but your welcome will be all the warmer for that!  It's good
to see you, old fellow!  You're looking well--your cannibal islands
must agree with you.  What do you think of this uncle of yours, eh,
Charlie?  He wouldn't for the world drop me a wire a day or two ahead,
or arrive by train or motor-car, like a civilized man.  Nothing will do
but to come in a schooner and land like a pirate on the beach!  But
come along to the house and bring your men; I can't offer them
missionary, if that's their usual diet, but we killed a steer
yesterday, and there's plenty of fresh beef."

"Well, Ben," said Uncle Harry, still clasping my father's hand, "ten
years haven't changed you, after all!  I can't tell you how good it is
to be back on the Santa Brigida again!  Your boy says that Mary and
Marion are well--come, I want to see them; let's be getting along.
I'll bring my sailors, if I may.  No need to ask how you are--rugged as
an old grizzly, eh?"

At sight of Uncle Harry my mother forgot her cares, and only the joy of
preparing dinner for him persuaded my sister Marion to leave his side.
We dined at midday in the old-fashioned manner, and that afternoon we
lingered long at table, until a whispering buzz of talk from the
courtyard told us that the news had spread--that my grandfather's old
retainers were assembling to greet the boy they had known so many years
before.  Motioning us to keep our places, Uncle Harry rose from his
chair with a smile and walked out through the door to the sunny court
beyond.

I heard a chorus of exclamations in Spanish: "Don Enrique!  Patroncito!
Ay, Dios Mio!" and the voice of old Juana, the white-haired woman who
had nursed him as a child, sobbing aloud as she murmured over and over:
"My child, my child--you have not forgotten old Juana, no?"  He had an
almost uncanny faculty for winning people's love.

We sat late that evening about the fire of oak logs in the living-room.
Even to-day the scent of wood smoke brings back the picture of that
long, dim-lit room, with its ceiling, so lofty that parts of it were
lost in shadow, crossed by great roughhewn beams, blackened by half a
century of smoke.  The heads of antelope and deer and bighorn looked
down from the walls, and close to the chimney my grandfather's
silver-mounted spurs and old Sharp's rifle hung from a peg.  The floor
was covered with the skins of animals that he had shot: wildcat and
mountain lion; grizzlies from San Gorgonio and Temescal; a moth-eaten
buffalo-robe from the days when he had crossed the plains.

At last we rose to bid my mother and Marion good-night.  Eager to hear
what my uncle would have to say, I seated myself inconspicuously in a
high-backed chair, and at that moment my father turned and noticed me.
"Bedtime, Charlie," he said in his firm, kindly way.  But Uncle Harry
was of a different mind.

"Let him sit up for once," he put in, with a twinkle in his dark eyes;
"I want to have a yarn with you, and I want Charlie to hear what I have
to say.  Don't complain if I keep you up the best part of the night,
for this is my only chance.  I am going to tell you a story, which will
explain why I must leave to-morrow, and why I ask you to let Charlie go
with me when I sail."

"Sailing to-morrow!" exclaimed my father, sitting up suddenly in his
chair; "and you want to take Charlie away!  That's a deuce of a thing
to tell me the first time I've seen you for ten years!  Why in the
world must you rush away so fast?"

My uncle smiled a wry smile.

"It's hard to leave so soon," he said.  "I wish I could spend a month
or two with you, wandering over the old place and having a bit of
sport.  But I'm short of time.  I've been in San Francisco, having a
motor installed in the Tara, and the people at the shipyard were slow.
I would have communicated with you, but I didn't want to make any rash
promises, and it began to look as if I wouldn't have time to put in
here at all.  I'll be up next year for a real visit--on my word; but
to-morrow I must sail; I'm going to take Charlie with me if I have to
sit up all night persuading you."

Uncle Harry gave me one of his brilliant glances, tempered with a wink,
and I felt my heart beat with excitement at the prospect opening
suddenly before me.  He rose to his feet, took a pair of long thin
cigars from his case, offered one to my father, and sank back into his
chair, cocking his heels high against the rough stone of the fireplace.

"Now," he went on, blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, "if
you're not too sleepy, I'm going to tell you how I came to hear of the
pearls in Iriatai Lagoon."




II

THE PEARLS OF IRIATAI

"Iriatai," my uncle began, "is an atoll in the Paumotus--a narrow ring
of land nowhere more than a few yards high, surrounding a lagoon ten or
twelve miles across.  The island has a curious history, for its people
were the last to remain savages among all the eighty islands of the
group.  It is a lonely place, far out to the eastward where
trading-schooners seldom pass, and long after the missionaries had
civilized the other atolls, Iriatai remained unknown--no white man had
landed on its beaches, or laid eyes on the wild people whose village
was screened by the dense bush along the shore.

"In those days there was a famous Catholic school on Mangareva in the
Gambier group, and one year, at Christmas time, a brig set sail from
Tahiti for the South, with a cargo of trade, and half a dozen children
of wealthy half-caste families, sent to be educated by the Church.  A
week after the brig's departure, a gale came roaring down out of the
northwest--a storm so fierce and long-continued that old men speak of
it to this day.  On Tahiti there was great anxiety for the vessel's
safety, and no one was surprised when many months later a schooner came
north from Mangareva, with word that the brig had never arrived.  It
was an old story,--another ship lost somewhere in the lonely spaces of
the South Pacific,--but there was one woman on Tahiti who refused to
believe that the vessel was lost.  She was a rich widow whose only
child, a flaxen-haired girl of eight, was missing with the others, and
she offered great rewards to anyone who could bring her news of the
ship.

"One day a trading skipper came to her with a clew.  On his last trip
through the Paumotus he had been blown far out of his course, and while
hove-to in a heavy sea, he had raised an island only vaguely marked on
the charts.  He ran in to take shelter in the lee, and as they stood
off and on, close to the leeward reef, the lookout had reported people
ashore.  Taking up his glass, the captain made out a crowd of savages
standing on the beach.  They brandished spears and were dressed in
girdles of pandanus leaf, but two or three of them wore about their
shoulders pieces of cloth which the skipper took to be of European
make.  He was an old-timer in the islands, and he was certain that no
trader had ever visited the place.

"The widow lost no time in fitting up an expedition at her own expense.
The skipper who had seen the savages on Iriatai was given command; the
old man is living in Papeete to-day--I had the yarn from him.  He
picked up half a dozen Rangiroa boys and armed them with rifles in case
of trouble, though they were instructed not to shoot unless attacked.

"After a fortnight of beating about, they raised the palms of Iriatai,
sailed in through the pass, dropped anchor a stone's throw off the
village, and went ashore.  There were canoes hauled up on the beach,
fishing tackle lay about as it had been dropped in haste, and the
thatched huts seemed to have been inhabited within an hour past, but
saving a dog or two and a few half-wild pigs, no living creature was in
sight.  The captain heard a shout from one of his men who was exploring
the far end of the village, and the others hastened to the place where
the Christian boy was pointing with horror to the ground.  There, close
to the temple of the islanders,--a long platform of rude coral
blocks,--was the _umu tagata_: the oven in which human bodies were
roasted whole.  The bones of men, clean-picked by the cannibals of
Iriatai, were scattered on all sides, and hundreds of Chilian silver
dollars--current throughout the Pacific in those days--were arranged in
neat patterns about the cooking-place.  A few yards off, mounted on
sharpened stakes along the coral wall, a row of heads was drying in the
sun, and one of them--a small head from which hung wisps of long flaxen
hair--made the whole story clear.  The widow's daughter had been found.

"The skipper was sickened--if he had caught the people then, he told
me, he would have slaughtered them like sheep.  Calling to his men, he
set off recklessly through the bush, resolved to shoot down the savages
at sight.  Hour after hour the searchers struggled through the dense
green bush, scratched by thorns, streaming with perspiration, stumbling
over the sharp coral underfoot.  It was a hot still day, and the jungle
was lifeless and strangely quiet.  No leaf stirred, no bird sang, and
the drooping fronds of palms hung motionless overhead.  Nothing moved
anywhere saving the small white sea-birds which circled eerily, high
above the tree-tops.  The oppression of the bush cooled the skipper's
anger and lowered the spirits of the searching-party; no word had been
spoken for half an hour when they sat down in silence to rest, close to
a pile of jagged coral blocks.  Leaning against a tree-trunk, with his
rifle between his knees, the captain was in the act of filling a pipe
when one of the men touched his arm, signing him to make no sound.  To
one side of them, in the bleached mass of coral, there was a faint
scratching noise, and presently, as they watched, a brown hand and arm
appeared for an instant in a crevice of the rocks.

"'That is their hiding-place,' the native breathed into the skipper's
ear; 'I have heard my own people speak of such caverns, where they took
refuge in the old wars.'

"The captain thought for a moment before he spoke.  'Go alone to the
mouth of the cave,' he whispered to the boy beside him; 'our rifles
will protect you.  See if you can talk to the savages.  and if they
understand you, try to persuade one or two of the men to come out.'

"The native rose and stole away, and soon they heard his voice calling
softly in the Paumotan tongue.  He seemed to be in conversation with
the people underground.  When he returned there was an odd smile on his
lips.  'It is strange,' he said, 'those people speak a tongue such as
our old men use.  They are like beasts or cruel children, killing
because they know no better, or are afraid.  I do not believe that they
are evil men.  There is no entrance to the cave--only a little hole in
the rock, through which a man may thrust his hand and arm.  The place
is sacred in these people's eyes and on the ground close to the hole
there is an offering of food.  They feared it might betray their
hiding-place; the man we saw was trying to reach it from within.  There
is another way out, they said, knowing that I could never find the
place.  To reach it, they swim beneath the water of the lagoon.  We
cannot get in from above; all our strength would not suffice to move
the rocks.  They are afraid to come out, but perhaps I might persuade
them if I could show gifts such as they have never seen.'

"The captain collected a few bright trifles among his men: a mirror or
two, a gaudy bandanna handkerchief, a clasp knife with a glittering
blade.  The native returned to parley with the savages, and while he
was gone the skipper gave instructions to his men--they were to scatter
a little and lie hidden; if the wild people found courage to leave
their cave, and they were not too many, they were to be seized and
bound at once.

"An hour passed.  Then, without the warning crackle of a twig, two
savages stepped from the bush and came toward the native who awaited
them, holding out gifts and speaking encouragingly.  They were naked
save for light girdles of grass, and their shocks of hair were tied in
high knots upon their heads.  The captain whistled, and a moment later
the two men of Iriatai lay triced and helpless on the ground.

"The schooner sailed for Tahiti the same night, carrying the prisoners,
whose evidence--the story, freely told, of how the wrecked brig had
been plundered before she broke up, and how every soul aboard had been
massacred--was placed before the French authorities.  A few months
later a man-of-war was sent to Iriatai, with one of the prisoners as
interpreter, and the people of the island were carried off to Tahiti to
be civilized.  In the end, the chief was executed in reprisal for the
island's crime, and his people were taken away to distant atolls of the
group.

"Only one of them, so far as I know, ever returned to Iriatai--Turia,
the chief's daughter, a girl of eleven or twelve when she was carried
off aboard the man-of-war.  Her beauty and intelligence attracted the
notice of a half-caste Tahitian, who adopted her and gave her an
education at the Sisters' School.  At seventeen she married the Baron
von Tesmar--an Austrian nobleman, a man of wealth and taste, brought up
among the capitals of the Old World.  He was well known in all the
outlandish ports of the Pacific; for reasons of his own, of which he
never spoke, he had chosen to shut the door on the past.  He traveled
on his own yacht with a Kanaka crew, and during a visit to Tahiti he
ran across Turia, the girl from Iriatai.  A month later she sailed away
with him, with a marriage certificate, all legal and shipshape, stowed
away in her camphorwood box.  I suppose she must have been the Baroness
von Tesmar--By Jove, a funny world!

"The natives have a quality I like: each one of them loves his own
island in a way that we can scarcely understand.  Turia was no
exception, but unlike the rest of her people, she ended her days on
Iriatai.  A short time after he married her the Baron became interested
in pearl-culture and--at her suggestion, no doubt--they settled on the
island where her savage forefathers had lived and died.

"To give you an understanding of the story from now on, I must tell you
one or two things about pearl-shell, which furnishes the
mother-of-pearl used all over the world for buttons and ornaments and
the handles of knives.  In the Paumotus where I trade, the
pearl-oysters are of a kind called 'black-lipped,' valuable as
mother-of-pearl but rather barren so far as real pearls are concerned.
Out to the west, about Celebes and in the Sulu Sea, there is another
variety, richer in pearls and far more valuable as shell, called
'gold-lipped,' because the edges of the shell are golden-tinted.  Von
Tesmar was a man of some scientific attainments, and he suspected, far
ahead of his time, that the growth of a pearl in the oyster was caused
by a parasite, which it might be possible to transmit by artificial
means.  In order to carry out his experiments, he had his schooner
fitted with a kind of well, through which the sea water was allowed to
circulate, and brought shipments of live oysters from distant parts, to
be transplanted in Iriatai Lagoon.  He may have had an idea that the
gold-lipped oysters, in this new environment, would prove more
susceptible to infection--to the little-known parasite believed to
cause the pearl.

"The Baron's career, his studies of the pearl, and his new settlement
on Iriatai were all ended by the hurricane of 1881.  The island had
been one of the finest of the Paumotus, with dense groves of coconuts
and a deep soil on the higher spots, but when I first landed there, in
ninety-six, it was a waste of sand and tumbled coral-blocks,
clean-swept from end to end by breaching seas.  On an islet, far down
the lagoon, a small clump of palms remained--the only living things,
save Turia and her child, to survive the fury of the sea.

"The settlement was at the weather end, and when the seas began to
breach across into the lagoon, von Tesmar's schooner was anchored fifty
yards offshore.  Both cables snapped and she disappeared in an instant
among the driving clouds downwind.  She must have piled up at the
leeward end, or perhaps she was carried clean over into the open sea
beyond.  At any rate, no man of her crew was ever seen again.  The
people of the settlement--a dozen natives with their wives, brought by
von Tesmar to labor in the oyster-beds--had no time to chop off the
tops of the palms in which they took refuge.  A pair of old palms,
eighty feet high, flexible and tough as whalebone, stood close beside
the house.  High up on the bole of one, the Baron tied himself, and
Turia swarmed up the other, her three-year-old boy lashed to her back.

"It is useless to try to describe a South Sea hurricane.  One after
another, the houses were carried away.  Each frothing comber seemed to
rush over the land more fiercely than the last; the wind came in gusts
that bent the palms like reeds.  With a sound audible above the uproar
of the hurricane, a palm-bole snapped, and its top, with two human
beings clinging among the fronds, sped off to vanish in the wrack.
Turia's was the last to withstand the wind; she watched the others
go,--men, women, and babies at their mothers' breasts,--and finally a
faint, splitting report close by told her that von Tesmar's palm had
given way.  Next moment her own refuge went, and still clinging to the
upper bole, she was sailing above the torn white surface of the lagoon.
How she survived the impact, disentangled herself from the wreckage,
and lived through miles of angry water is a thing that I have never
understood.  When she struggled ashore on the islet which was the only
land above the sea, her child was still alive.  No one but a Paumotan
could have done it, and no woman of any other race could have lived and
supported her child--as Turia did for many weeks--on coconuts and the
fish she was able to catch with her bare hands.  In the end, the
lookout of a passing schooner saw her signal-smoke."

My uncle's cigar had gone out and he rose for a moment to scratch a
match against the fireplace.  The lamp was turned low; the glowing logs
on the andirons sent waves of light flickering among the shadows of the
room.  My father stood up to stretch his legs.  Standing with hands
clasped behind his back, he gazed quizzically at his brother, seated in
the deep old leather chair.

"That's a good story of yours, as far as it goes," he observed; "but
what has all this to do with you, or with the fact that you can spend
only one day with us?"

"No wonder you're growing impatient," said Uncle Harry, with a smile;
"it must seem an interminable yarn, but it's all linked together, as
you will see.  I came into it about ten years ago, when I took a lease
on Iriatai.  It was just after my last visit here.  A friend suggested
that I have a look at the island with a view to planting coconuts--they
thrive wonderfully in the coral of the atolls.  I had heard
half-legendary accounts of von Tesmar and his pearls, but such
experiments are not taken seriously in the islands, where so many
cranks have tried this scheme or that, and failed.  The lagoon had
never been a place for shell.

"I met Turia when I landed there.  Von Tesmar had left her a little
money in the Papeete bank, and after a year of civilization, she had
been overpowered by the homing instinct of her race.  Her husband had
relatives in German Samoa--the directors of a great Apia
trading-house--and she took her child to them before she set out to end
her days on Iriatai.  Then she chartered a small schooner and sailed
away with a couple of poor native families and a stock of provisions
and seed-coconuts.  I found her happy in a lonely sort of life, settled
in a one-room cottage, surrounded by groves of fine twelve-year-old
palms.  The place was furnished with a bed, an accordion, and a chest
of camphorwood; a portrait of von Tesmar, in the uniform of an officer
of dragoons, hung on the wall.  There must have been a human side of
this man's character, for his widow remembered him with a devotion hard
to match.

"She was the only claimant to rights in the island, and I had no
difficulty in gaining her consent.  Within a year I obtained from the
French Government a long lease on Iriatai and now there are sixty
thousand young palms on the island, some of them already beginning to
bear.  Another hurricane?  We can't afford to think of that--they
strike an island not more than once in every hundred years.  During the
visits when I carried labor and supplies to Iriatai, Turia used to spin
me yarns about the hurricane.  She was an interesting woman, as those
of the pure old blood are apt to be.  When I knew her she was straight
and handsome still--no darker than a woman of southern Spain.
Sometimes she showed me letters from her boy, growing up in far-off
Samoa with his relatives.  I did not meet him till after she was dead.

"I needed a rest last year, and as I didn't have time for a run up to
see you all, I decided to take a vacation among the islands--a short
cruise through the Tongan and Samoan groups.  One night in Apia, the
German port, I had been dining at the consulate, and as I walked along
the moonlit beach to where my boat's crew awaited me, I was stopped by
a young half-caste, dressed in soiled white duck.  He spoke English,
and he looked so miserable, so poor and ill that it needed a thicker
skin than mine to pass him without a word.  His body was no more than
skin and bones, and when he turned in the moonlight, I saw the wreck of
what had been a handsome face, ravaged by quick tropical tuberculosis.
He spoke in abrupt sentences, gasping for breath and stopping at
intervals to cough.

"'You English?' he asked.  'No?  American, eh?  I speak German,
French--not much English.  That Tara your schooner?  They tell me you
go Tahiti to-morrow.  Give me passage, eh?  I cook--wash dishes--cabin
boy--anything!  I want go Tahiti too much!'

"He turned away from me and leaned over with a hand to his chest,
coughing frightfully; when the paroxysm had passed he stood gasping and
unable to speak.  It was impossible not to be sorry for the poor devil.

"'I'll let you know to-morrow,' I told him.  'I'm sailing at sundown.
Come to the beach at four or five o'clock.'

"Next morning, strolling with the American consul, I pointed out the
half-caste, asleep in the shade of a beached canoe.  'Oh, that fellow,'
said the consul; 'Yes, I know him; von Tesmar's his name.  Doesn't look
much like a nobleman, does he?  As a matter of fact, he's a baron of
the Austrian Empire--when he's drunk enough he'll show you the papers
to prove it!  Odd story.  His father married a Paumotu woman years ago
and was lost in a hurricane, back in the eighties.  The mother brought
her child out here--old Madame Lichtenstein, of the Hamburg Concession,
was the youngster's aunt.  The old lady was good to him, sent him to
the Protestant school and finally shipped him off to Europe with plenty
of money to spend.  But the cold winters were too much for his native
blood, I guess; t.b. got him after the second year, and as happens so
often in the islands, consumption led to drink.  Then one day he turned
up here, a yellow skeleton with a craving for alcohol.  The Germans
took pity on him and pensioned him off for a time, but he was sinking
rather low, and finally they cut off the money and ceased to recognize
him at all.  One can't really blame them much!'

"I didn't say anything, but I was interested, I'll admit.  So this was
Turia's son--the child of the hurricane on Iriatai!  He had traveled a
long road since those days; but I suspected that the end was near.  Why
should he want to go to the eastern islands?  The old instinct of his
mother's blood, perhaps, calling the wanderer home at last to die.

"I gave him a passage, at any rate.  He was willing enough, but it was
absurd to talk of working his way--when we'd been out three days I knew
that his eyes would never see another landfall.  I put him in a berth
in the spare stateroom.  He'd picked up his English on the beach, but
in French you'd have been surprised to hear the fellow talk.  With the
interest one cannot help feeling in a dying man, I spent a good deal of
time yarning with him, and finally told him that I had heard something
of his story and had known Turia on Iriatai.  He was in a steady low
fever by this time, and our talks seemed to excite him; he asked
endless questions about his mother and her life--the island--the lagoon.

"One night, when I was at the wheel, the cabin boy came on deck,
rubbing the sleep from his eyes, to say that von Tesmar wanted to see
me at once.  There was something of great importance to tell me, it
seemed.  We were in the middle of the wide, lonely reach of sea that
stretches from Rose Island to the Leeward group.  The moon had risen
about eleven o'clock; there was not a cloud in the sky, and a steady
breeze blew warm and fair from the northwest.  I had taken the wheel at
moonrise and I hated to go below, but the half-caste's message seemed
so urgent that I called the man on watch to take my place.

"I found von Tesmar gasping in his berth.  He had gotten up to undo a
bundle he carried with him, wrapped in a piece of native cloth, and
when I pulled the curtain aside, he held out to me a tattered sheet of
cheap ruled notepaper.

"'For you,' he whispered breathlessly, in the French he had picked up
during an edifying year in Paris.  'Ah, _mon ami_, this is the end--now
I must die, and a glass of your excellent rum would help me to die
gracefully.  _Merci bien_--you are kindness personified!  I wonder why:
there is so little, in your eyes, that I can do.  Yes, this is the end.
I cannot complain--I have had my fun and paid for some of it, at least.
Never again shall I watch the faces passing my table on the boulevard,
nor sit with the brown people in a bush-clearing far from the church,
while the drums throb and the sleek young girls twist and flutter their
hands in the torchlight.  No doubt you are thinking that I am a _drôle
de type_, and so I am, by training and by birth--half savage, half
_boulevardier_.  But the time is short and I weary you with idle
reflections; _allons_, to business!  You can read the native Tahitian,
eh?  It is difficult for one who knows only the Samoan dialect.  I had
hoped to keep that paper to myself; the doctors say that men with my
malady are always optimists.  But you have treated me as one white man
treats another--keep it, read it, and do as you please.  Perhaps it is
worth another glass of rum, _n'est-ce pas_?  Another rum for Monsieur
le Baron!  They called me that in Paris, at the Grand Hotel--Ha, ha!
Noble on both sides, _bon Dieu_!--my mother a cannibal
Princess--Monsieur le Baron von Tesmar, Prince of Iriatai!  How's that
for a title, _hein_?'

"At five o'clock, when the moonlight paled before the first flush of
dawn, he turned his face away from me and died.  I blew out the light
and went on deck to give orders for his burial.  Then, when I had my
coffee, I lay down in my berth and unfolded the paper he had given me.
It proved a quaint document--a letter in the native language from Turia
to her son, written a few days before her death.  Here it is--it is
worth translating for your benefit:--


This from your dear mother, who loves you and prays that God's blessing
may bring you prosperity and health.  _Amen_.  I am ill, and though the
woman who tends me has made medicine, I think that I shall soon die.
Do not weep for me--I shall be happy to be again with your father, whom
I have always loved.  Now pay attention, for there is a thing that I
must tell you.  Your father was a wise man, and his work was to bring
pearl oysters from foreign seas to this lagoon.  After the hurricane,
when I swam so far with you clinging to my back, I believed for many
years that the oysters must all be dead, but that was not true.  In the
far end of the lagoon, where no one goes to-day, I have found where the
strange shells with edges like gold lie on the coral in thousands, not
more than fifteen fathoms deep.  Many times I have gone alone in my
canoe to dive for them, and I have found fine pearls, great and small.
These are true words.  The white man called Seroni, who brings people
to plant coconuts on Iriatai, is a good man and my friend, but I have
said nothing of the pearls to him.  They were your father's work, and
you will want them, since you live in the white man's land.  The
oysters are on coral bottom, midway between the islet and the reef.
Beware of a great brown shark when you come here to dive; he comes
sometimes to that end of the lagoon, and twice he has nearly had me
when I was intent upon my work.  I think he is the old god of my
people, worshiped when I was a child.  Farewell, my dear son--I shall
not see you again.

_On Iriatai, from Turia, to her son, Arno von Tesmar_


"Somehow, as I read this letter, I was convinced that what the woman
said was true.  There are nearly a hundred square miles in Iriatai
Lagoon, and though my men did a good deal of fishing, a shell-patch of
the largest size might have escaped their notice for years.  No one in
the Eastern Pacific had ever succeeded in acclimatizing the gold-lipped
shell, but that did not prove that it could not be done.  If Turia's
words were true, von Tesmar's eagerness to reach the group was
justified.  It might prove a rare chance, and I resolved to investigate
at once.

"Fatu, my big mate, is a man that I can always trust.  He is a
first-class diver, and when the Tara was anchored at Iriatai, I told
him the story and explained that he must hold his tongue.  We took a
big canoe and made camp on the islet at the far end of the lagoon.
Even with Turia's directions, it took us four days to find the shell,
but when Fatu began to bring up the gold-lipped oysters in both hands,
I saw that the dead half-caste had paid his passage a thousandfold.

"My man reported the bottom covered with shell for acres on either
side--a little fortune in mother-of-pearl alone.  And pearls--By Jove,
I could scarcely drag Fatu away!

"I didn't dare to linger--there was danger of causing talk.  It would
need a dozen or fifteen divers to work the patch properly; the news
would travel like a whirlwind, and I hadn't the shadow of a claim on
the shell.  The open lagoons--I must explain--with passes through which
a vessel can enter from the sea are Government property, and during the
legal season any native may dive and keep what he obtains.  Unless I
did some careful planning, half the schooners in the South Pacific
would soon be anchored at Iriatai.  Well, I headed for Tahiti and did
my thinking on the way.  The Governor of French Oceania is a friend of
mine.  When we reached Papeete my plans were made and I put the matter
up to his common-sense: By pure chance, in one of the atolls under his
administration I had discovered a brand-new patch of shell.  (I said
nothing, of course, about von Tesmar, or the fact that the shell was
golden-lipped.)  If properly preserved and worked, this patch might in
the future prove a valuable asset to the Government.  As things were, I
could not legally profit by my discovery--any Kanaka diver had as much
right as I to exploit the new lagoon.  If I held my tongue, a hundred
years might pass before another man stumbled on the place.  In view of
all this, therefore, wouldn't it be fair to give me one season's
exclusive rights, in return for adding a new pearl-lagoon to the five
or six already under French control?

"It struck me as a fair thing to ask, and I had little difficulty with
the Governor.  Within a month the papers were delivered to me all
signed and sealed: a year's rights to the shell and pearls of Iriatai.
I had always wanted an engine for the Tara and now I felt that I could
afford one.  In the Paumotus, with reefs and five-knot currents and
frequent calms, a motor is better than a dozen insurance policies.  Now
the engine's installed and I am heading back without a day to waste.
It will take time to find the men, to build canoes, and get the diving
under way."


As he finished his story, my uncle rose and began to pace back and
forth before the fireplace.  My father lay in his chair, smoking and
making no comment; I fancy that the glimpse of an adventurous life on
the other side of the world had set his thoughts to wandering.  Though
it was long past midnight, I was wide awake.

All at once my uncle stopped beside his brother's chair and stood
looking down at him, with a half-apologetic smile.

"See here, Ben," he said, "I want you to let Charlie come along.  A few
months out of school will do no harm and I'll give you my word to have
him back in the fall.  I've come to the age when a man feels the need
of youngsters, and yours are all I have.  There'll be plenty of work--I
need someone I can really trust.  He'll have his share in what we get,
of course, and he'll earn it--I'll see to that.  Be a good fellow, and
let him come!"

My father looked up and sighed before he spoke.  "Ah, Harry," he
remarked, "you're a lucky man!  All your life you've been a
rainbow-chaser and now you seem to have caught up with one at last.
It's hard not to envy you when I hear a story like the one you've told!
I didn't realize what a dull old stay-at-home I had become.  As for the
boy, I'm tempted to let him go; but you're asking a good deal!  You
live in a rough part of the world, if the stories one hears are true.
There must be men down there who would make it hot for you if the news
of your pearl-lagoon leaked out.  Even in California we used to hear of
the exploits of Bully Hayes."

My uncle smiled and shook his head.

"Those days are past," he said.  "Pease and Hayes are dead, and they've
left no successors in the Eastern Pacific.  So far as I know, there's
only one scoundrel of that type left in Polynesia and he operates far
out to the west: 'Thursday Island Schmidt'--ever hear of him?  I don't
know him myself, and I'm not hankering to make his acquaintance until
this job is done.  But he's never been east of Samoa, and even old
Thursday Island would hesitate to tackle a barefaced hold-up nowadays.
Warships and the wireless have ended all that.  Let the boy come--I'd
be the last man to drag him into any scrapes."

"He can go, then," said my father, rising from his chair.  "I only wish
I'd had such a chance when I was a youngster.  But you'll have to talk
his mother around--I wash my hands of that!  We'll leave that for
tomorrow, eh?  Come, you must be tired; we'd better turn in, all three
of us."

And so the matter was left, while I wandered in a daze to my room and
lay down to spend a night made sleepless by mingled anxiety and
happiness.




III

ABOARD THE TARA

It must have taken a deal of talking to win my mother's consent, but
Uncle Harry proved equal to the task.  When we had breakfasted he sat
with her for an hour in the courtyard, and afterward, when I saw her
alone, she kissed me and told me that I was to go.

We had guests that day--old friends who had known my uncle when he was
a boy.  I sat at dinner with the others, but all I can remember of the
meal is that Uncle Harry praised my ducks.  I was still dazed at my
good fortune: my dreams of adventure and of distant wanderings were to
come true at last!  A cruise on the Tara in the South Seas--a quest for
pearls in a tropical lagoon--a part in the sequel of my uncle's
tale--indeed, the prospect was enough to intoxicate any boy of fifteen.
Iriatai!  There was magic in the word alone, and I repeated it under my
breath while the older people about me spoke of commonplace things.

The sun was low over the Pacific when we said good-bye.  The others
accompanied us to the beach: my father and mother, Marion, and our
guests; and in a little group of people from the Santa Brigida I saw
old Juana sobbing, with a shawl pulled over her head.  The two sailors
rolled the whaleboat into the wash of the sea; after the final
handclasps, Uncle Harry and I took our places in the stern.  The ocean
was calmer than on the day before.  Ivi and Ofai watched their time,
ran the boat out in a lull, leaped in to seize their oars, and pulled
seaward through the gentle surf.  The mate of the Tara had seen us with
his glasses and the schooner was headed toward the land.  Presently we
came alongside, scrambled over the rail, and helped the sailors haul
the boat on deck.  My uncle shouted a command; the sheets were slacked
away, and the Tara bore off to the southwest.

I turned for a last look at the watchers on the beach, already so far
distant that they were no more than a patch of color against the dunes.
There was a lump in my throat--it was the first time that I had been
away from home.

"I hate to leave," remarked Uncle Harry, who was standing at my side,
"but we're off now; in the morning we'll be out of sight of land.  Come
below and have a look at your quarters.  I think you'll like the Tara;
she's my only child!"

The Tara, as I have said, was schooner-rigged--a vessel of a hundred
tons, fast, comfortable, and designed to ride out any sea.  A glance
convinced me of her owner's love.  The sides were snowy with fresh
paint; the decks of white pine were holystoned till they gleamed
spotless against their seams of pitch; the masts and spars were newly
varnished, and no spot of mildew stained the sails.  On the after deck
a shallow cockpit contained the wheel and binnacle.  Forward of the
cockpit, the companionway led down to the saloon, where a pair of
curtained doors gave on staterooms to starboard and to port.  The
woodwork was of bright mahogany.  On either side of the saloon there
was a leather-upholstered lounge, and half a dozen chairs were screwed
fast to the floor about a handsome dining-table.  Forward of the saloon
was the engine-room, shut off by a bulkhead from the main hold where
burlapped bales and packing-cases were piled high between decks.  The
galley was on deck, and the forecastle was placed far up in the bows,
furnished with a deal-table and berths made of piping on which lengths
of heavy canvas had been stretched.

My uncle's was the larger of the two staterooms.  It was fitted with a
washstand and a single berth; a few framed photographs hung on the
walls, a large porthole gave a view of the sea outside, and a steel
safe was built into one corner of the room.  The cabin opposite was
assigned to me--it was here that the half-caste son of von Tesmar had
breathed his last.

"You're not afraid of ghosts, eh?" my uncle asked me with a smile.
"The poor devil died in that very bunk, but he's never troubled us
since, and if he did appear, he'd be harmless enough.  Come--I want you
to know my boys; excepting the cook I shipped in 'Frisco, I've known
them all for years."

They were Kanakas--brown Polynesians of the islands, akin to the
Hawaiian people and to the Maoris of far-away New Zealand.  Ivi and
Ofai I already knew.  Fatu, the mate, was a huge silent fellow with a
smile in his quick dark eyes--a nobly proportioned giant.  The
engineer, Pahuri, was an elderly Rarotongan with a passion for fishing:
a small man, gray, wrinkled, and talkative.  He had followed the sea
since boyhood and had visited many parts of the world on whaling
vessels and on merchant ships.  His heart was kind, but he possessed a
biting tongue and his travels had made him cynical.  Then came Rairi,
the half-caste cook my uncle had found stranded in San Francisco after
a voyage before the mast.  He was a shade lighter than the others, with
a handsome, sullen face: a tall man and powerfully built, though
dwarfed in the presence of the mate.  Rairi spoke a little English,
picked up along the waterfront, and had a pleasant manner when he
wished to make himself agreeable, but at other times his features were
of a forbidding cast.  He cooked, and cooked well, in his box of a
galley, set on the forward deck above the hold.  Outside of his duties
he had little to do with the men, as if his strain of white blood
caused him to hold aloof.  Last of all came Marama the cabin boy, who
served our meals, polished brasses, and made himself useful whenever
there was an odd job on hand.  He was a brown lad of my own age, though
larger and much stronger than I, and I liked him from the moment we
met.  He was a cheerful worker, his black eyes were bright with humor
and intelligence, and he never lost his temper when a lurch of the deck
threw a potful of hot coffee over his feet.  His father, Uncle Harry
told me, was a chief on Raiatea.

"We're heading straight for Raiatea," said my uncle as we sat at dinner
that night.  "I want you to stop there while I run across to unload my
cargo at Tahiti.  It's a fine island and the chief of Faatemu is a
great friend of mine.  You can put up at his house; I'll leave young
Marama to keep you company.  He knows a bit of English--that will help
you at first.  By the way, you'll need to pick up the native as fast as
you can; the man who can't speak with them is handicapped.  It's easy
to learn; why not work at it during our passage South?  I'll help you
and so will any of the men; it always pleases them to find one of us
interested in their language.  Try memorizing a few words a day at the
start, then the simple phrases will come to you, and before you know
it, you'll be yarning with the crew.

"The quieter we keep this business the less trouble we'll have, and for
that reason I'm going to pick up my men on Raiatea.  There's a Paumotan
colony on the island--we'll have no trouble in getting all the divers
we need.  They work two in a canoe, and we'll want fifteen canoes to be
on the safe side.  They'll have to be built specially; I want you to
stay in Faatemu to see that they are ready when I return.  It's a great
place for fishing and pig-hunting--you'll have a lot of fun!"

When dinner was over we sat on deck for a time, while my uncle smoked
one of his slender black cigars.  The sails were furled, for the wind
had died away an hour after sunset.  An oily swell was running from the
west and the pulsing of the Tara's engine drove us steadily away from
land.  By the dim light of the binnacle I could see that Ofai, at the
wheel, was shivering.  Finally he called to Ivi, and the other came aft
with a thick woollen jacket on his arm.  Uncle Harry tossed the stump
of his cigar overboard; I heard it hiss for an instant as it struck the
sea.

"Come," he said; "let's turn in before we're both frozen.  My blood's
too thin for these chilly winters of yours!"

Next day we left the zone of coastwise calms and ran into the northeast
trade.  The engine was stopped and the Tara headed southward with all
sails set, running almost free.  It is a brave wind, the trade, and it
blew strong and fair, making the whitecaps dance on the dark blue
swells, and driving us southward day after day till we were within a
few degrees of the Line.  Each day, at noon, my uncle fetched his
sextant on deck to observe the sun, and I watched him afterward,
bending over the chart in his stateroom, marking off our position with
dividers and scale.  Finally, with a very sharp pencil, he made a tiny
cross, and I knew that this mark on the great blank spaces of the
mid-Pacific was where the schooner had been at twelve o'clock.

Sometimes the wind fell away at sunset and the engine chugged steadily
throughout the night; once, when the trade blew day and night without
abating, the Tara reeled off two hundred knots from noon to noon.

The weather grew warmer day by day.  Shoes, stockings, and warm
clothing were stowed away, and the men went about their work in
waistcloths, with brown chests bare.  One morning Uncle Harry called me
into the trade-room at the after end of the hold, and handed me half a
dozen _pareus_--strips of cotton print, dyed in barbaric patterns of
scarlet and white, a yard wide and two yards long.

"If I were you," he said, "I'd put away my trousers from now on--shirts
too, if you're not afraid of the sun.  My friends call me a savage, but
aboard my own schooner I dress as I please.  The natives invented the
pareu, and it's the most sensible dress for this part of the world.
It's cooler than pyjamas at night, and in the morning you have merely
to hitch a fresh one around your waist and you're dressed for the day.
Let me show you the trick of putting it on."  He wrapped the cloth
about my waist, tucked in the ends and made a tight roll at the top.
"There," he remarked with a smile, "that's quick dressing, eh?"

From that day we went barefoot and bare-chested as the sailors did, and
I was soon burned to a uniform deep ruddy brown, only a shade paler
than the native crew.

We were in the tropics now.  The ocean was of a vivid blue that I had
never seen.  Shoals of flying fish rose before the Tara's cutwater to
skim off above the waves, and sometimes the water about us was alive
with the predatory fish which rove the open sea.  One afternoon Marama
showed me how to catch my first albicore in native fashion.

We were standing by the rail, on the after deck.  Suddenly, close to
the schooner's side, a dozen great steel-blue fish flashed into the
air, leaping like porpoises.  "Albicore!" exclaimed my companion, as he
darted away toward the forecastle.  A moment later he was back,
brandishing a twelve-foot pole of heavy bamboo.  To the small end of it
he made fast a length of strong cotton line, terminating in a lure of
mother-of-pearl tinted in iridescent shades of yellow and green and
fitted with a barbless hook of brass.  The shell was cut and polished
to resemble a six-inch flying-fish, with a tuft of white horsehair
projecting on either side to represent the wings.

The albicore were still leaping and flashing alongside, now darting
ahead, now circling to follow in our wake.  Marama tossed his lure
overboard and allowed it to skitter on the waves, holding the butt of
the rod strongly with both hands.  There was a flash of blue in the
sea; the lure disappeared; the line snapped taut; the bamboo bent with
the struggles of a powerful fish.  A yell burst from my companion's
lips.  He braced himself to heave with all his strength, and a
thirty-pound albicore, vibrant and flashing in the sunlight, broke from
the water, sailed over the rail, and thudded to the deck.

"Quick!" shouted Marama.  "You try!  I kill this one--take him
forward--Seroni no like blood on deck."

My own blood was up and the hint was enough.  In an instant the lure
was overboard and I was doing my best with unskilled hands to make it
skitter as the native boy had done.  The fish had circled and were
following astern; I could see the spray of their leaping in the
schooner's wake.  Then, as I gazed into the clear water, I saw a single
monstrous albicore rushing at my hook.  His jaws gaped wide--there was
a mighty wrench; I found myself doubled over the rail, clinging to the
rod with all my strength and shouting for help.  Marama had turned to
come aft and his quick eye took in the situation at a glance.  He
bounded to the forecastle and came running along the deck, holding
aloft a long, four-pointed spear.  "_Tapea maitai!_" he shouted--"Don't
let go!"  At that moment, Seroni himself--for that was my uncle's
native name--appeared on deck.  He seized the spear from Marama's hand
and sprang to the rail.  I was beginning to learn that Uncle Harry
prided himself on excelling the natives in their own pursuits.  His arm
shot out in a swift dexterous thrust which transfixed the wallowing
fish, so heavy that we could not lift it till a noose had been thrown
over its tail.

That night, for the first time in my life, I tasted the characteristic
dish of Polynesia: raw fillets of fish, soaked in vinegar and served as
an appetizer.

The trade wind held for sixteen days, and when it died away at last we
were only four hundred miles north of the Line.  Then the Tara's sails
were furled and for three days and three nights the engine drove us
southward over a sea ruffled by light airs from the west.  I shall
never forget those equatorial nights, when all the others, saving the
steersman and myself, were asleep on deck--the steady pulsing of the
Tara's motor; the calm sea, heaving gently as a sleeper's breast; the
Southern Cross, low down among the blazing constellations.  Each day at
dawn the air cooled and freshened; presently the sky to the east began
to pale, the little clouds on the horizon grew luminous with rosy
light, and the sun appeared above the rim of the sea, a disk of
dazzling brightness, glaring like burnished brass.  The sunsets, on
evenings when masses of cloud were piled along the western sky, were
still more beautiful.  Long after the sun had sunk beyond the slope of
the world the clouds were tinted with opal and rose, and pierced by
lofty shafts of golden light.

We crossed the Line and met the southeast trade, blowing from the
far-off Chilean coast.  Then the sheets were close-hauled and the Tara
began to beat southward, pitching and bucking into the head sea.
Marama brought racks to hold the dishes on our table; we moved about
the deck in short runs, grasping at the rail or a convenient stay; and
for the first time I felt a landsman's seasick qualms.  The constant
tossing made all hands irritable, and brought on the trouble between
Pahuri and the cook.

I heard from Marama how the affair began.  Fatu and the engineer ate
their meals forward with the men, old friends and natives like
themselves, with whom there was no occasion to enforce strict
discipline.  Pahuri, the little Rarotongan engineer, was the oldest man
and the recognized story-teller of the crew.  He had seen many strange
parts of the world, and no doubt, like other story-tellers I have
known, he was quite ready to describe other places he had never seen.
No matter how often the story had been told, nor how obviously
embellished by a resourceful imagination, the men always listened
eagerly when Pahuri began his tale.  Rairi, the half-caste cook, was
the only skeptic of the lot, and his comment on the engineer's accounts
of Sydney and Wellington and Singapore, coupled with his own white
blood and pretense of superiority, caused daily friction between the
two.  There was soup on the day of the trouble, scalding-hot soup,
carried to the forecastle by Rairi's own hands, and a plate of it,
poured down the engineer's neck when the Tara gave a sudden violent
lurch, brought Pahuri raging to his feet.  Rairi was Paumotan on the
native side; to a man of his kind no epithet could have been more
offensive than the engineer's angry: "_Uri Paumotu!_--Paumotan dog!"
But the mate's presence tied his hands and he retired sullenly to the
galley, trembling with rage.  The sequel came late that night.

Pahuri had been working on his engine and he came on deck, a little
after midnight, for a breath of air.  He was leaning on the rail by the
shrouds when strong hands seized his throat and he heard a fierce
whisper in his ear:--

"Ah!--Pig of a Rarotongan!"

Pahuri was a wiry little man and he struggled frantically in the
other's grasp, for he realized at once that the cook intended to
strangle him into silence and heave him overboard.  He twisted his body
about, gripped the shrouds like a monkey, doubled up his knees and
drove both heels into Rairi's stomach.  The cook relaxed his hands for
a moment with a grunt of pain, and Pahuri managed to give a stifled
shout.  But the half-caste's fingers tightened once more, and the
engineer felt his senses leaving him.  His hands fell from the shrouds
to which he had clung, his body was lifted to the height of the rail,
and he thought numbly that the end was near.  Then, suddenly as he had
been seized, he was dropped to the deck, where he lay gasping for a
time before he realized what had occurred.

The giant mate was standing over him, gazing down with an expression of
concern.  There was a waning moon, and by its light Pahuri saw that
Fatu held the cook with one huge outstretched hand, the thumb and
fingers sunk in the half-caste's corded neck.  He held him easily as
one lifts a puppy by the scruff.

"What is this?" the mate asked mildly, in his soft deep voice.  "Has
this man tried to do you harm?"

The man at the wheel had given the alarm, and my uncle came on deck a
moment later, dressed only in a pareu, his chest and powerful shoulders
bare.  I had been sleeping, but the noises of the scuffle awakened me,
and I followed close behind.  Pahuri was able to speak when we arrived
and he told a story that left out no detail of the affair.  For a
moment, no one thought of the half-caste, struggling weakly in Fatu's
mighty grip.  Even in the moonlight, I could see that his face was
blackening--I pointed and touched my uncle's arm.

"Let him go, Fatu!" he ordered sharply.  "You'll kill the man!"

The mate had been listening intently to Pahuri's tale, and at Uncle
Harry's words he dropped Rairi with an air of surprise, as if he had
forgotten him.  The cook had fainted; we could not revive him until a
bucket of sea water had been dashed over his face.  At that he sat up
feebly, groaning as his hands went up to feel his neck.  My uncle
glanced down, his dark eyes burning with a glitter that made Rairi turn
away his face.

"Feel better now?" asked my uncle in a hard vibrant voice.  "I'm glad
of that, for I've something to say to you.  You understand English, eh?
You needn't do any talking--I know all about this affair.  You tried to
kill Pahuri--an old man half your size and your superior on board.
These boys would like to heave you into the sea; I fancy they're right,
it would be a riddance of damned poor trash.  The only difficulty is
that I need a cook.  We're going to Raiatea first, and if you value
your skin, you'll stick close aboard.  Then I'm going to Tahiti and
I'll drop you there.  If you behave yourself from now on, I'll say
nothing to the authorities; but if you try any more tricks, if any
member of the crew goes overboard accidentally at night, or if anyone
so much as falls ill before we reach Tahiti, I'll feel it my duty to
turn you over to the French, who know me well.  They guillotine their
murderers down there--it's not a pleasant way to die!  Think it over.
You can go forward now."

Rairi struggled to his feet and tottered forward with a hand on the
rail.  At that moment, moved by a boy's emotion, I felt almost sorry
for him, but as he passed me I caught a glimpse of his face in the
moonlight--dark handsome features distorted by passion.  I drew back as
if he had raised his hand to strike me, but the others had not seen
what I had seen, and I stifled the cry of warning which rose to my lips.

There was no more trouble with Rairi while he remained aboard the Tara;
he went about his duties in silence, ignored by the sailors and sitting
alone in his galley during the slack hours of the day.  But I know now
that it would have been better for us, and better for him, perhaps, in
the long run, if my uncle had given his men their way--had let them
throw the revengeful half-caste to the sharks.

On the morning after the trouble we raised our first land--the western
islands of the Marquesas.  At sunset we had seen flocks of birds flying
steadily southeast, and my uncle told me that if we followed them they
would lead us to the land.  At dawn, when I came on deck, I heard the
ringing shout of landfall from aloft, and gazing eastward, I made out
the high silhouette of Hatutu, a faint outline against the flushing
sky.  An hour later we drew abreast of Eiao, a saw-toothed ridge,
falling away gently at either end; and toward midday we raised the rock
of Motu Iti, and the long highlands of Nukuhiva, veiled in masses of
black thundercloud.  At nightfall, in the darkling east, the pinnacled
skyline of Uapou faded and disappeared.

"A beautiful group," remarked my uncle, standing by the rail.  "When I
was trading there I knew every bay from Hanavave to Tai-O-Hae.  The
larger islands have a fascination--a gloomy beauty that gets into one's
blood.  The people, though they were cannibals, were a fine savage
race, who had developed, during the course of centuries in their
isolated group, an interesting culture of their own.  But their blood
was too wild to stand contact with our civilization, and when the white
man came they died off, as the Indian and the buffalo disappeared from
our American plains.  Now the valleys where people once dwelt in
thousands are silent and deserted, the lonely burial-places of a
vanished race.  I suppose I'm a heathen, but I can see the savage's
point of view--he asked no more than to be left in peace, a favor we
white men have never been willing to grant...."

Two days afterward I had my first glimpse of the coral islands.  The
moon was bright that evening as we passed through the twelve-mile
channel separating the atolls of Rangiroa and Tikehau.  I climbed to a
perch in the shrouds and lingered there as we coasted the western end
of Rangiroa; the night-breeze blowing off the land brought to my
nostrils a faint sweet perfume, the odor of pandanus blossoms.  The
line of palms, growing on the low ring of land, stood out sharply in
the moonlight, and at times, when we passed a region of sparser
vegetation, I had glimpses of the great lagoon beyond, silvered by the
moon and stretching away to the horizon without land in sight.

It was close to midnight when the atoll dropped away astern and I
climbed down to the deck, stiff from my long vigil aloft.  I found
Uncle Harry busy over some papers at the little desk in his stateroom.
He swung about in his chair and lit a cigar as I sat down on the berth.

"Been having a look at Rangiroa, eh," he remarked.  "There's a kind of
beauty about the atolls, especially on a moonlight night.  Iriatai is
the same sort of place, though on a much smaller scale.  There's no
other group in the world like the Paumotus: eighty lagoon islands, some
of them of immense size, strung out northwest and south-east in a
cluster a thousand miles long.  Darwin believed that they were the
peaks of a submerged mountain-range, on which the coral polyps have
built, as the mountains sank little by little beneath the sea.  The
lagoons are accounted for on the ground that the polyps tend to die in
calm water, and thrive best in the froth and spray of breaking seas.
As time went on, you see, the ones on the outside would build higher
and higher, while the ones inside would die.  Then, as the island
continued gradually to sink, with the live polyps all working in the
wash of the sea along the outer run, a deepening lagoon would form
inside--and there you have your atoll.  The passes are believed to be
caused by fresh water, the heavy rainfall of these latitudes, finding
an outlet to the sea.  Running out at low tide over the lowest portion
of the reef, it kills the coral-builders and causes the slow formation
of a pass, often deep enough to allow large vessels to enter the lagoon.

"There was a day, perhaps, two thousand years ago, when the Paumotus
lay lonely and uninhabited, spread out like a vast net, a thousand
miles long and four hundred miles across, to catch the canoes of
wanderers who had missed the higher and richer islands to the west.
The Polynesians were daring seamen, but their methods of navigation
were of the most primitive sort--by the stars, the clouds, the trade
wind, and the flight of birds.  Hundreds of their great double canoes
with clumsy sails of matting must have left Samoa for the eastern
groups, and some of them, missing the Cook Islands or Tahiti, of which
they had only half-legendary accounts, fetched up along this chain of
atolls.  The Paumotan people of to-day are their descendants.  The
names of the islands still show the wonder of those ancient wanderers
at the strange sea in which they found themselves, and the joy and
relief the landfalls brought--'The Spread-out Heavens'; 'The Place of
Rejoicing'; 'The Windward Rainbow'; 'The Land of Great Beacon-Fires.'
But perhaps this doesn't interest you very much--I have a way of
preaching when I start on the subject of the islands!"  My uncle tilted
his chair and smiled at me through a cloud of smoke.

"The wind is shifting toward the north," he went on, "and with a little
luck we'll sight Raiatea before dark to-morrow night.  As I said, I'll
leave young Marama with you; you're getting on well with the language,
but you'll need an interpreter for the present.  I'll be gone a month,
at least, and when I return I'd like to be able to start at once for
Iriatai.  You'll stop with Marama's father, the chief of Faatemu Bay.
I'll be careful to explain what I want to the old man, but remember
that a native hasn't the least notion of the passage of time.  I'm
leaving this to you--if you don't keep after old Taura every day, the
canoes may not be finished for months.  I want fifteen strongly made
canoes of hibiscus wood, about twenty feet long, and complete with
outriggers, cinnet for lashings, and a pair of paddles with each.  Then
we'll need twenty-five or thirty pairs of diving-goggles, with the
glass set in wood or horn.  Some of the men will have their own, but
they're always losing them, and once his goggles are lost, a diver is
no more use.  I'll leave you the glass and the diamond to cut it with;
Marama will find you men who understand this work.  I have a store at
Faatemu; you can take the keys and advance a certain amount of goods to
the canoe-builders, but don't let them get too far ahead of you!  Old
Taura, the chief, is as good a native as I know, and he'll see that you
enjoy your stay on the island.  You'll be swimming, and spearing fish,
and hunting wild pig in the mountains--I only wish that I were stopping
over, myself!"

The north wind blew all night with sudden fierce gusts and squalls of
rain.  The day broke wild and gray, but toward noon the sun shone out,
and presently the clouds were left behind, sinking along the horizon to
the north.  At four bells land was in sight--the peaks of Huahine,
bearing a little west of south, minute irregularities on the line where
sea met sky.  It was an afternoon such as one sees rarely in the
tropics: a cloudless horizon and an atmosphere clear as the air above
our deserts at home.  An hour before sundown the Leeward Islands were
all in view, strung out in the shape of a great half-moon on the sea
ahead of us.  The tall mountain rising abruptly in the north was Bora
Bora; Tahaa and Raiatea, sheltered within the same circling
barrier-reef, lay straight before the Tara's bows; and Huahine made the
southern horn--beautiful as some land remembered from a dream.

At midnight we saw the torches of fishermen on the Raiatea reef, and
dawn found us off Faatemu Bay.  The sails were furled, Pahuri started
the engine, and we glided in through the Nao Nao passage, past the
green islet of Haaio, past Tuuroto Point, and into the deep inlet where
the thatched roofs of the village clustered beneath the palms.




IV

AT FAATEMU

I wish that I had space to tell more of the month I spent at
Faatemu--the story of all that happened in those days would fill a
thicker volume than this one.  I was young, keenly alive, and set down
among strange and kindly people in a brand-new world.  When the Tara
set sail at nightfall I felt a little lonely and forlorn, but before
another day had passed I was beginning to enjoy one of the happiest
periods of my life.  No matter how far I wander, or how remote those
dreamy island days, I shall never forget the kindness of my friends,
the brown Faatemu villagers.

We had been sighted offshore and canoes were thick about the Tara when
her anchor dropped.  Taura was the first man aboard--a stately,
gray-haired native, of a type not common nowadays.  He was barefoot,
but his suit of drill was spotless and he wore a beautifully plaited
hat.  His fat old wife Hina came behind him, her kindly face working
and her eyes full of tears; and Tetua, Marama's little sister, stood
shyly at her mother's side.  Hina made straight for her son and clung
to him for a time, sobbing gently; Tetua kissed her brother bashfully;
and finally the chief, after he had shaken hands with the rest of us,
sat down beside Marama for the silent greeting of their race.

"Come ashore with me," called my uncle, as the ship's boat went over
the side; "there's some copra here and I still have room for a bit of
deck cargo.  We must hurry if I'm going to get away to-night!"

The boat plied back and forth all morning, laden with bags of copra,
while Uncle Harry unlocked his store, showed me how to keep account of
the goods, and explained to Taura that I was to stop over and that the
canoe-building must be hurried as much as possible.  The chief promised
to have the canoes ready in a month's time.  As for divers, he believed
we could pick up all we needed on Raiatea--Paumotu men who had settled
in the Leeward group.  My bag and light blanket were brought ashore and
installed in Taura's house, and toward evening my uncle bade us
good-bye and was pulled out to the schooner.  It was dusk when she
stole out through the pass, before the gentle night-breeze which comes
down from the hills.

I lay awake long that night, in my bed in a corner of Taura's great
single room.  The others had spread a mat on the floor and set a
turned-down lamp near by.  Father, mother, and sister lay in a circle
about Marama while he recounted, in a low voice and with many gestures,
the story of his adventures in the north.  I lay staring up at the
rafters under the lofty thatch, thinking of all that had happened since
Uncle Harry had steered his boat in through the California surf; of the
von Tesmars, father and son; of Iriatai, and what the future held in
store.  The lamp flickered when the land breeze found its way through
the thin bamboo walls, causing the shadows above me to deepen and
retreat; Marama's rapid flow of words droned on monotonously; and at
last sleep closed my eyes.

Early next day, when Taura came to demand half a dozen axes for his
men, I did my first bit of trading.  Then I closed the store, and
Marama and I went with the canoe-builders to select their trees in the
valley far up among the mountains.  We followed the river up from the
bay toward Faaroa, the great central valley of the island.  A dim path,
along which we walked in single file, led through the jungle, winding
about the trunks of fallen trees, across the rushing, waist-deep
stream, high along the mountain-side, at a place where the valley
became a gorge.  I saw thickets of _fei_, the wild plantain, bearing
great bunches of its reddish fruit; jungle cock crowed shrilly among
the hills; and once a troop of wild pig, led by a gray old boar,
crashed off, grunting, through the undergrowth.  It was strange to
think that only three generations had passed since Marama's ancestors,
fierce brown warriors armed with rude ironwood clubs and spears, had
stolen along this same path on forays against neighboring clans.

The wild hibiscus seldom grows large enough to furnish a log for a
twenty-foot canoe, and it took us the best part of the day to choose
our trees.  All were close enough to be dragged to the river and
floated down to Faatemu, and while the work was going on Marama and I
went out every day with the men.  First of all, the tree was felled and
the branches chopped off smoothly, flush with the trunk.  Then a
twenty-foot length was measured along the straightest part of the tree
and the ends cut off, before the log was rolled and dragged to the
riverside.  Finally, when our fifteen logs were ready, it took a
strenuous day's work, pushing over shallow reaches and swimming through
deep pools, to float them to the beach.

Once our logs were at Faatemu, Taura was for giving a feast and resting
for a day or two.  But I urged haste, recalling my uncle's words to the
chief.  Then the logs were laid out in the shade, close to the village,
and one man set to work on each, fashioning a canoe with axe and adze.
Day after day the builder chopped, while the chips flew and the form of
the canoe emerged--the curve of sheer, the rounded bilge, the sharp
lines of bow and stern.  Sometimes a man stood off, squinting at his
handiwork with one eye closed--judging the symmetry of the slender
hull.  When the outside was roughly chopped to shape, the log was
turned over and the builder began to hollow out the inside with his
adze.  At last, when the walls of wood were of the required thickness,
the process of finishing began: a slow and laborious rubbing with hard
bits of coral, and a final smoothing with the rough skin of a
stingray's tail, tacked to a wooden block.  Then a pair of narrow
planks of hibiscus were sawn out to make the raised gunwales, six
inches high and of the same thickness as the sides of the canoe.  After
long scraping and repeated trials, these gunwales were made to fit so
perfectly that no crack of light appeared when they were set in place.
At intervals of about a foot, holes were drilled in the gunwales and
corresponding holes in the dugout-sides beneath.  The planks were
joined at stem and stern and lashed to the canoe with cinnet--strong
cording made of the braided fibre of the coconut.  Now, save for its
outrigger, the canoe was finished.

Round-bottomed and very narrow for their length, the native canoes
would capsize at once were it not for their outriggers--light slender
logs which float in the water alongside at a distance of four or five
feet, attached to the hull by a pair of transverse poles.  When Captain
Cook first sailed among the islands, the natives marveled at the great
canoe which remained upright without an outrigger--more wonderful by
far, in their eyes, than the white man's cannon, or muskets, or axes of
steel.  "_Aué!_" they exclaimed, in astonishment.  "_E vaa ama
oré!_"--a canoe without an outrigger!

We made our outriggers of light _purau_ wood, twenty feet long, five or
six inches thick, and pointed at the forward end.  The attaching poles
were of iron wood--_casuarina_ is the name of the beautiful,
pale-foliaged tree--lashed across the gunwales fore and aft, the bow
pole rigid, the rear one curved and flexible.  At Taura's suggestion, I
gave orders that all the outriggers and their fittings be assembled,
and the canoes tested in the water before they were taken apart to be
loaded aboard the Tara.  Thanks to the chief, they were ready some days
before the schooner came in sight, and our diving-goggles, made in the
evenings by the old men of the village, were finished and waiting at
the store.

To the native fisherman, these goggles are nearly as important as his
spear.  They are not unlike the goggles used by motorists at home: a
pair of glasses, set in wooden rims which fit tightly about one's eyes,
and held in place by an elastic around the head.  With such glasses,
well fitted and water-tight, one can see nearly as well in the clear
sea-water as in the air above.

I kept two pairs for Marama and myself, and we went out often, on
afternoons of leisure, to spear fish inside the reef.  Paddling to a
place where the water was from five to ten feet deep, we moored our
canoe to a coral mushroom and set out, swimming for long distances or
wading as the water shoaled.  Little by little I learned one of the
most difficult of native arts: to swim gently with my face under water,
holding the spear between my toes.  I learned to distinguish the good
fish from the bad, the wholesome from the poisonous; to recognize the
holes where the fat black _maito_ hide; to see the octopus dart into
his cranny; to transfix my quarry with a well-aimed thrust.  Sometimes
we were in the water for three hours at a stretch, but I never wearied
of admiring the strange beauty of this underwater world.  The sunlight,
filtering through the clear lagoon and reflected from the bottom in
delicate tints of blue and green, revealed shoals of fish, colored like
jewels and of fantastic shapes, gliding among the branches of the coral
forest.  In deeper water a gleam of vivid blue showed where the
tridacna--the giant clam--lay in his hole with jaws agape, and I
learned to swim down with a bar of steel and pry him from the rock.

Sometimes, on moonless nights, we took torches and went out spearing on
the reef.  The Raiatea barrier-reef, about a mile offshore, is no more
than a low dyke of coral, half awash and breaking the landward run of
the swell.  By night, when the torches flicker and flare, and mighty
combers, bursting on the outer edge, come foaming waist-deep across the
jagged rock, the reef is an eerie place, not without dangers of its
own.  Under cover of darkness, strange monsters have been known to
crawl up from the depths on the seaward side--the huge decapods on
which the sperm whale feeds, and nameless creatures of which the
natives speak with whispered dread.  There were tales of fishermen who
had paddled out at nightfall, never to return....  Nothing would have
tempted me to fish on the reef alone at night, though when several of
us went out together, armed with machetes and heavy spears, there was a
wild charm about the sport.

We walked abreast in a line that reached from lagoon to sea, each man
bearing in his left hand a torch of dry bamboo.  At times, a cry from
the seaward man caused us to brace ourselves for the big sea he had
seen rearing in the torchlight.  Then with a roar and a crash the wave
would break, sending a wall of white water across the barrier.
Sometimes a shark came thrashing across with the wave, to be speared
before he could reach the deep water of the lagoon.  Sometimes a series
of shouts went up as a great silver cavally swept by us so fast that
man after man missed his thrust.  When the wave receded there were
spiny crayfish to be caught in the pools, and enormous pink-spotted
crabs to be held down with a spear-shaft till one could take a safe
grip, out of reach of the menacing claws.

One day, when the sun was bright and the current in the pass was slack,
Marama showed me a pleasanter and lazier kind of fishing.  He had
caught a great quantity of hermit crabs the night before, and at
daybreak I found him on the beach, picking up the pebbles used for
sinkers and tossing them into the bottom of the canoe.  He had brought
a line fitted with strong hooks on wire leaders, and his water glass--a
small wooden box, open at the top and with a bottom made of a pane of
clear glass.  We paddled to the passage and anchored the canoe on one
side, where she could swing out over the wall of coral, shelving almost
vertically into deep blue water.  Then Marama began to crack the shells
of his crabs, smash the claws and bodies between two stones, and toss
this ground bait over the side of the canoe.  I took the glass and
watched the fragments of crab-meat eddying down beside the seamed and
crannied wall.  The water was so clear that every detail of the scene
was visible: the strange fish drifting along the face of the cliff; the
mouths of the caverns from which larger fish looked out; the sandy
bottom beneath us, scoured clean by the current of the pass.  At first,
only a shoal of small fry gathered to gobble up the bait, but suddenly
they scattered in terror as a pair of parrot fish, bright blue and a
yard long, with horny beaks instead of mouths, moved leisurely from
their hiding-place.  There was so little wind that my companion had
seen them without his glass.  He baited his hook with the soft body of
a hermit crab, tied a pebble to his line with the curious hitch that
allows the sinker to be released by a jerk, and dropped hook and stone
over the side.  I watched the pebble rush down toward the bottom; saw
it halt below the drifting bait; saw the line jerk and the sinker drop
off and disappear; watched the baited hook rise slowly to the level of
the parrot fish, that were beginning to feed in their deliberate way.

Now Marama's bait was eddying among the other morsels of crab, and I
almost shouted as I saw it disappear in the beak of the larger of the
big blue fish.  The native boy struck sharply and began to haul in his
line, cutting the water in crisp zigzags this way and that.  A final
heave brought the twenty-pound fish tumbling into the canoe, a blow of
a short club ended its struggles, and I examined it at leisure while
Marama baited his hook once more.  It was the first that I had seen--a
strange and beautiful creature, covered with scales larger than a
fifty-cent piece, scales of a vivid iridescent blue with a green spot
at the base of each.  A nip of its horny beak would have severed a
man's finger clean.  Later that day when I ate my share of it,
steaming-hot from the oven, I understood why the parrot fish was prized
so highly.

When Taura's family assembled for a meal, all of their cooked food came
from the native oven, under the shed behind the house.  Their method of
cooking seemed to me--and still seems, when I think of those dinners at
Faatemu--the finest in the world, preserving as it does all the juices
and flavor of fish or fowl or meat.  The native cook's equipment
consists of a heap of waterworn pebbles, picked up along the beach, a
pile of large green leaves, and a supply of firewood.  Fish and chicken
and pork are cut into pieces of convenient size and made into little
leaf-wrapped packages.  Yams, sweet potatoes, plantains, and bananas
are selected for cooking and laid out beside the packages of meat.
Then a shallow hole is scraped out in the earth--perhaps a foot deep,
and two feet across--and a hot fire is built inside.  When the fire is
blazing well, the pebbles are heaped on the wood and left till they are
heated almost to a glow.  At this stage the hole is raked out clean,
the food put in and covered with hot pebbles, and the whole overlaid
with a thick layer of leaves and earth.  An hour later the oven may be
opened, the baked vegetables peeled, and the packages of fish and meat
removed from their clean leafy wrappings.

As time went on, it seemed to me that my friend Marama possessed more
useful accomplishments than any lad of his age at home.  The fishing
excursions in which I was always eager to join were in reality his
work, for we supplied more than half of the household's food.  My
friend could read and write, but otherwise he had no education in our
sense of the word.  He knew nothing of history, algebra, or geometry,
but his mind was a storehouse of complex fishing-lore, picked up
unconsciously since babyhood and enabling him to provide himself and
his family with food.  And when you come to think of it, that is one of
the purposes of all education.

The habits of the fish in the South Pacific are regulated by the moon,
and Marama knew what kinds were to be found on any night of the native
lunar month.  On nights of bright moonlight we cast a white fly for the
small rockfish which frequent patches of live coral; on dark nights we
gathered the mollusks abounding in the lagoon.  During the week of the
new moon's first appearance, we went out at dawn to fish for tunny in
the pass.  Sometimes Tetua, the twelve-year-old sister of Marama, took
me with her to spear prawns in the Faatemu River.  Carrying torches and
armed with small barbless spears, we slipped and clambered over the wet
rocks, scanning the pools for the little fresh-water lobsters which
soon filled our pail.  Sometimes I took a paddle in one of the long
narrow bonito-canoes and went with the men on trips that took us far
offshore, following the birds above the leaping schools.  I grew hard
and browned by the sun, and the native language came to me surprisingly.

Once on a Saturday, when my uncle's work was done, Taura took us to the
mountains to hunt for pig.  The chief's two lean dogs ranged ahead, and
far up in the Faaroa Valley they started a bristling gray boar, fierce,
old, and fleet of foot.  He led us a long chase over the rough
stream-bed and through dense thickets of tree-fern and hibiscus.  In
the end we heard a fierce uproar of snarls and yelps and grunting, and
knew that he had turned at bay.  Taura was too old to run as we did,
and by this time the chief was a good half-mile behind.  We had no
weapons, and when I saw the angry brute, foam dripping from his jaws as
he faced the dogs with his back to a great tree-trunk, I wondered what
we were to do, now that we had come up with him.  But Marama did not
share my hesitation.

"Take care!" he warned me--unnecessarily, I thought.  "He is a bad pig!
If he runs at you, jump into a tree!"

He took a clasp knife from the tuck of his pareu, cut a limb of
hibiscus, and peeled off a length of the tough bark--the strongest of
natural cord.  Then he shouted encouragingly to the dogs, and while
their attack diverted the boar's attention, he stole quickly around the
sheltering tree-trunk.  I saw his brown hands shoot out to seize the
boar's hind legs, and the next moment--grunting and struggling
ferociously--the old brute was thrown heavily upon his back.  I rushed
to lend a hand and our combined strength was enough to hold him while
we tied his legs with strips of bark.  Taura found us lying exhausted
beside our captive, while the dogs lay in the cool stream, with heaving
flanks and tongues lolling in the water.

That evening, when Marama had recounted the details of our hunt, his
mother told us one of her tales of heathen days--the story of how the
first pigs were given by the ancient gods to mankind.  Many of her
words I understood; at times her son whispered a translation in rapid
broken English.  We were lying on a wide mat, spread under the palms
close to the beach.  A new moon was setting behind the point and the
evening was so calm that only the faintest of murmurs came from the
reef.

There was a time--so the story ran--many years ago, when there were no
pigs on any of these islands.  In those days men ate only fish, and
sometimes, in seasons of famine, the flesh of rats.  The clans of the
different valleys were constantly at war, for there was no one
government over the island--no family of Raiatean chiefs.  Men lost
heart for the planting when villages were destroyed and crops burned on
every hand, and many of the people left their lands to live in hidden
caves among the hills.

In this bay of Faatemu lived a feeble old man, blind with age and
weeping, for his wife and all but one of his children had been
slaughtered in the wars.  He was called Vatea, and the name of his
young son, who cared for him, was Tamatoa.  They lived in a rude
thatch-shelter the boy had built.  It was a time of famine; a war-party
from Tahaa had burned the village, and there were no plantations of
yams or sweet potatoes.  The men of Tahaa, as was their custom, had
chopped down all the coconut palms, and Tamatoa feared to go after
plantains.  By day the father and son kept to their hidden shelter, and
each night the boy came cautiously to the seaside, to catch what fish
he could.  Since he dared not use a torch, that was not much; on many
occasions his patience was rewarded by no more than one small fish.
Then he would make for himself a poor dish of scraped banana-stalks,
not fit to keep the life in a man, and after preparing his single fish,
he would carry the food to where blind old Vatea awaited him.  "I have
caught only two small fish," he told the old man at these times; "one
for you, and one for me.  Now let us eat!"  And while the hungry father
devoured his fish, the son would make a great noise of smacking his own
lips over the wretched scrapings of banana stalk.

Each day the fish were smaller and more difficult to catch, and finally
the old man was starving, though Tamatoa gave him all the real food
that he could find.  As happens at such times, Vatea grew suspicious of
his son, thinking that the boy was taking advantage of his blindness to
save the best morsels for himself.  One day, when the son brought a
small raw fish and his own dish of grated banana-stalk, the old man
spoke.  'Fetch me a calabash of cool water from the stream,' he said;
and when the boy was gone, he felt his way across to where his son's
food lay in a wooden bowl.  Then his tears fell, and his heart was
heavy with remorse.

That night, as they lay side by side on their mats, old Vatea spoke to
his son.  "Listen carefully to my words," he said, "and forget nothing
that I say.  To-morrow I shall die; when I am dead, bury me by the
great rosewood tree yonder in the valley.  Then, every morning, you
shall go to my grave at the hour when the sun first strikes the ground.
Watch closely; take what you find and use it wisely--it will make you a
powerful man."

Next morning old Vatea died, and his son, who was a dutiful lad, did as
the father had instructed.  For two days, when the first rays of
sunlight touched his father's grave he was watching by the rosewood
tree, and on the third morning his eyes saw a strange thing.  The earth
cracked and heaved, and he heard a new sound, the sound of grunting, as
a pair of pigs came up out of the dust--the first pigs that any man had
seen.  Marveling greatly, Tamatoa took them home and cared for them,
and only a day or two later, peace was made among the clans, and a
bountiful run of fish entered the lagoon.

Litters of young pigs were born as time went on, and the fame of
Tamatoa went abroad among the islands--to Huahine, to Bora Bora, and
even to distant Maupiti.  Then the high priest of Oro, at the Opoa
temple, was seized with a frenzy, and through his lips the chiefs
learned that Tamatoa, the favored of the gods, was to be made ruler of
the island.  Thus Tamatoa became king, and the race of swine was given
to furnish food for men.


As she finished the story, Marama's mother heaved herself to her feet
and led the way to Taura's steep-roofed house.  The moon had set, and
as I followed through the warm darkness, I thought drowsily of my uncle
and wondered when the Tara would return.  I might have slept less
soundly if I had known that she was then within twenty miles, and that
in the morning she would anchor in Faatemu Bay.




V

IRIATAI

I was awakened at daybreak by a noise of shoutings and running out of
the house, my eyes still heavy with sleep, I saw the Tara standing in
through the Nao Nao Pass.  I called to Marama.  We launched our canoe
and paddled out as the schooner rounded to and dropped anchor with a
prolonged rattle of chain.  My uncle was standing at the wheel--a tall
bronzed figure in a scarlet waist-cloth; he called out a jovial
greeting as we paddled alongside.  Ivi and Ofai were busy with the
whaleboat; Fatu waved an enormous hand at us; I saw Pahuri standing by
the rail, smiling his cynical and wrinkled smile.

"Come aboard, boys," my uncle shouted.  "Eh, Charlie, the islands agree
with you, I see!  You're brown as a native and an inch broader than
when I saw you last!  Hello, Marama!  _Mai ai oe_?  How's the work
coming on?  All the canoes ready?"

It seemed like returning home, to breakfast once more in the Tara's
saloon.  Uncle Harry was in high spirits at the prospect of an early
start.  Everything had been arranged in Tahiti; the Tara's cargo had
been unloaded, and a fresh cargo--all our supplies for the
diving-season on Iriatai--taken aboard.

"An odd thing happened," remarked my uncle as we sat down.  "I lost a
lot of papers from my desk.  Remember the letter I translated to you at
home--the one about Iriatai, from the old native woman to her son?
Well, that was among them; it's of no use to anyone, of course, now
that we have the lagoon tied up.  A piece of spite-work, I think.
Rairi, that precious cook of ours, boarded the schooner one day while I
was ashore--said he'd forgotten a bundle of his things.

"I wish you'd been with me," he went on, "you'd have had a look at a
famous schooner and the most picturesque scoundrel in the South Seas.
Ever hear of Thursday Island Schmidt?  Oh yes, I remember--I mentioned
him that night at the ranch.  Well, this was my first glimpse of him,
and I'll own that I was interested.  A week ago he brought his little
schooner into Papeete with a load of shell from the Gambier Islands.
She's as pretty as her reputation is black, and the way he handled her
was a treat to watch.  She's flying the tricolor now; he transferred
her to French registry in Noumea, last year.  They know less than the
British about her past!  She's dodged Russian gunboats when Schmidt was
seal-poaching in the foggy North Pacific; she's kidnapped wild
bush-niggers, out in the Solomons and New Hebrides; she's posed as an
Australian revenue-boat to hold up the Malay pearlers in Torres
Straits, where her skipper got his name.  I saw Schmidt in the club
that afternoon--he's a big German, with a full beard and a pair of cold
blue eyes.  They say he's a cashiered naval officer--a great talker at
any rate, and speaks English like a professor.

"Papeete's a gossipy place!  After Schmidt had left the club, I heard
some queer yarns.  There's a rumor that he has a prisoner aboard the
Cholita--someone who's never allowed ashore and whom visitors are never
allowed to see!  The traders have nothing to think about but the price
of copra, and other men's affairs!

"One night on the water-front I saw Schmidt walking with a man I
thought was Rairi, but the native turned away before I was close enough
to make sure, and old Thursday Island gave me a long stare as I passed
under a street lamp.  By Jove!  It set me to thinking, you know!
Suppose Rairi has the letter--he may be cooking up some deviltry with
the master of the Cholita!  I'll be nervous as an old woman till I get
that shell safely stowed away!  But that's nonsense--we're living in
the twentieth century, and even if Rairi knows more than is good for
him, Thursday Island wouldn't dare try any of his old tricks nowadays.

"Come," concluded Uncle Harry, who had been talking as I breakfasted,
"we must be getting ashore.  Fatu can bring the canoes out and stow
them away while we have a yarn with the chief.  I hope he has found me
some divers."

Taura had sent word to the small Paumotan settlements scattered around
the island, and for a week past the divers had been drifting in to
Faatemu, traveling by cutter or sailing-canoe with their women, their
children, and their household goods.  My uncle went to their camp to
select his men, and soon the bay was a lively place, echoing with
laughter and shouts as the laden canoes plied between the schooner and
the beach.  The Tara, once smart as a yacht, took on the aspect of a
floating menagerie: pigs grunted disconsolately on deck; dogs barked;
hens clucked; roosters crowed.  A swarm of Paumotans lay about,
smoking, chattering in high-pitched voices, playing accordions.  The
decks were littered with their mats and bedding, on which small brown
babies lay asleep, unconscious of the uproar of departure.

Late in the afternoon Marama and I made our parting gifts to his family
and paddled out to where the Tara lay, her engine going and her anchor
up.  We clambered over the rail; old Taura stood in the canoe, waving
his hat while the schooner got under way and glided out toward the
pass.  Months were to pass before we saw the gray-haired chief again.

My uncle laid his course due east, to pass between the great atoll of
Fakarava and Faaite, the smaller island to the south.  The fair weather
held while the Tara threaded her way through the strange Sea of
Atolls--the dangerous archipelago, dreaded by mariners since the
Pacific was first explored.  We passed the southern end of Fakarava, a
lagoon like an inland sea, surrounded by a narrow ring of palms, passed
Katiu and Tuanake, turned south to skirt the treacherous reefs of
Makenio, were swept eastward by the current racing between Nihiru and
Marutea, and breathed freely once more as we turned north, past Reka
Reka, the Island of Good Hope.  Sometimes a low smudge of palms lay
along the horizon; sometimes, with no land in sight, the Tara battled
with the fierce uncharted currents of this maze of reefs; and there
were days when a green glimmer in the sky told of the presence of some
huge lagoon, hidden from our eyes by the curving slope of the world.
In the open sea to the east of Reka Reka, the bad weather began.

The wind veered to the northwest--the storm wind the natives call the
_toerau_.  Black clouds closed above the Tara like a canopy; for two
days and two nights she made heavy weather through squalls of wind and
rain.  My uncle spent much of his time at the rail, binoculars raised
to scan the empty horizon east of us.

"We must be close to Iriatai," he said to me on the morning of the last
day, "but in these shifting currents, and without a chance for a shot
at the sun, it's hard to say just where we are!  Risky business, this
knocking about at night--if we don't raise the land to-day, I'm going
to heave to."

I had been gazing idly at the clouds drifting overhead, and had noticed
several flocks of sea birds, passing high above us, all heading
southward.  As my uncle spoke, another flock appeared in the north.  He
saw them, too, and shouted a command to alter the schooner's course.

"That's the third lot of birds I've seen this morning," he remarked;
"there's a chance that they are coming from Iriatai.  We'll beat up to
the north a bit, and have a look."

An hour later I heard a long-drawn cry from the crosstrees, and soon
from the deck I made out the familiar atoll-landfall--a level dark line
of palm-tops, low on the northern horizon.  It was Iriatai.

The island differs from most of the atolls in that the pass is on the
weather side.  The lagoon is nearly circular, ten miles long and about
eight across, and the surrounding land is composed of three long
curving islands, separated by short stretches of reef over which the
sea washes no more than knee-deep on a calm day.  A dense growth of
young palms--planted by my uncle--covered the islands, and just inside
the pass, where von Tesmar's settlement had stood before the hurricane,
I saw the loftier tops of the trees planted by Turia, the dead Paumotan
woman.  From a perch high up in the shrouds, gazing with the glasses
toward the far end of the lagoon, I could make out the tall old palms
of the islet where the woman and her child had fetched up in that
long-ago storm.  We were at the end of our voyage: somewhere between
the islet and the reef lay the patch of gold-lipped shell planted by
the strange Austrian wanderer!

That night we anchored the Tara off the village of my uncle's laborers,
natives established on the island to plant and to make copra as the
trees began to bear.  Next morning, with a dozen fresh helpers
gossiping on deck and a man at the masthead to give us warning of
shoals, the Tara sailed the length of the lagoon and found a berth
close to the high islet at the farther end.  Our divers made their camp
on that ten-acre dot of land, shaded by old palms which had survived
the hurricane.

While the divers floated their canoes ashore and set to work to lash on
the outriggers, the other men launched the boats to transfer the
schooner's cargo to the beach.  The women and children went ashore at
once, stacked their belongings in individual heaps, and busied
themselves with plaiting the palm-fronds with which their houses would
be thatched.

The younger women and some of the boys swarmed up the trees like
monkeys, machete in hand, and soon the green fronds were crashing to
the ground on every side.  Their older companions chopped off the heavy
butts and split each rib down the middle, making a pair of tough strips
of fibrous wood, fringed along one side with the narrow leaves of the
coconut.  Squatting on their heels, while their fingers worked with
marvelous rapidity and skill, the women braided these leaves together
to form strips of coarse green matting, a foot wide and eight feet
long.  As each piece was finished it was stacked on the growing family
pile.  By nightfall the last of the canoes was assembled and they were
hauled up in a line on the beach.  The men were now ready for their
task of housebuilding.  In two days our village on the islet was
complete.

They began by clearing the chosen site, a couple of acres in extent.
There was a dense growth of wild hibiscus under the coconut palms, and
as they chopped this away with axe and bush-knife, they took care to
save the long straight poles which would be of use.  Then each man
selected the place for his house and set to work by himself.  With the
help of his wife and children he dug four holes and set the
corner-posts, forked at the top to receive the long poles corresponding
to plates.  Midway between the corner-posts at each end of the house, a
much taller post was set, to support the ridgepole.  Then plates and
ridgepole were laid on their forked supports and lashed in place with
strips of tough hibiscus-bark.  Next, the rafters were made fast at a
steep pitch, laid at intervals of about a foot, and a similar light
framework was lashed to the gable ends.  At this stage the house was
ready to be thatched.

Now the entire family went to the far end of the islet to cut armfuls
of bark for tying on their thatch, and when a supply of this natural
cord was on hand, they set up light temporary scaffoldings of poles and
took their places,--the woman outside, the man inside the roof,--to lay
the thatch of plaited fronds.  Working from the eaves toward the
ridgepole, the strips were laid on like shingles, each one overlapping
by four or five inches the one beneath, with the split midrib tied
firmly to each rafter that it crossed.  After the roof, the gable ends
were thatched; a doorway was framed on the leeward side, and a rustic
siding of hibiscus wands, placed vertically as close together as they
would go, was set up from ground to plates.  Then the family gathered
the snowy coral gravel on the beach and spread it several inches deep
to make a floor.  The house was finished--cool, airy, and weatherproof,
beautifully adapted to an environment where lumber and corrugated iron
were out of place.

But lumber and iron were necessary for our water supply, and while the
natives were busy with their housebuilding, we set to work to build a
long low shed, with a gutter along the lower edge of the roof, from
which tin piping would conduct the rain water to a series of large
connected tanks.  The drinking-nuts would never suffice for such a
gathering, and fresh water was the one important thing the islet
lacked.  We relied on the rains to furnish our supply, and the shed was
to serve as a store, and as a warehouse for our shells when that had
been cleaned and sacked.

The building was finished on a Saturday, and that night the men went
out in their canoes to fish.  They were all Christians and they kept
the Sabbath more religiously than most of us at home.  The missionaries
who had converted them were of the strict old Calvinist school, which
taught that it was sinful to fish, or plant, or to do any kind of work
on the day of rest.  My uncle respected the divers' beliefs, but he had
communicated his own restless energy to the members of the Tara's crew,
and on that Sunday, while the Paumotans dozed in the shade of their new
houses, we took the whaleboat on an excursion to explore the
diving-grounds.  When we returned at sunset the others shook their
heads--in their eyes we had reaped the reward of sacrilege, for our
boating-party had come near to ending tragically.

The lagoon was calm that morning, calm as an inland lake, its surface
ruffled at intervals by faint catspaws from the north.  Looking back
toward the pass, there was no land in sight--the blue water met the sky
in an unbroken line.  Ahead of us, at the northern end of the atoll,
the seabeach was little more than a mile away, and the thunder of the
breakers was borne to our ears, now loud, now soft, on flaws of air.
My uncle stood in the stern and I sat beside him; Fatu was in the bow,
Ivi and Ofai at the oars.  Once or twice Fatu motioned my uncle to
change his course, to avoid the coral mushrooms rising to within a few
inches of the surface, but in general the depth of the lagoon varied
from six to twenty fathoms.  Gazing down through the blue translucent
water, I could see the strange forms of growing coral far beneath us;
and sometimes, as the bottom turned sandy and the water shoaled, the
lagoon shaded to purest emerald green.  Clad only in a scarlet pareu,
with his bronzed back and shoulders bare, Uncle Harry was leaning over
the side, gazing intently at the bottom through a water glass.  He had
given the word to go slowly, and the men were resting on their oars.

"This is the place," he said; "we'll anchor here and let Ofai go down
for a look."

While Fatu was paying out the anchor line, I took the glass and leaned
over to see what I could make out.  The water was about twelve fathoms
deep, and far down beneath the whaleboat's keel I could distinguish the
purple coral on the floor of the lagoon.  Ofai, the Rangiroa boy, was
preparing himself to dive.  He coiled a long cotton line in the bottom
of the boat, and made fast to one end of it a thirty-pound bulb of
lead, like an enormous sinker.  Then he adjusted his goggles and went
over the side.  While he lay in the water, drawing a series of deep
breaths, Fatu passed him the weight.  He allowed it to sink a yard
beneath him, seized the rope between the toes of one foot, and took a
grip, high up on the line, with his left hand.

"_A haere_!" ordered Fatu--"Go ahead!"

The diver filled his lungs with air, grinned at us like some
goggle-eyed creature of the sea, and let go the gunwale.  Coil after
coil of line flew over the side, and a train of bubbles rose to the
surface, hissing faintly.  When the line ceased to run out, Fatu pulled
in the slack till it stood taut from the bottom, and made it fast to a
cleat.  Gazing downward through the water glass, I found that I could
see Ofai dimly, in the twilight of the depths.  He was swimming close
to the bottom, with strange slow motions of his arms and legs; at times
he stopped as if examining something, and finally--after what seemed a
longer time than any man could hold his breath--I saw him approach the
rope, pull himself upright, and heave strongly with one hand.  He
seemed to shoot upward faster than he had gone down; an instant later
his head broke water and he was expelling his breath with the eerie
whistling sound I was to know so well.  Then he shouted--the long-drawn
yodeling cry which announces a lucky dive.

"Never have I seen shell of such a size!" he exclaimed, as he handed up
a great coral-encrusted oyster and came clambering over the side.  "It
grows everywhere--the bottom was covered as far as my eyes could see!"

My uncle was opening the oyster with the blade of his clasp knife.  It
was a rough, roundish thing, uncouth to the eye, and a full eight
inches across.  He cut the muscle, felt skillfully but vainly for
pearls under the fringe, tossed the soft body overboard, and handed the
shells--still attached at the hinge--to me.  Craning their necks to
see, the natives exclaimed with wonder.  When closed, the oyster might
have been mistaken for an ugly lump of coral, picked up at random on
the floor of the lagoon; when open, it displayed the changing
opalescent shades of mother-of-pearl, fringed with a band of gold.

"Get up the anchor," ordered Uncle Harry; "we'll try again, a hundred
yards farther on."

"There would be a sensation on Tahiti," he went on, turning to me, "if
you showed the traders that shell!  It's worth twenty dollars a ton
more than the black-lipped variety, and the books say that it produces
a great many more pearls.  We'll do a bit of prospecting to-day, mark
the best places, and let the men begin diving in the morning."

We wandered on for several hours, examining the bottom at each halt and
marking the more likely spots with a small buoy, moored to the coral
with a few fathoms of line.  By mid-afternoon, our work seemed
finished--we had found more shell than our men could bring up in all
the months ahead of us.  Our final halt was close to the reef, and
there, in about ten fathoms of water, Ofai went overboard for the last
time that day.

The coral was light-colored at this place and I could see every motion
of the diver beneath us.  Suddenly, when he had been about a minute
under water, I saw him crouch and disappear in a crevice of the rock,
and an instant later a long moving shadow passed beneath the boat.

"_E mao_!" exclaimed Fatu.  "A shark!"  My uncle sprang to the side.

I leaned over with the rest, watching with acute suspense to see if the
shark would move away.  No--he had seen Ofai and was turning back
toward the deep crevice in which the diver had taken refuge.  Then the
shark rose toward us and we saw him clearly--longer than our boat,
livid-brown and hideous.  An exclamation of horror went up from the
men.  There seemed nothing we could do.  Thirty seconds passed; Ofai
had been under water a minute and a half.  My uncle had reached the
limit of his endurance.  He spoke to Fatu sharply: "Your goggles!  That
knife!  The other weight!"

The shark had approached the surface again, and as he turned to go
down, before any of us could utter a cry of protest Uncle Harry went
over the side, plunging downward with all the impetus of the heavy
leaden bulb.  It was an act of the most reckless courage; for in spite
of the stories one reads, men do not attack the great sharks of the
South Pacific in their own element.

Half sickened with suspense, I watched what followed: a drama played
out in the limpid water beneath our boat.  Grasping in his right hand a
keen broad-bladed knife, my uncle shot down so fast that half-way to
the bottom he overtook his monstrous antagonist.  The shark was still
intent upon Ofai; I saw him start and turn with a sweep of his tail as
the man's body struck him and the thrust of a powerful arm sent the
knife deep into his side.  A pink cloud of blood gushed from the wound,
and at that moment I saw Ofai emerge from his hiding-place, seize the
rope, and bound toward the surface of the lagoon.  The diver's lungs
must have been nearly bursting, and he mounted the rope with desperate
speed.  Now he was close to my uncle.  The shark had circled, turning
on his side with a livid gleam of his under parts, and was coming
straight at the native.  The monster reared--again I saw Uncle Harry
raise his arm, saw the long knife sink home and the water reddened by a
cloud of blood.  The respite had been enough for Ofai; his head broke
water with a gasp, and before a hand could be raised to help him he had
seized the gunwale and was over the side of the boat.

My uncle was in desperate straits.  He had been under water nearly a
minute and was still eighteen or twenty feet beneath the surface.  Fatu
and Ivi were brave men and devoted to him, but it would have been
insanity to think of going to his rescue now.  I heard Fatu's voice,
unreal and far-off, shouting to the men to move to the other side of
the boat; I felt the boat list, and saw, out of the corner of my eye,
the gigantic figure of the mate standing on the seat beside me, bent
almost double as he watched the scene below.

Uncle Harry had dropped the weight at the first attack, and now, still
grasping his knife, he made for the rope and seized it with his left
hand.  The shark had darted away as he felt the steel for the second
time, but now he was returning straight for the antagonist he seemed to
recognize at last.  Moving with horrid deliberation, he reared almost
vertically beneath the swimmer, and opened his great jaws.  My uncle
stopped himself with his left hand on the rope, gathered his body
together, and drove the knife into the broad rounded snout beneath
him--the shark's most vulnerable point.  For a moment the monster lay
stunned and motionless, and in that moment Uncle Harry nearly reached
the surface of the lagoon.  Fatu was bent double, his hands already in
the water.  Then the shark seemed to regain his senses and came rushing
upward grimly.  I saw the muscles of the mate's arms standing out as
though cast in bronze, I saw the swimmer's goggled face within a yard
of the surface, and the great fish charging with open jaws, fearfully
close behind.  Then the whaleboat lurched as Fatu plunged his arms deep
into the water, seized my uncle and swung him up and inboard with a
single mighty heave.

[Illustration: _The shark reared almost vertically beneath the swimmer
and opened his great jaws._]

The shark came crashing against the side of the boat--a blow that
nearly stove in the planking and started a dozen seams.

A minute passed before my uncle sat up and lifted the goggles from his
eyes.  "Get the oars out," he gasped, "and pull for the shallow water
yonder.  Bale, you two, and look lively--that fellow means mischief!"

The shark was at the surface now, swimming in swift zigzags like a
hound at fault.  While Ofai and I baled and the others began to row, I
glanced over my shoulder and saw the tall dorsal fin heading straight
for us, so swiftly that the water rippled away on either side.

"Pull hard--he's after us!" shouted my uncle, standing in the stern
with a twelve foot oar in his hand.

We were making for the shallows over a large coral mushroom, a hundred
yards away, and the men were rowing at top speed, for they realized
that our light cranky boat gave little protection against such an
enemy.  The shark drew rapidly abreast of us and as his head ranged
alongside Uncle Harry raised the oar and thrust down with all his
strength.  The blow was a glancing one, and before he recovered his
weapon the three-inch shaft of tough wood was between a pair of
formidable jaws.  My uncle's eyebrows went up as he raised what was
left of the oar, sheared off as a child bites through a stick of candy.
Next moment Ivi cried out, as the monster seized his sweep and wrenched
it from his hands.  I saw it float to the surface with a splintered
blade--felt our boat shaken violently as the shark took the keel in his
teeth.  Then the bow grated on coral, and we leaped out in the shallows
to pull the boat into the safety of a foot of water.

After a time the ominous fin tacked away toward the reef and
disappeared.  We were not anxious for another encounter and allowed our
enemy plenty of time to go.  The men were talking excitedly in
high-pitched voices, when my uncle lit one of his long cigars and
turned to me.

"What a brute!" he remarked.  "I thought he had me that last time!  By
Jove!  When Fatu took hold of me I could fairly feel those teeth
sinking into my legs!  Well, our work is cut out for us--there'll be no
diving till that fellow is dead.  The men are saying that in all
probability there are no other dangerous sharks in the lagoon.  Do you
remember the letter I read you that evening at home?  This is the same
shark, without a doubt,--he may have been here for a hundred years.
He's of a rare kind, by good luck; so rare that I know only his Latin
name: _Carcharodon_.  They are relics of prehistoric times and seem to
be nearly extinct to-day, though a few of them still linger in the warm
waters close to the Line.  Remember the big fossil teeth, from Florida,
on the mantel at the ranch?  They came from one of this fellow's
ancestors who grew to be ninety feet long and swarmed in the Tertiary
seas."

"But won't he die?" I asked.  "I saw you stab him three times."

My uncle laughed.  "No more than you will," he replied.  "A shark of
that size takes a lot of killing.  But he's going to die to-morrow, if
we have to sit up all night hammering out a lance and a harpoon.  Our
fish-spears would only tickle his ribs.  Come, he seems to have given
us up--let's be getting back to the Tara."




VI

  THE END OF THE SHARK AND
  THE BEGINNING OF THE DIVING

That Sunday night, while the crew of the Tara told to their friends the
story of Ofai's rescue, my uncle and I labored with forge and anvil and
grindstone under the shed of corrugated iron.  From the schooner's
trade-room we took a couple of the whale-spades used throughout the
islands as agricultural tools, and removed the wooden hafts from their
sockets.  While I pumped the bellows, Uncle Harry heated one of these
in the forge and hammered it into the shape of a harpoon, welding on a
piece of steel to make the socket into which the hinged barb would fit.
Then, gripping a morsel of steel in the tongs, he forged out the barb,
punched a hole through it, and riveted it in place, so that it folded
into its socket when the harpoon was thrown and opened to prevent the
iron's withdrawal from the wound.  When the harpoon was finished to his
satisfaction, I turned the grindstone while he ground it to a
razor-edge.  After that he heated the other spade and forged out a
lance for killing: a slender, double-edged blade, two inches wide and
eighteen long--a murderous weapon in skilled hands.  We fixed the lance
on a twelve-foot pole of hibiscus, and whittled out a short stout shaft
for the harpoon, tapered to fit loosely in the socket.  Then my uncle
fetched from the storeroom a coil of heavy cotton line.  Passing one
end of it through a screw eye halfway up the shaft of the harpoon he
lashed it firmly to the small of the iron.  It was long past midnight.

"We won't get much sleep," he remarked, as we paddled out to the
schooner in a canoe.  "We must kill that shark to-morrow--to-day,
rather--without fail!  The natives are superstitious as children; they
used to worship sharks, you know, before the missionaries came, and if
any ghost-talk starts, we may have to go back for another lot of men.
I'll wake you at five o'clock."

I dreamed strange dreams that night, for my mind was feverish with the
excitement of the day.  I was diving, and like Ofai, I had taken refuge
in the coral while a great shark nosed at me from above.  But the
crevice was too narrow for his head, and I crouched there with bursting
lungs, praying that the monster would leave me to reach the air before
I drowned.  At last I could stand it no longer; I sprang out from my
retreat--past the shark gazing at me with fierce green eyes, upward
toward the surface, so far off that I gave myself up for lost.  The
water weighed on me like lead; I seemed to sink instead of rising; I
saw the monster approaching, grimly and deliberately.  Then he seized
my shoulder in his jaws.  I felt the sharp teeth tear the flesh and
crunch the bone--and I awoke with a strangled shout.

The stateroom was lit by the first gray light of dawn, and my uncle's
hand was on my shoulder as he shook me awake.

"Time for coffee," he said, smiling at my bewildered face.  "The men
have killed a pig for bait, and they're getting the surfboat ready.
We'll be off in half an hour."

We left before sunrise, in the broad heavy boat used for landing cargo
from the schooner.  I sat aft with Fatu, who held the steering-sweep;
Ivi and Ofai pulled, and my uncle stood forward in the bows.  The
morning was calm, and as we reached the line of buoys we kept a close
lookout for the shark, but no fin cut the water and no long shadow
passed beneath the boat.  Finally, at the place where we had sighted
our enemy the day before, we cut open the carcass of the pig, tied it
to a buoy, and pulled off a little way to watch.

An hour passed; the sun rose, and the lagoon began to shimmer in the
heat.  I heard the booming of the breakers where the ring of land was
broken north of us and saw the smoke rising vertically from the ovens
at our island camp.  The natives were half dozing, but my uncle had not
relaxed his watch.

"There he is!" he exclaimed suddenly.  "Quick--pull over there--don't
make a noise with your oars!"

I glanced up as he spoke and saw the dead pig rise and disappear in a
circle of ripples.  Then the head and forelegs came to the surface
again--the carcass of our pig had been bitten in two.

"Row faster," my uncle whispered in the native tongue.  "Make haste, or
he will eat the pig and go."

Our boat glided toward the feeding monster.  Without turning his head,
Uncle Harry motioned to the men to cease their rowing, and it was then
I caught sight of the huge brownish body of the shark, rising to finish
what was left.  My uncle brandished the harpoon above his head--hurled
it with all the strength of his arm.  The water swirled and coil after
coil of line flew out through the chock.  We were fast.

As he felt the iron, the shark turned with a mighty sweep of his tail
and rushed off swiftly to the south.  Fatu swung the boat around to
follow, and before half the line had streaked overboard we were
gathering way.  Then my uncle got his hands on the line, paying it out
more gradually until our full weight was on the fish; the oars came in
and we foamed along at a faster gait, perhaps, than the clumsy surfboat
had ever known.  The shark seemed tireless--we passed the islet, where
the people stood on the beach, waving in answer to our shouts, and sped
on toward the southern end of the lagoon.  We were following a deep
channel in the coral, which turned westward halfway to the pass and
approached the long island that formed the atoll's western side.  At
the end of an hour I could see the village of the copra-makers and the
distant pass, a gap in the low ring of wooded land.  The channel had
brought us close to the inner beach and our pace was slowing
appreciably.  My uncle was beginning to haul up, when all at once the
fish turned at right angles toward the submarine cliff of coral, close
at hand.  The line went slack; the boat drifted quietly for a few
yards, and came to a halt.  My uncle turned his head.

"Look," he said, "he's gone into that hole yonder!  See the mouth of it
a couple of fathoms down?  This must be his den."

Holding the line with one hand, he took up the lance and ordered the
rowers to back water--to keep a steady galling strain on the fish.
"The iron is tickling him," he remarked when five minutes had passed.
"I can feel him twitch.  Look lively now!  He'll be out in a
moment--Ah!  Here he comes!"

Far in beneath the coral the cave must have broadened, for the shark
had turned to face the entrance of his lair.  He came out with a rush,
maddened by the pain of his wound, open-mouthed and at bay.  Before
Ofai could pull in his oar the monster had wrenched it from his hands
and turned to sink his teeth in the cutwater of the boat.  But my uncle
was ready with the lance.  Again and again his arm rose and thrust
downward, and at each stroke the keen blade bit deep.  The water
reddened; the jaws relaxed their hold; the tail ceased its lashing and
lay quiet.  The huge carcass turned belly-upward and sank in the clear
blue channel beneath us.

Uncle Harry laid down the lance and came aft to light a cigar.  "That's
a good day's work," he said.  "No diving with that fellow about!  He's
sinking now; we'll have the boys cut the line and make the end fast to
the coral.  To-morrow he'll float high--I'll send a couple of men to
cut out the jaws.  They'll make you a fine souvenir of Iriatai."

There was rejoicing when we arrived at camp, for the native regards a
large shark with a peculiar, superstitious dread.  There had been much
talk among the divers since the night before, but now their fears were
at an end and they busied themselves with preparations for the ensuing
day.

That night, when dinner was over and we sat talking on the Tara's deck,
my uncle explained to me the terms of the agreement under which his
divers worked.  "Ordinarily," he said, "when the Government opens the
lagoons the men are free to keep everything they bring up: the shell
and the pearls are theirs to do with as they please.  The traders keep
track of all the better men and do their best to get them as deeply as
possible in debt before the season begins.  You can imagine what
happens when credit is offered to simple fellows like these Paumotans:
they run up bills for all sorts of useless trash--guitars; silk dresses
and high-heeled shoes for their women; cheap perfume at five or six
dollars a bottle; every kind of fancy white-man's food in tins.  They
load up with this sort of stuff till they are over their heads in debt.
By the time he begins to dive, each native is safe in the clutches of
some trading-house--Chinese, more often than not--and every pearl and
every pound of shell must be sold to the creditor at the creditor's
price.

"It is different here on Iriatai, for the men know that I have a year's
monopoly of the lagoon.  But there is more shell, and it lies in
shallower water than in the lagoons which have been worked for a
generation, so the divers are glad to accept my terms.  Ever since I
came to the islands I have tried to deal honestly with the people, for
I have a theory that the savage appreciates a square deal as well as a
civilized man.  It has paid me, too.  As you know, I am furnishing the
canoes and advancing a reasonable amount of food and goods.  The men
have agreed, on their side, to work every day the weather permits and
to let me make the first offer on their catch.  Half of the shell goes
to me; all of the pearls and the other half of the shell will be
theirs.  At the end of the season I'll make each man an offer on his
shell--cleaned, sacked, and loaded aboard the Tara.  As for the pearls,
they will be brought out every night and offered for sale to me.  Those
I do not care to buy, or for which the owners think they can get a
higher price in Tahiti, will be sold in the open market when we go
North.  But I'll get all the really fine ones--I can pay good prices
and still double my money in every case!"

In the morning I had my first sight of pearl-diving as it is practised
among the atolls of the Paumotus.

The men we had brought with us from Raiatea, reënforced by a few
volunteers from the copra-makers of Iriatai, made up fifteen crews of
two men each.  I say men, but one of the best of the lot was an elderly
brown woman, and there was not a man who could dive deeper than old
Maruia, or bring up more shell in a day.

Each canoe was equipped with its paddles, an anchor at the end of
thirty fathoms of line, a five-gallon kerosene-tin, a stout knife, and
two coils of light rope--one attached to the diving-weight, the other
to a large openwork basket of bamboo.  The two members of the crew
shared equally in the catch, though almost without exception one man
did all the diving while his partner remained at the surface, raising
and lowering the basket, cleaning the shell roughly, opening the
oysters and inspecting them for pearls.

As they worked no more than five hours a day, we did not leave camp
till the sun was well up, illuminating the bottom of the lagoon.  I
went out with a pair of middle-aged Paumotans whose acquaintance I had
made during the passage from Raiatea.  It was about half a mile from
the islet to the patch of shell on which work was to begin.  Uncle
Harry had gone out ahead of us in the whaleboat and as the little fleet
of canoes drew near, he pointed out to the paddlers the two acres of
lagoon in which they were to work.  The bow-man in our canoe dropped
anchor in about seventy feet of water, and began to prepare himself to
dive.

First of all, he stripped off the cotton shirt he had been wearing and
hitched the pareu tight about his waist.  Then he polished his water
goggles, adjusted them carefully over his eyes, and thrust his right
hand into a heavy working-glove.  A pile of coral lumps, picked up on
the beach the night before, lay in the bottom of the canoe; the
stern-man placed a couple of these in the basket and lowered it into
the lagoon till it came to rest on the bottom.  Then the diver went
over the side and lay in the water with a hand on the gunwale of the
canoe, while his partner coiled the diving-line and lowered the leaden
weight till it hung a few feet beneath the surface.  The man in the
water gripped the line with his left hand and the toes of his left
foot; he took two or three long breaths before he jerked his head
upward in a sudden gesture that meant: "Let go!"  Coil after coil of
line went leaping overboard, as the diver sank like a stone, leaving a
trail of bubbles in his wake.  When the lead touched bottom the
stern-man hauled it up at once, coiling the line in readiness for the
next dive.

A minute passed--a minute and a quarter--a minute and a half.  The
canoe lurched to a sudden strain on the taut basket-line.  I looked
over the side.  Far down in the green water I could see the shadowy
figure of the diver, mounting the rope with leisurely movements of his
arms.  He came to the surface, exhaling the breath from his lungs with
the strange shrill whistle I had heard before.  Then, raising the
goggles from his eyes, he gave the exultant whoop of the diver who has
brought up a rich haul--a cry that was beginning to ring out on all
sides, where the canoes lay at anchor.  He lay resting alongside while
his companion pulled up the basket, loaded with six or seven great
gold-lipped oysters; and craned his neck to watch as the other opened
the shells with a twist of his knife at the hinge, felt for pearls
under the soft mantle, and tossed the body of each mollusk into the
open kerosene-tin.  My companions seemed excited.

"_Aué_!" exclaimed the diver.  "There is no other island like this!  It
is as Seroni told us--the bottom is covered with shell, and the water
is not overdeep: twelve fathoms, by the knots on my line.  Last year,
at Hikueru, I worked at twenty till my head ached all through the
night.  And this shell--the size, the weight, the color of the
lip--think of what it must be worth a ton!  No man in all these islands
has ever seen its like!  I would still dive if there were fifty sharks
instead of the one Seroni killed yesterday.  But watch carefully, and
if a shark comes, move the basket up and down a little so that I may be
warned.  Now pass me the weight, for I am ready to go down again."

At the end of three hours the diver clambered stiffly into the canoe;
even in this water, only a few degrees below the temperature of one's
blood, a man grows chilled and must come out to rest and warm himself
in the sun.  He had averaged a minute and a half to two minutes under
water, and five minutes' rest at the surface between dives, and I
noticed that he sent up five or six oysters each time he went down.  We
had brought along a bottle of water and a package of cold food done up
in leaves.  When lunch was over and the diver lay basking in the sun, I
asked him how he could stay under water so long, and how a man could
stand the pressure of the depths.  At home in California I had excelled
my friends by bringing up sand from the bottom at thirty feet, and my
ears had ached for an hour afterward.  These natives thought nothing of
working at seventy feet, and from what they said, I knew that one
hundred and twenty feet was not considered an extraordinary depth.

"It is not difficult," the diver remarked, smiling at my efforts to
question him in his own tongue.  "If he would take the trouble, the
white man could learn as well as we.  But one must know how.  You say
that at six fathoms your head ached and your lungs were bursting.  That
was because you tired yourself by swimming down instead of letting a
weight pull you to the bottom.  And perhaps you held all of your breath
until you rose--that is wrong.  First of all, you must learn never to
tire yourself beneath the water, and not to fill your lungs too full
before you start.  When your time is half up, you must begin to let the
air out of your lungs, little by little,--a few bubbles now and
then,--so that, as you reach the top, there will be scarcely any air
left in you.  If your ears ache, swallow; or hold your nose and
blow--this will clear the little passages between your nose and ears,
and stop the pain.  That is all, except that in deep water you must
never look up, nor bend your body backward.  As for the sharks, there
is little danger--not one in a hundred will do you harm.  When that one
comes, you will know him by the way he swims, and if there is sand or
mud on the bottom, you can escape by throwing it up to cloud the water
while you pull yourself quickly up the basket-rope.  Otherwise you can
only take refuge in a crevice of the coral, hoping that the shark will
leave you before your lungs go flat.  Conger eels are more to be
feared; you must watch sharply as you pass the holes where they lie
hidden.  The big eel's jaws are like the jaws of a dog!  If a conger
seizes wrist or ankle, it is useless to struggle--ten strong men could
not drag one from his hole.  Three times, when I was young and
careless, I have felt the teeth of the eel; see--my ankles bear the
scars to this day.  But I remembered what the old men had told me and
lay quietly without struggling, till the conger relaxed his jaws to
dart forward for a better hold.  Each time I tore my ankle free and
reached the surface with only the loss of a little blood.  But we must
get to work--the others are beginning to dive."

The canoes returned to camp in mid-afternoon.  The women were waiting
to begin their task of cleaning shell, and there were exclamations of
wonder as the day's catch was brought ashore.  While the men went off
to rest, their wives and daughters sat gossiping in little groups,
hammering, chipping, and washing the mother-of-pearl.  Half of the
catch of each canoe had been set aside as my uncle's share, and some of
his own people--Ivi, Ofai, and a few men and women from the settlement
on Iriatai--set to work to clean it in a space reserved for them.  I
saw a number of women along the beach, filling the tins from the canoes
with sea water, mashing the soft meat between their fingers, and
pouring off the mess little by little, as they searched for any pearls
that might have been overlooked.  My uncle was delighted with the first
day's work.

"It is going better than I had hoped," he said, as we sat in his
stateroom that evening.  "They brought in about two tons of shell
to-day, and the quality is superb--nothing like it has ever been seen
in this part of the Pacific.  Your canoe had no luck, but the others
netted four handsome pearls and a number of small ones for the day.
That alone proves that there must be something in von Tesmar's theory.
I've seen thousands of black-lipped oysters opened without a pearl.
Old Maruia found a beauty to-day, with her usual luck.  I gave her a
thousand dollars for it, and any jeweler in Paris would jump at a
chance to offer twice as much.  You are smiling, eh, to think of that
funny old woman having a thousand dollars, all at once?  Why, in the
eyes of her people Maruia is a millionaire!  Twenty years of diving
have made her the owner of a fine plantation, and one of the prettiest
villas on Tahiti.  Ah--I almost forgot to show you our first pearls."

He leaned over to twirl the knob of the safe, swung open the door, and
took from the shelf a small tobacco-tin, which he opened and handed to
me.  It was lined with cotton and there, lying side by side like tiny
eggs in a nest, were four pearls, pale, lustrous, and without a flaw.
Three of them were like peas in size and the other was larger than the
three together,--I had never seen a pearl of such size and
beauty,--shimmering with a soft opalescence in its bed.  My uncle took
it in his hand, turning it to admire the perfection of its shape.

"You won't see a pearl like this five times in a season," he remarked.
"There are many larger ones of greater value, but there is nearly
always something wrong with them--a flattened spot, a flaw on the
surface, a dullness in orient.  Though not of great size, this is a
really perfect pearl.  If I had a mate for it I could ask my own price
for the pair!

"I wish now that I had brought a few more men," he went on, "but I
think we can make out by shutting down the copra-making and putting
everyone at work.  I am going to put Fatu and Ofai to diving, with a
couple of stern-men from the village; they say we can find trees to
build two or three more canoes.  The others will have to work at
cleaning shell, and from now on I'm counting on you and Marama to feed
us.  Tins are all right in an emergency, but it would be absurd to make
ourselves ill on canned stuff in a place swarming with excellent fish.
There are eight of us on board, counting the new cook, and I want you
to supply us with fish.  You can begin to-morrow--I'll give you the
small canoe and whatever gear you need."




VII

SOUTH SEA FISHERMEN

I have always loved fishing since I was old enough to hold a rod and
cast out into the surf at home, and now, as I look back on the months
spent with my uncle in the South Seas, I know that my happiest memories
of Iriatai are of the long hours in a canoe with Marama in the lagoon
or on the open sea beyond the reef.  It was fishing in unspoiled
waters--fishing to dream about in after years.  Our primitive tackle,
much of which was fashioned by our own hands, did not detract from the
charm of the sport, and the background--the land, the sea, the sky--was
hauntingly and strangely beautiful.

Some of those nights were unforgettable--calm nights when we lay off
the reef from sunset till dawn began to brighten in the east.  In all
that solitude our lantern was the only light, the only sign of man.
Iriatai lay like a shadow on the sea, stretching off vaguely to the
south, and the heavens above us were powdered with stars of a
brilliance I had never known before.  The native boy was a better
astronomer than I; he had names for many of the constellations, and
strange old stories to tell of them.  Castor and Pollux, the Twins,
sinking on the horizon to the west, he called _Pipiri-Ma_--a boy and a
girl, he told me, who had lived in very ancient times and who, because
of their unkind parents, had fled away to the skies.  The Southern
Cross was _Tatauro_; the Scorpion was a great fishhook, flung into the
sky after a god had used it to pull up the islands of the Paumotus; the
Pleiades, visible in the east an hour before the dawn, he called
_Matarii_--the Little Eyes, and told me a pretty story of their origin.

Much of our fishing was done at night, when we fished offshore for the
great bottom-feeders of the South Pacific: the deep-water albicore, the
castor-oil fish, and the _manga_--a long black creature shaped like an
enormous pickerel, with goggle-eyes and rows of formidable teeth.

Our custom was to start an hour before sunset and paddle north to a
break between the two long islands, where we dragged our canoe through
the ankle-deep wash of the barrier, waited our moment, and slipped out
through the surf.  The outer face of the reef shelved off steeply, and
our line, which reached the bottom at two hundred fathoms, would have
reached the reef as well.  Marama usually took the stern, paddling
gently, while I did the fishing forward.  Our bait was fish, saved from
the previous day's catch and salted.  I chose a morsel large as a man's
fist and tied it with strong thread to the point of one of the great
wooden hooks used in this deep-sea fishing: a fork of ironwood, six
inches from tip to tip, and barbed with a cod-hook lashed on to point
down and inward.  It was useless, I learned, to fish with an ordinary
hook for these dwellers on the bottom.  Their habit of swimming down
vertically, to seize the bait from above, made necessary the use of our
barbaric implement.  When my hook was baited, I fastened a large pebble
to the line, with a special hitch that Marama had taught me.  Coil
after coil ran out as the pebble sank, until at last I felt the
slackening which told me that it had touched bottom.  Hauling up a yard
or two, I gave the jerk which freed my coral sinker, and settled myself
to wait.  Sometimes an hour passed without a strike, and then, when I
was least prepared for it, some monster of a hundred pounds seized my
hook with a rush that carried my arm elbow-deep into the black water
alongside.  Hand over hand I brought him slowly to the surface till he
lay wallowing beside the canoe, eyes bulging with the release from the
pressure of his deep-sea haunts.  A blow with the blunt side of our
whale-spade ended his struggles, and taking hold by the gills, we
tilted the canoe and slid the quivering body inboard.

Sometimes, as my fish neared the surface, I felt a sudden slackening of
the line--one of the small sharks that prowled along the reef at night
had helped himself, leaving only a bodiless and gaping head upon the
hook.  Once or twice, when the marauder rose close to our canoe, Marama
sprang to his feet in a rage--keen-bladed spade in hand--and ended the
shark's life with a cutting blow forward of the eyes.  At those times
we seized our paddles and made off swiftly for new fishing-grounds; for
the scene of the ensuing feast was no place for our light canoe.

Fishing by night meant sleeping through the warm hours of the day.
Sometimes, when we wearied of this, the order was reversed and we went
out at daybreak to pursue the schools of bonito far offshore.  The
lures for bonito are made of mother-of-pearl, and the fisherman must
carry six or seven different shades to suit the varying conditions of
sea and sky.  Marama selected half a dozen large pearl-shells, shading
from light to dark, and marked with a pencil on the thickest part of
each the outline of a small fish.  When this was done we took our shell
to the shop my uncle had set up ashore, and set to work with vise and
hacksaw to cut out the lures.  Then came the grinding and polishing,
and finally a barbless hook of brass was attached to each, the line
made fast to the forward end, and a tuft of coconut fibre bound on
across the rear.  We tied the lines to a stiff pole of bamboo, ten or
twelve feet long and equipped with a ring at the butt end, in which to
hook the lures when not in use.

Bonito-fishing was hard work and not unspiced with danger,--the risk of
being swamped or blown offshore in a squall,--but it had a fascination
of its own.  We used to paddle half a mile out to sea and wait in the
morning calm, on the lookout for birds.  At sunrise the boobies and
noddy terns left their roosting-places by hundreds and cruised about
over the sea, singly or in little bands, in search of breakfast.  We
watched them flying this way and that until at last, perhaps a mile
away, a dozen noddies began to circle and dive.  Then it was time to
seize our paddles and strain our backs to make for the birds at top
speed.  Keener eyes than ours had been on the watch, and before a
minute had passed hungry sea-birds were flapping from all directions
toward the school of fish.  The small fish, pursued by both bonito and
birds, were far from remaining stationary; sometimes they sounded and
disappeared altogether; sometimes, when our backs were aching with an
hour's chase, they swept off to windward at a pace that made us lay
down our paddles in despair.  There were days when we went home worn
out and empty-handed, but there were other days when luck was with us
and we drove the canoe into the midst of ravenous schools.  Then, while
the man forward paddled with all his might, the stern-man faced about,
long rod in hand and lure skittering over the waves behind us.  A hasty
trial proved which shade of mother-of-pearl was most attractive, and
next moment fish after fish came tumbling aboard--fat, steel-blue, and
vibrant.  There were days when we hooked and landed thirty fish in half
as many minutes, before we sank down exhausted to rest, leaving the
birds to circle off above the foaming sea.

Sometimes, when we could get bait, we enjoyed a sport even more
thrilling than bonito-fishing--trolling along the reef at daybreak for
tunny, barracuda, and the giant cavally of the Pacific.  A silvery
species of mullet proved the best lure for the fish that lay in wait in
the caverns along the outer edge of the reef, and many of our
afternoons were spent in mullet-catching.  First of all we prepared a
mass of paste, made of flour or arrowroot, and with this for bait, we
paddled to a place in the lagoon where the water shoaled to three or
four feet over a coral bottom.  Our tackle was a stick of light wood
eighteen inches long, attached by a trace to twenty feet of line, and
fitted with a small hook on a leader at either end.  One of us baited
the hooks with bits of paste and stood ready to cast the stick, while
the other threw pieces of our dough ahead of the motionless canoe.
Presently the water would dimple and swirl with rising mullet--it was
time to cast.  The float lay quietly for a moment--bobbed--jerked
disappeared under water, with a pair of fat mullet, as often as not,
fast on the hooks.  We kept them alive in an openwork basket floating
alongside, and towed our catch back to the Tara, in readiness for the
morning's fishing.

An hour before sunrise we dragged our canoe over the reef, shot out
through the breakers, and paddled to our favorite trolling-grounds--a
shoal which ran out a quarter of a mile to sea.  Our hook for this kind
of fishing was equipped with a leader of piano-wire, which was passed
lengthwise through the body of a mullet and pulled through the mouth
until the shank of the hook was out of sight.  Then the lips were
lashed to the wire with a bit of thread and the leader made fast to the
end of a hundred yards of heavy line.  Arranged in this way and towed
at a good pace behind the canoe, the mullet flashed and zigzagged
through the water in imitation of a living fish--an imitation so
perfect that many a wary old dweller on the reef was deceived and came
rushing upward to his death.

The handling of these powerful fish required all our skill, and Marama,
being more experienced than I, usually took the stern on
trolling-expeditions.  Making the line fast to the outrigger-pole which
crossed the canoe behind his seat, he gave the word, and we began to
paddle our hardest, following the edge of the shoal.  As the sun rose,
one could look down and see the changing colors of the coral--every
fold and crevice clearly visible ten fathoms beneath us.  There were
certain crannies and caverns where we knew the big fish lay, and as we
passed above them we increased our efforts to make speed.  In this kind
of sport there was no holding the line to feel for a bite; we were
never in doubt when a monster tunny or barracuda struck.  The canoe
quivered with the shock.  Sometimes we fought for half an hour while
the hooked fish towed us in rushes, this way and that.  One old
barracuda, I remember,--seven feet long and with the jaws of a
shark,--pulled us more than a mile before he lay exhausted at the
surface.

We seldom returned from trolling till the trade wind came up at eight
or nine o'clock, for a good catch, sufficient for two or three days,
meant rest and time for other amusements.  The weather was hot of
course, and we had no ice, but the native method of cooking--baking
over and over again, which improves the flavor with each succeeding
day--permitted fish to be kept for as long as a week.  On days of
leisure we rested, overhauled our tackle, or went in search of the
shellfish which abounded at Iriatai.

There were lobsters, crabs, and sea snails on the reef, clams and
mussels in the lagoon, and best of all,--to be found on patches of
shallow sandy bottom,--there were _varos_, creatures whose repulsive
English name is "sea centipede."  They look like the tail of a lobster,
with rows of legs along the sides and a small head, armed with a pair
of wicked nippers, said to inflict a poisoned wound.  The varo is no
beauty, but if it is broiled over a charcoal fire and eaten hot with
melted butter, I agreed with my uncle that the sea produced nothing
half so good.

One calm morning, when there was a plentiful supply of fish aboard,
Marama suggested that we try our luck at varo-fishing and showed me the
tackle he had made the afternoon before.  It consisted of half a dozen
slender sticks of wood to which rows of small fishhooks were lashed,
points out.  Each stick was provided with a few feet of line and a
light float, made fast to the upper end.  While I was examining these
curious snares, my uncle passed along the deck and stopped at sight of
us.

"Going after varos, eh?" he remarked.  "The men used to say there were
plenty of them here.  Good luck to you--we'll have a feast here tonight
if you can get some!"

The native boy threw his snares and a few pieces of smelly fish into
our canoe and we paddled to the western shore of the lagoon, where a
bottom of mud and sand ran out from shore.  He allowed the canoe to
drift over the shoal while he scanned the bottom through the calm
water, clear as glass.  Here and there I saw that the sand was pitted
with holes, the burrows of various marine creatures; and presently
Marama pointed down to one, smaller than the rest and surrounded by a
little mound of sand.  "That is the dwelling of the varo," he said, "I
can tell by its freshness and the smallness of the opening that he is
at home."

I held the canoe in place while he took up one of the snares, tied a
bit of fish to the upper end, and unwound the short line attached to
the float.  Then he tucked up his pareu and went overboard.  Taking a
long breath and working with head and shoulders submerged, he enlarged
the mouth of the burrow until its full size was exposed and inserted
the baited stick--gently, so as not to alarm the creature inside.
Varos were plentiful at this place; we set all our snares within a
radius of fifty yards and sat at leisure in the canoe, watching the
floats for the first signs of life.  We had not long to wait; Marama
pointed to one of the floats which was beginning to bob and twitch; a
few strokes of the paddle brought us alongside and he went overboard
again.

The fishhooks on the snares were lashed on in tiers of three, pointing
out and up.  The bait was tied to the upper half of the stick, so that
in order to get at it, the varo was obliged to pass the uppermost tier
of hooks.  As it tore the fish with its nippers and crammed the pieces
into its mouth, its hard back was against the wall of the burrow and
its more vulnerable under-parts in range of the barbs.  Marama put his
head under water again, seized the end of the stick and held the varo
against the side of its hole; then, with a quick pull, he sank his
hooks into the creature's under joints and held up the snare with a
triumphant shout, the captive struggling and waving its claws.  "Take
care you are not hurt," he told me as he broke off the nippers.  "They
cut like scissors and they are poisoned--the wounds will fester and
swell for weeks!"

At ten o'clock, when the breeze came up, we paddled back to the
schooner with a score of varos in the bottom of our canoe, a feast for
all hands.

As we crossed the lagoon Marama spoke to me suddenly at the end of a
long silence.  "Listen, Tehare," he said,--"Tehare" was as near as he
could come to pronouncing my name,--"let us speak together, for there
is a plan in my mind.  I dare not ask Seroni myself.  Fishing is the
work he gave me, but he is your father's brother and if you desire to
do the thing that I propose, perhaps you will speak to him.  You have
learned much about our fishing and you see how easy it is to provide
for the Tara's needs: two or three nights each week give us more fish
than we can use.  It is in my mind that on days when there is fish in
plenty we might take this canoe and go out with the others to dive.  I
can dive deeper than one need go in this lagoon, and you can pull up
the basket and open shell, since men are not accustomed to diving in
your land.  We shall get much shell, and perhaps a great pearl like the
one Maruia found.  What say you--will you ask Seroni?"




VIII

I TURN PEARL-DIVER

My chance came the same afternoon, as we were finishing lunch.  At last
Uncle Harry lit a cigar and called for coffee.  "By Jove!" he remarked
as he blew out a cloud of fragrant smoke, "those varos were wonderfully
good.  I reckon the best restaurant in San Francisco couldn't produce a
finer dish!"  The moment seemed opportune.

"We can always get plenty when the weather is calm," I said, "in fact
it only takes a third of our time to catch more fish than the Tara can
use.  We were speaking of this to-day and wondering if you wouldn't let
us go out with the divers in our spare time; Marama says he has often
been down to twelve fathoms, and offers to do the diving if I will open
shell.  I wish you could let us go--it would be fun and somehow I feel
sure that we'd be lucky.  Of course, if you'd let me, I'd like to try a
little diving myself."  My uncle looked at me with a twinkle in his
dark eyes.

"I knew you'd ask me that sooner or later," he said.  "As a matter of
fact I ought not to let you do it--I'm responsible to your father,
after all, and old Taura's a good friend of mine.  Diving is always a
dangerous business, though I don't believe there are any more bad
sharks in the lagoon.  Still, the other men do it every day, and you
two are old enough to take the same risks.  If I had youngsters of my
own, they'd have to take their chances with the rest--otherwise they'd
miss their share of good times and hard knocks, and become the helpless
sort of men and women who are no use in the world.  Yes, you may go,
and dive too, if you wish.  But, for my sake, keep your eyes open and
be as careful as you can!"

That evening, when the day's work was over and the people lay on mats
before their houses, smoking and gossiping in the brief twilight, we
went ashore.  My uncle led the way to where old Maruia lived with one
of her nephews: Teura, a pleasant and amusing boy, who paddled her
canoe to the diving-grounds and opened the shell that she brought up.
Her house was surrounded by a fence of stakes, inside which a pair of
pigs wandered, rooting up the earth.  As we opened the gate, I heard
her voice give the hospitable shout of "_Haere mai_!--Come in!"

"I have come to talk with you about Tehare, my nephew," said Uncle
Harry, when a mat had been spread and we had taken our places on it,
native-fashion.  "He and Marama have become so clever at the sea
fishing that we are glutted with fish and time hangs heavy on their
hands.  To-day they have asked me if they might go out and dive for
shell with you others; they are strong boys and well grown--it is in my
mind to let them go.  What think you of the plan?  Is Iriatai a lagoon
overdangerous for boys?"

The old woman shook her head as she replied.

"There is little danger here," she said.  "Ten fathoms would not hurt a
child, and the great shark you killed was the only evil shark in the
lagoon.  And he was not a shark, as I and all the others know!  For the
rest, we have seen neither _tonu_ nor conger eel in all the days we
have been diving, though it is well to watch closely, for a tonu is an
ill thing to meet!  But let them go--they will come to no harm; perhaps
they will find a pearl like mine, and in any case the white boy will
have strange tales to tell when he returns to his own land.  I myself
will show them where there is shell in seven fathoms of water--not so
much as where we dive, but a good place to begin.  Let them beware of
the clefts and crevices where an eel might lurk, and avoid the dark
caverns in the coral, for it is in such places that the tonu lies in
wait.  There seems little to fear in Iriatai, but one is never sure.
As for pearls, watch always for the great lone oysters crusted with
coral and misshapen with old age--_parau tahito_, we call them, and
every diver knows that they contain the finest pearls."

When the divers went out next morning Marama and I went with them, our
canoe equipped like the others with basket and weight and line.
Maruia, smoking a cigarette in the bow of her canoe while Teura
paddled, showed us the way to a patch of shell she had found in shallow
water, a quarter of a mile east of where the others were diving.  "Drop
your anchor here," she said, bending over the gunwale to examine the
bottom.  "The depth is seven fathoms and there is enough shell to keep
you busy, though not so much nor of such great size as in the deeper
water where we work.  Now I must leave--stay here, you two!"

I weighted the basket with a heavy stone and lowered it till it rested
on the bottom, while Marama tucked up his pareu, adjusted his goggles,
and fastened the glove on his right hand.  Then he went overboard, a
grin on his brown good-natured face.  I passed him the weight; at the
signal, I let go the line and watched him shoot down into the blue and
green of the depths.  After all, seven fathoms were more than forty
feet.  I pulled up the lead, coiled the line for the next dive, and
waited, watching the figure of my companion, seen dimly in the twilight
beneath the canoe, as he moved along the bottom with deliberate motions
of the arms and legs.  Once I thought I saw him place something in the
basket, and finally, when more than two minutes had elapsed, he seized
the upright line and pulled himself to the surface.  But he gave no
shout of exultation as he raised the goggles from his eyes.

"Aué!" he exclaimed, shaking his head, "it is more difficult than I had
thought!  The oysters are there, but I have not the eyes to see them,
nor the art to twist them off the rocks.  There is no need to pull up
the basket; I got only two oysters, though in all my life I have never
stayed longer beneath the water.  But I shall learn!"

All through that morning Marama dove with increasing success.  It was
well for me that he did not send up as much shell as the older divers,
for I was clumsy at opening it and so afraid of missing a pearl that I
wasted a great deal of time in useless fumbling under the fringes of
the oysters.  At mid-day I had found no pearls, but the shell Marama
had brought up was opened and neatly stacked amidships, and the soft
bodies of the oysters were thrown into our kerosene-tin for inspection
in the evening.

"I am going to dive this afternoon," I announced to Marama, as we lay
resting after lunch.

"That is well," he answered.  "I am not accustomed to being so long in
the water--my bones are chilled!  I will open the shell and you can try
your hand as I have done.  It is strange down there, and very
beautiful, with the coral colored like flowers and the great fish
passing close at hand.  At first I was a little afraid.  Do not let
yourself grow discouraged; the shell is hard to see and harder still to
wrench off until you learn the trick.  Remember that the old divers
never look upward--to gaze into the blue water overhead gives one a
horror of the depth!"

At last, with a beating heart, I made ready for my first dive.  I loved
the sun, which had burned my back and shoulders to the color of
mahogany, and I wore nothing but a pareu.  This savage garment I
hitched about my waist as I had seen the others do, before I polished
my glasses and fastened the glove tightly on my wrist.  Once in the
water, I held the lead-line with my left hand and the toes of my left
foot, adjusted the goggles to my eyes and gave the signal to let go.  I
saw Marama's answering grin--felt the water close over my head.  Then,
gripping the line tightly, I plunged down into a strange purple
twilight.

An instant later there was a gentle shock and the line slackened in my
hand.  I had reached the bottom.  My ears ached and the pressure on my
chest and stomach made my body feel as if it were being squeezed flat.
I could understand now the curiously deliberate movements of the
divers, for my limbs seemed weighted with lead--the same feeling I have
had in dreams, when to my horror I have found myself unable to avoid
the attack of some nightmare monster.  I swallowed as I had been
instructed, then held my nose and blew.  The pains in my head ceased at
once.

Frightened and ill at ease, I let go the line and saw the weight
ascending through the deep bluish purple of the sea above me, which
seemed, like the earth's atmosphere, to extend upward into infinity.
There was no sign of the surface--nothing to catch the eye in the break
between sea and air.  For a moment I was in a panic; it seemed to me
that I should never reach the air again, never feel the friendly warmth
of the sun nor see the bright sun-lit world above.  Then I saw the
bottom of the canoe, close over my head.  Fifteen or twenty seconds had
passed, and though far from feeling at home, I had gained enough
assurance to gaze with interest at the strange new world in which I
found myself.

Though not so dark as the greater depths I visited later on, there was
far less light than I had supposed.  The floor of the lagoon, here at
seven fathoms, was bathed in a sort of purplish twilight which enabled
me to see as clearly, I should say, as on an average moonlight night
ashore.  But instead of being silvery, like moonlight, the light was
purple, and tinged with changing shades of green and blue.  The bottom
was of dense reef-coral, which dies when sheltered from the breaking
sea, but a hundred fantastic varieties of still-water coral grew on the
dead madrepore, as vegetation grows on the inanimate earth, and its
forms were those of vegetation.  Close beneath me I saw little coral
plants, fragile as violets or anemones; on a level with my head were
leafless shrubs, marvelously colored and perfect in trunk and limb and
twig; yonder a giant mushroom, ten feet across and growing on a tall
thick stalk, towered above the undergrowth.  Shoals of small fish, gay
as the bird life of the tropics, drifted through the coral foliage or
darted into the shelter of the mushrooms when larger fish passed
overhead.

The floor of the lagoon was irregular, seamed by gullies and rising in
rough hillocks here and there, and my weighted basket lay at the edge
of one of these ravines.  By swimming slowly in a horizontal position I
could move from place to place without great effort, and hoping to find
at least one oyster before I was forced to rise for air, I swam along
the brink, scanning the coral sharply for the pearl oysters I knew to
be plentiful at this place.  A great silver cavally, four feet long and
with goggle-eyes as large as dollars, darted out of a gloomy cleft,
halted to gaze at me for an instant, passed within a foot of my face,
and disappeared in the shadows.  The fish gave me a start; in the
flurry I let go a good half of my breath, which rose in a string of
bubbles toward the air.  My lungs were cramped.  I had reached the
limit of endurance.

I made for the line, seized it with both hands, heaved strongly and
felt myself bounding upward like a cork.  When my head broke water and
I raised the goggles from my eyes, I saw that the native boy was
bending over me with an air of concern.

"Another moment," he said, "and I would have gone down after you.  You
were long on the bottom--I feared that you had been seized with cramps."

"It is strange down there," I answered, a little apologetically, "the
pressure--the dim light--I was so interested that I nearly forgot to
look for shell and when I did look there was none to be seen."

"It was the same with me at first," declared Marama, smiling, "but if
you look closely in the rough places, on piles of coral and along the
edges of the gullies, you will see the oysters there by hundreds.  It
is easy to mistake them for lumps of rock--coral and barnacles grow on
them as on the rock itself.  They lie open like the _pahua_ (the
tridacna clam), but that helps you little, for their fringes are not
blue and yellow like the clam's tongue."

I did not waste my strength by climbing into the canoe, but lay in the
water resting as I had seen the natives do.  When five minutes had
passed I put down my glasses and went to the bottom again, and this
time I saw two pearl-oysters.  I found them at the edge of the gulley,
when I was on the point of giving up in despair of seeing the elusive
things.  They looked for all the world like irregular lumps of coral,
projecting like hundreds of other lumps from the rocky wall, and I
would have passed without a second glance if one of them had not moved.
Though they have no eyes, in our sense of the word, all bivalves which
do not habitually lie buried in sand or mud seem to possess a subtle
sense of light.  As my body passed over the oyster, shutting off the
light, the creature was thus mysteriously warned, and instantly its
shells closed with a smooth swiftness.  Looking more closely, I
recognized the outlines of the _margaritifera_, the pearl oyster,
beneath a protective growth of parasites, and grasping it with my
gloved hand, I endeavored to wrench it from its fibrous moorings.  As I
struggled to free it from the coral, the water must have been agitated,
for another rough lump closed with the same smooth swift movement,
revealing a second great oyster.  By this time I had been under nearly
a minute, and though I tugged with all my might I was unable to wrench
the shell free before I rose.

"I have seen the oysters," I told Marama, as I lay resting in the
sunlight, "but try as I would, I could not tear one loose!"

He picked up an opened shell from the bottom of the canoe.

"Take hold thus," he instructed me, "and turn the oyster with a sudden
wrench.  It is useless to pull.  Ah--your left hand is bleeding--take
care to use the gloved hand only, for the coral cuts like a knife, and
oftentimes the wounds are poisoned."

By the third time down I had gained confidence and was beginning to
feel at home on the bottom.  Now I remembered the trick of which the
Paumotan diver had told me, and when I had been half a minute under
water I began to let the air out of my lungs.  The native had spoken
truly; each little string of bubbles brought its moment of relief and
enabled me to go about my work more calmly.

I was beginning to see the oysters now: my eyes were growing accustomed
to the dim light.  This time I managed to tear off a couple of oysters
and put them in the basket before I rose for air.  Three dives filled
the basket, and when Marama pulled it from the water with its
coral-encrusted load, I gave an imitation of the exultant native
shout--a cry which brought a grin to my companion's face.

"We are learning," he said mockingly, "but it will be time to shout
when we can fill the basket at one dive!"

That afternoon, when we joined the little fleet of canoes to paddle
home, Maruia stood up, craning her neck for a look at our catch.  "You
have done well," she remarked, a smile wrinkling her brown face, "not
badly for the first day's diving!  I have seen grown men do worse.  No
pearls?  Never mind--you will find them surely.  Beginners always have
the luck!"

From that day onward the fishing occupied less than a third of our
time, and the balance was put in on the lagoon.  We learned fast, as
boys do, and gradually worked our way into deeper water till we were
diving with the rest.  Within a few weeks we were bringing in as much
shell as the Paumotans, and my uncle was enthusiastic over our success!
He could dive with any native, and once or twice, when he had leisure,
he sent Marama out alone to fish and accompanied me to the
diving-grounds.  On those days my uncle's share of the shell went to
the native boy's account--growing into a round little sum.

As for me, the diving fascinated me more each day: the beauty and
strangeness of the underwater world; the spice of danger--small, but a
reality, nevertheless; the thought of the money I was earning; the
daily, even hourly, hope of finding a rich pearl, perhaps worth a small
fortune.  From time to time we found a few small pearls, but when at
last good fortune came to us, it came hand in hand with tragedy.

As the nearer shell-patches became worked out, the canoes moved
gradually northward, taking the cream of the shell without diving
enough to exhaust the beds at any one place.  One morning, in the
latter part of July, Marama and I anchored close beside Maruia's canoe,
on new and very promising grounds.  It was my turn to open shell.  The
Paumotan woman, not ten yards away from me, was loafing that
day--letting her nephew dive, for once.  Teura was a boy of twenty or
twenty-one, a favorite among the natives because of his skill as a
musician and his jokes.  I had grown fond of him since we had been
thrown with the divers, and often went ashore in the evening to chat
with old Maruia and listen to her nephew's songs, accompanied by wild
native airs on his accordion.

I remember that morning as if it were yesterday.  The bottom was at
about eleven fathoms, rougher than any part of the lagoon that we had
seen.  Here and there pinnacles of coral rose to within a few yards of
the surface; in the shadowy depths below, the bottom was seamed with
crannies and pitted with the mouths of caves.  The look of the place,
in fact, was by no means reassuring, but the men sent out to survey the
bottom reported that the lagoon there was fairly paved with shell.

It had become my habit to take a water glass in the canoe, for by now I
was expert at opening the shell, and I found it interesting, in leisure
moments, to watch my companion at his work.  The depth was too great to
see clearly, but I watched Marama plunge feet-first into the shadows,
and a moment later, a second string of bubbles told me that Maruia's
nephew had followed him down.  Vaguely in the depths I could see Marama
moving about, a dim moving shadow when his body passed above a patch of
sand.  Then, before half a minute had passed, the canoe lurched
suddenly and sharply--the native boy was pulling himself up the line in
desperate haste.

His head broke water.  With a heave and a spring that nearly capsized
us, he threw himself into the canoe.

"Ah, the great tonu--he nearly had me!" he panted, trembling with
excitement.  "Aué!  Teura!  Where is he?"

I snatched up the water glass, and side by side, with our heads close
together, we gazed down into the blue water.  Hearing the boy's words,
Maruia had seized her own glass.  Next moment a sudden sharp wail came
from her lips.  Then I saw the figure of her nephew, mounting his line
with great heaves of both hands--and rising deliberately beneath him a
monster hideous as a nightmare memory.  It was a huge fish, eight or
nine feet long and of enormous bulk.  Its great spiny head, four feet
across and set with a pair of eyes like saucers, terminated in jaws
larger than a shark's; its rough body was spotted and brindled in a way
that rendered it almost invisible against the coral; its pectoral fins,
frilled and spiny as the fins of a sculpin, spread out like wings on
either side.  It had the look of an incredibly old and gigantic
rock-cod--to which family, indeed, I have been told that the tonu
belongs.

We watched in terrible suspense, all three of us, Teura was nearing the
surface; in another moment he would be safe.  The tonu seemed
undecided, as if it were following the man out of curiosity rather than
pursuing him.  I began to breathe more freely.  Then when the diver was
within twenty feet of us.  the fish reared itself suddenly and came
rushing up, huge jaws agape.

In a twinkling it was beneath us, so close that the water beneath the
canoes swirled with its passage.  The next instant the monster flashed
downward and the man was gone.

The tonu halted, four or five fathoms down, and lay with gently moving
fins.  It was then I saw, to my unutterable horror, that Teura's feet
and the calves of his legs hung from the creature's twitching jaws.

Another spectator was close at hand.  "Aué!" cried old Maruia bitterly,
in a choking voice.  "Teura is gone!  But I shall kill that devil as he
has killed my boy!"

She had been baptized--she was a churchgoer and a keeper of the Sabbath
day; but now I heard her half chanting a strange invocation, in loud
and solemn tones.  "She prays to the heathen gods," muttered Marama in
an awed whisper, "to Taiao, and to Ruahatu, the old shark-god of her
people!"

I glanced up.  The woman was standing in the stern of her canoe.  She
wore her usual diving-dress, a loose gown of cotton over a pareu worn
as the men wore theirs.  The goggles were on her eyes and she had taken
up a heavy fish-spear from its place on the outrigger-poles of the
canoe.  It was a formidable weapon, a haft of tough black wood tipped
with a yard of steel: a tapering lance sharpened to a needle-point.  I
turned my head to look into the water glass.  The great fish lay
beneath us, a monstrous vision in the blue twilight below; but now the
man's legs had disappeared.

Maruia's canoe came alongside.  I heard the outrigger knock softly
against our own.  Then both canoes rocked violently, and we started at
the sound of a heavy plunging splash.

Without a word to us or an instant's hesitation, Maruia had leaped
overboard.  One hand held a leaden diving-weight and the other gripped
the spear, point downward.  The fish scarcely moved at the turmoil in
the water; the hideous lord of the lagoon was making his meal.  Our
hearts beat fast as we watched what followed, gazing through our little
pane of glass.  Swift and straight, the woman went down head-first till
she was within two yards of the tonu's back.  She let go the weight,
which plunged down out of sight among the shadows; she drew herself
together and struck--struck squarely where the head joined the
misshapen body, a foot behind the monstrous goggle eyes.  I saw the
steel strike deep--saw Maruia raise herself upright in the water to
drive the spear home with both hands on the shaft.  The fish started;
its jaws gaped wide--the sprawled and mangled body of Teura eddied down
toward the coral forty feet below.  The wounded monster turned on his
side, the shaft of the spear protruding from his spiny back, and swam
feebly and aimlessly to the surface, where the divers, now gathering
from all sides, put a quick end to his struggles.

Then I heard the eerie diver's whistle close beside our canoe and the
voice of Maruia calling to us.  "I am going home," she said.  "Lend me
a hand to put Teura in the canoe."  She had been nearly four minutes
under water and had brought up with her the body of her boy.

The natives did no more diving that day.  Anchors came up, gear was
stowed away, and one after another the canoes fell in behind old
Maruia, while the wailing of the _tangi_, the native mourning for the
dead, floated across the lagoon.  I reached for our own anchor-line,
but Marama stopped me with a gesture.

"Wait," he said seriously, "we will go back soon, but first there is
something I must tell you."

"Let us go to the Tara," I answered, "and tell Seroni what has
happened.  This place makes me shudder.  I have no more heart for
diving to-day."

The native boy looked at me solemnly.

"Like you, I am afraid," he confessed, "but I have seen what moves me
more strongly than fear.  And I know that our fears are baseless, for
my grandfather, who was the most skilled fisherman of Raiatea, has told
me many times that where one tonu lives, another is never to be found
close by.

"Watch well," he went on, "and move the basket if there is danger, for
I am going down once more.  In the cave where I first saw the tonu, are
two _parau tahito_--the old oysters of which the divers speak.  They
are covered with barnacles, very old and huge, and perhaps they hold
pearls--great pearls that will make rich men of you and me.  But that
cave is an evil place!  Teura went down with his back to me, and I saw
him reach the bottom close to the entrance of the cavern, which he did
not see.  Then I looked in, and my heart beat fast as I saw that pair
of old oysters, just inside.  I looked more closely, and there in the
shadows were the eyes of the tonu watching me, and his great jaws
opening as he made ready to rush out.  For a moment my limbs were
paralyzed!  The rest you saw."

I was becoming infected with my companion's excitement.  Ever since we
had begun to dive I had heard stories of famous pearls, taken
throughout the group in years gone by, and the pearls which fetched the
greatest sums and made immortal the names of their finders had always
come from these huge, old, and sickly-looking oysters, growing apart
from the rest.

Marama had picked up his goggles and was making ready to go over the
side, when a saying of my uncle's flashed across my mind.  "Never let
one of your men do a job you're afraid to do yourself!"  Then all at
once I knew that I should have no peace unless I acted quickly.

"Stop," I said--a little shakily, at the prospect of the task before
me.  "You have been down once.  Now it is my turn!"

All my life I have found that the more one fears a thing, the quicker
it should be done.  Without heeding Marama's protests, I snapped on my
glasses, tucked up my waistcloth, and went overboard.  Next moment I
seized the lead-line and signaled Marama to let go.

Never, before or since, have I been more afraid than on that day, as
the weight took me plunging down into a bluish gloom.  The bottom, as I
have said, was at about eleven fathoms,--close to seventy feet,--and
since the coral was of the dark-purple kind, the light was very dim.
When my weight struck the coral my heart was beating so that I nearly
choked; I lost my bearings and wasted half a minute before I found the
entrance of the tonu's cave.  Suddenly, five yards ahead of me, I
perceived the dark mouth of the cavern, like a low wide doorway,
fringed with pink coral and gently waving weeds.  As I stared into the
darkness which seemed to fill a vast chamber, I felt a prickling at the
roots of my hair--what if the tonu had a mate.

Then, dimly in the gloom, I made out the forms of the two great
oysters, their barnacled and crusted shells agape.  I moved forward to
wrench them from the rock.  With one in each hand I swam toward the
basket, glancing back fearfully as went.  There was no shout of triumph
when I reached the surface--I flung myself into the canoe and lay there
while Marama pulled up the basket.

"You got them?" he inquired eagerly, without turning his head in my
direction.

"They are In the basket," I said, "but if I had not found them, I would
not have gone down again!"

"My stomach was cold at the thought of it.  Come--let us open the shell
and leave this evil place.  I can scarce wait to see what is inside!"

"You take one," I suggested, "and I will open the other."

"Yes!" he answered, with a boy's eagerness to prolong the moment of
suspense, "I will open mine first, and when we have seen what it
contains, you can look into the other one."

He inserted his knife close to the hinge, severed the muscle connecting
the shells, and laid the great oyster open on the bottom of the canoe.
His fingers, skilled with long practice, went under the fringing mantle
where nearly all pearls are found, searching rapidly and in vain.  He
felt more carefully--uttered an exclamation of disgust.

"There is nothing," he said mournfully, "not so much as a blister
pearl!"

I took my knife and opened the oyster he had handed me.  It was very
old and diseased; the shells seemed half rotten, pierced with the holes
of borers, and the flesh of the creature inside had a sickly, greenish
look.  My forefinger went under the mantle--felt something hard and
smooth, which moved loosely at the touch.  Next moment I laid in
Marama's hand a magnificent pearl, the size of a marble, round,
flawless, and glimmering with the sheen of perfect orient.

We gazed at it, awed by our good fortune.  A man might spend years
among the atolls without laying eyes on a pearl one half so beautiful!
My fingers had gone back to the oyster to complete the habitual
inspection when Marama found his voice.

"With such a pearl," he said softly, "a man could buy a schooner like
the Tara, or an entire island for himself!  Not one of the divers has
ever seen its match, nor--"

I interrupted him with a frenzied shout, as I laid in the palm of his
hand, beside the first pearl, a second one--its twin in size, in color,
in lustre, and perfection of form.

"Marama," I said when we had grown a little calmer, "we must say
nothing of this to anyone except Seroni.  I know little of pearls, but
the value of this matched pair is too great to be made known.  The
sight of them would tempt a man to things he might regret."

Our mood of exultation was quenched by the wailing of mourners as we
passed the islet, and the sight of my uncle's sober face when he met us
at the Tara's rail.  "I'm glad you came in," he said.  "This has been a
bad day and I'm feeling anxious and depressed.  Teura--poor devil; he
was one of the best of the lot; I've known him since he was a lad at
school.  This business won't stop the diving, of course,--it's all part
of the day's work to them,--but it's a pity that such a tragedy has
come to spoil our season at Iriatai.  I've been jumpy as an old woman
since the canoes came in--a silly idea that you might have gone on
diving and that there might have been another of those damned tonus
about!"

"We want to have a talk with you, Uncle Harry," I said.  "Can we go
down to your stateroom--all three of us?"

I followed my uncle and Marama into the stateroom and closed the door
behind me.  Then I unrolled the tuck of my pareu, opened a knotted
handkerchief and laid on the table the twin pearls of the tonu's cave.
My uncle's dark brilliant eyes opened wide, his eyebrows went up, and
he whistled a soft and long-drawn note.  Without a word he took up
first one pearl and then the other, turning them in his fingers and
letting the light play over their gleaming and flawless surfaces.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed at last, "you take my breath away!  I reckon
this is the most beautiful matched pair that ever came out of the
Paumotus--by long, long odds!  In Paris, on the Rue de la Paix, the
jewelers would fight one another for a chance to bid on them!  You
can't set a price on a pair of pearls like these.  One of them by
itself would make you independent in a small way; the fact that they're
matched probably doubles the value of each."  He turned to the native
boy.  "Eh Marama," he said to him, in his own tongue; "you are a lucky
boy!  This morning's work will make you the richest man of Raiatea,
with a fine house, a cutter, and plantations enough to keep all your
relatives in plenty.  But say nothing of this, for not all men are good
at heart."

"Of course they are yours," he went on in English, "to do with as you
wish; but I advise you two to let me handle this matter for you.  They
must be sold as a pair, and I know a Jew on Tahiti who will give us the
top of the market.  He is buyer for one of the largest firms in Paris,
and in a case like this, something more than money is involved.  These
pearls will make history, you will see; I haven't a doubt they'll end
among the jewels of some European court.  Sikorsky knows me and knows
that I know the game; it will be a matter of naming our own price,
within reason, for the acquisition of such a pair of pearls would be a
tremendous feather in his cap.  Come, we must christen them, for pearls
of real importance are always named.  What do you say to calling them
the _Marama Twins_?  Marama means the moon, and their orient has the
pure, pale glimmer of moonlight.  What beautiful things!  If I were a
rich man I'd take them off your hands myself!

"See--we'll put them in cotton-wool in this tobacco-tin, and stow it
away in the safe.  The less said the better, I fancy, even among
ourselves.  Such a temptation might prove too much for almost any man!
But tell me about Teura--his aunt was too much cut up to talk."

Marama left us to go on deck while I told my uncle the story of the
morning's happenings.  He shook his head when I told of how the canoes
had gone home, and of our resolution to go down after the two old
oysters Marama had seen.  Then I spoke of my feeling that I must be the
one to dive, and how I had gone down to bring up the oysters from the
tonu's cave.

"I know what you mean," he remarked, as I concluded, "and you did the
right thing; but don't take such chances very often!  You'll have to
keep on diving for a few days, if only for the sake of public morale,
but I wish you'd slack off gradually and give it up altogether in a
week or two."




IX

THE CAVE OF THE SHARK GOD

I went on deck that night and lay alone in the warm darkness, building
castles in Spain.  Every lad has dreamed of all that he would do for
his parents when he had gone out into the world and made his fortune,
and now my dreams seemed to have come true at last.  I thought of my
mother, and the things I might do to brighten the dullness of her life;
of Marion, and how my good fortune would send her to the Eastern school
she longed for; of my father, who had dreamed for years of improving
and restocking the ranch.  The old Santa Brigida where I had been born
and where I hoped to end my days--a sudden understanding came to me, a
rush of gratitude for my father's determined clinging to our land.  I
realized as never before how I loved the valley, the brown hills, the
lonely stretch of coast.  A home to go back to--that was the best thing
in life!

Teura was to be buried in the morning, and no man on the islet slept
that night.  After the native fashion the divers were assembled at
Maruia's house, and all night long their wild and melancholy songs
floated out across the water.  The hymns of the islanders have a power
to stir one strangely: the voices of the women wailing in a minor key,
the deep, chanting refrain of the men--gradually, under the influence
of their music, my thoughts wandered, and I fell asleep.

The natives observe Sunday with a strictness unknown among more
civilized Christian races.  Saving a few unavoidable tasks like
cooking, no work of any kind is done on that day, and the man bold
enough to break the rule would make an outcast of himself.  If he went
fishing, they believe that his fishing would be accursed; if by any
chance he caught a fish, its flesh would be poisonous; and in all
probability a shark would be sent to overturn his canoe and make an end
of the impious Sabbath-breaker.  White men are a law unto themselves,
of course, but my uncle had warned me long since that it would be a
mistake to urge Marama to break the rules of his religion.  Our
Sundays, therefore, were what Sundays should be--days of rest and
change from the occupations of the week.

Marama and I often persuaded the cook to put up a cold lunch for us,
and set out in our canoe to explore the distant portions of the lagoon.
To amuse ourselves, and for easier traveling on these occasions, we had
rigged a sail--a bamboo mast, a big leg-of-mutton sail of unbleached
cotton, and a spar of tough light wood.  We selected from the Tara's
stock of lumber a long two-inch plank, and when we set out for a day's
sailing this plank was lashed to the canoe--one end to the outrigger,
the middle to the gunwales, and the other projecting up and out, six
feet on the starboard beam.  We carried a tremendous spread of sail for
so small a craft, and the long narrow canoe, with a fresh breeze astern
or on the beam, skimmed the lagoon at a speed that delighted our
hearts.  One of us managed the sheet and steered with an oar from the
whaleboat; the other took his place on the plank, changing sides when
we tacked, and crawling out on the weather beam when the wind freshened
and the canoe lay over--bounding forward to rush through the water with
a tearing sound.

On the Sunday after Teura's burial, we took our lunch and set out for
an all-day sail, and toward the middle of the afternoon the trade wind
fell away and died.  We were on the west side of the lagoon, a mile or
two north of the village of the copra-makers, built on the site of the
ancient Paumotan settlement.  It was the first time that we had passed
close to the place where the shark had met his death, and as we paddled
slowly along the coral cliffs rising almost to the surface, we watched
for the opening of the cave.

Finally, through the calm blue water, not more than ten or twelve feet
down, we saw the mouth of the cavern where the monster had taken
refuge.  The palms alongshore almost overhung the lagoon at this place.
The fringing reef which fell away in a line of submarine cliffs was
only a few yards wide, and beyond it lay the highest land on Iriatai,
the path of an ancient hurricane where the breaching seas of centuries
ago had piled great blocks and masses of coral to a height of eight or
ten yards above the sea.  Marama dropped his paddle and took up a pair
of water goggles.

"Hold the canoe here a moment," he said; "I am going overboard for a
look.  There was only one shark and I do not believe that a tonu would
live so close to the surface."

Next moment he was over the side and swimming down toward the
cave-mouth, into which I saw his body disappear.  Presently, with
leisurely strokes, he swam into sunlit water and rose to take breath,
with a hand on the gunwale of the canoe.  "Have patience a little
longer," he said with a smile, as he pulled down his goggles for the
second time.  "I am going down once more."

Again he disappeared, and again I waited idly for his reappearance.  A
minute passed; a minute and a half; two minutes.  I began to be
alarmed.  Three minutes were gone.  I knew that never before had my
friend stayed down so long.  Four minutes--I hauled up the canoe in the
shallows, snapped on my glasses and plunged down to the entrance of the
cavern.  As I peered in anxiously, I saw that there was a strange
glimmer of light where only darkness should have been.  Suddenly the
light was blotted out, and Marama emerged from the tunnel and rose with
me to the surface of the lagoon.  When we had taken breath, his hand
went up to interrupt my hasty demand for an explanation.

"Aué!" he exclaimed in an excited voice, "but that is a strange place!
The hole in the coral rises as it runs inward, and seeing light ahead I
thought that I would swim in a little way.  The light grew stronger;
all at once my head was out of water and I was breathing air.  When I
pushed up my glasses to look about me, I found that I was swimming in
the midst of a great pool, arched over with a low ceiling of rock.  At
the farther end a single ray of sunlight shines through a crack between
two wedged-in boulders, and beneath the light I saw a broad ledge,
sandy and high above the water.  On that ledge, where a hundred might
stand together, are things of the old times: a heathen god, spears,
stone axes, the whitened heads of men.  I am afraid, but I will go back
if you desire to see."

A sudden memory flashed into my mind--the scent of wood-smoke; the
long, shadowy living room at home; my uncle lying in a rawhide chair
with his feet against the stones of the fireplace; the missing brig;
the savages of Iriatai; the story of the searching-party--beyond doubt
we had stumbled on the cave where the cannibals took refuge on that day
so long ago!

"There is nothing to fear in old bones," I said.  "Lead the way, if you
are not weary, and I will follow close behind."

Marama ducked under like a rolling porpoise, to swim down the face of
the cliff with long easy strokes, and I swam after him down the cliff
and into the faintly luminous gloom.  The light grew stronger as we
advanced; twenty yards from the entrance my head came out of water and
I breathed the welcome air again.  We were swimming in a black pool
which half filled a long shadowy cavern, illuminated by a beam of
sunlight filtering in through a cranny in the rocks.  Stalactites of
fantastic shape hung from the low roof, and I saw the broad ledge of
which the native boy had spoken.  We were in the hidden refuge of the
savages, the lurking-place of the terrible carcharodon, the shark which
had come so near to making an end of my uncle during our early days on
Iriatai!

It was an eerie place.  We swam to the far end, and my heart was
beating faster than usual when my feet touched bottom and we walked
out, side by side, upon the ledge.  A glance showed me that the place
had been a heathen temple of some sort.  Under the hole which admitted
light stood a small platform of roughhewn coral blocks, a kind of
_marae_, like others to be found throughout the Polynesian islands.  On
the platform, with his misshapen back to the ray of afternoon sunlight,
squatted a hideous little god of stone, leering and monstrous, with
hands folded on his belly and with a grinning mouth.  A semicircle of
crumbling skulls lay about the idol, and leaning against the rocky wall
I saw carved war-clubs, beautifully fashioned spears, and axes of
polished stone.  Marama touched my arm.

"Let us go," he whispered.  "This is an ill place, indeed!  I have
heard the old men's tales of the days when there were still wild people
in the Paumotus; without doubt that _tiki_ is Ruahatu, to whom you
heard old Maruia pray.  These heads are the heads of men slain here in
sacrifice--their bodies were offered to _Atua Mao_, the shark god.  Let
us go!"

That night, when I was telling my uncle of the cavern, Maruia came
aboard to show him a pearl that she had found.  Her eyes gleamed as he
translated to her the story of our adventure, and she nodded her head
violently in confirmation of each fresh detail.

"Aye," she remarked at the end; "It was thus in the old days among the
Paumotan people.  On my island, Matahiva, we had such a place; my
father has told me how in his childhood the women took refuge there
when the warriors went out to meet the men of Rangiroa, raiding in
their great canoes.  And that stone god was Ruahatu, the Lord of
Sharks.  For know that the shark you killed was not a shark, nor would
you have killed him had you not been a white man!  You smile--but I am
speaking true words.  For a hundred years, two hundred, since time
beyond reckoning, perhaps, he has lived in that cave and fattened on
the bodies of men, cast to him by the priests.  Yet his own people
might swim about him fearlessly, for he knew them, and they were of his
clan.  One of my own ancestors, after his death, took on the semblance
of a shark!"


"You'll have an interesting yarn to tell at home," said my uncle, when
the woman was gone.  "I've heard of these Paumotan refuge-caves, but I
never knew a man who had laid eyes on one.  Some Sunday we'll run down
for a look.  I'd like to get those weapons for my collection in Tahiti."




X

THE CHOLITA COMES TO IRIATAI

In those days Marama and I were accounted among the skilled fishermen
of the island, and a few weeks after we explored the shark's cave, we
decided to make an expedition after a fish seldom captured in the South
Seas--the dolphin, or dorado, which the natives called _mahimahi_.  He
is a noble fish, swift, predatory, and difficult of approach, a rover
of the open sea, where his pursuit requires no small degree of
hardihood and skill.  And the dolphin's flesh is delicate above all
other fish--a feast for island kings before the white man came.
Pahuri, the Tara's wrinkled engineer, gave us the idea of
dolphin-fishing: we were listening to his yarns one night when he
chanced to speak of the mahimahi.

"Aye," he said, as he twisted a bit of tobacco in a pandanus-leaf,
"there is one fish that you have never caught!  How many men on this
island have tasted of the dolphin?  Not you--nor you?"  We shook our
heads.

"When I was a boy in the Cook Islands," he went on reminiscently, "that
fish was often in the oven at my father's house.  In those days the men
had not grown lazy and timid, clinging to the land.  For it needs a man
to bring the dolphin home: he is not to be found in a few fathoms of
water close to shore!  The mahimahi is the swiftest of all fish and the
most beautiful, with his colors of blue and green, changing like flame.
He ranges far out to sea in little bands--three or four males and as
many females together.  You will know them apart easily, for the male
will often weigh a hundred pounds, while his mate is never more than
half his size.  How can you find the dolphin?  Listen and I will tell
you--I have forgotten more of fishing-lore than these others will know
in all their lives!

"Paddle offshore a mile, two miles, three miles, and wait in the early
morning calm, when the birds fly out to feed.  When you see the
_itatae_, the small, pure white tern, watch carefully!  Remember that
the brown noddy-tern, which follows the bonito, never circles above the
mahimahi.  But if you see four or five white birds circling low and
fast above the waves, hasten to that place and make ready for the
dolphin-fishing.  As for bait, flying-fish is good, but I will tell you
a secret.  Above all other food, the mahimahi loves the lobster!  Take
with you the white meat from the tails of the lobsters, and when your
canoe is close to the birds throw this bait into the water directly
under them.  Then watch closely and you will see the dolphin dart up
from the depths like a living flame!  Let your baited hook sink slowly
and presently a fish will seize it, but you must handle him gently, for
he is very swift and strong.  If one is taken, the others will stay
about the canoe, and you will catch them all.  You are going to try?  I
would go with you if I had time--it is work from daybreak to darkness!"

That night we made torches of dried coconut-leaves, bound in long
bundles, and paddled out to the reef separating the two islands north
of camp.  There was a new moon, by good luck--the best time of the
month for lobsters and other dwellers on the barrier.  We wore
rope-soled shoes to protect our feet from the sharp spines of sea
urchins, and when we had anchored the canoe in shallow water we walked
abreast along the outer edge of the reef, brightly illuminated by our
torches.  When a comber toppled and crashed, sending a foaming rush of
water across the coral, we halted and waited till the water cleared in
the interval before the next breaker came rolling in.  Then we walked
slowly, bending to scan each weedy crevice and hole.  Sometimes a
lobster darted like a flash from his refuge and was gone; sometimes the
torchlight reflected from a pair of stalk-eyes betrayed our quarry in
time for us to press a foot down on the lobster's back, seize him
warily from behind, and toss him into the gaping sack.  In an hour we
had more than we could use.

The stars were shining and there was only the faintest glimmer of dawn,
when we dragged our canoe over the reef and shot out seaward through
the breakers.  Gradually, as we left Iriatai behind us, the eastern sky
paled, grew luminous, flushed a rosy pink.  The sea changed from black
to gray, and from gray to blue--a new day had begun.  Around the vast
circle of the horizon, saving in the west, where masses of dark cloud
towered to a great height, light scattered trade-wind clouds hung above
the line where sea met sky.

"I do not like the look of the weather," remarked Marama, glancing
westward; "there is wind in those clouds, and if they draw nearer we
must return in haste.  But the sea is calm, so let us go about our
fishing for an hour or two."

We were perhaps four miles offshore.  The palms of Iriatai lay like a
low smudge along the horizon to the south of us.  Singly and in twos
and threes, the birds had left their roosting-places ashore and were
flying this way and that over the sea, on the lookout for schools of
fish.  There were boobies and noddy terns in plenty, and a few of the
small snow-white terns on which we kept a special watch.  Suddenly, a
quarter of a mile from us, a pair of noddies began to circle and dive;
other birds came flapping hastily from all directions, and soon
hundreds of them were wheeling and plunging through the air.

"Bonito," said my companion, heading the canoe toward the school.  "Let
us make sure of not returning empty-handed!"

It was an old game to me, but one of which I never wearied.  We bent
our backs and dug our paddles into the sea.  The light canoe flew over
the swells at a pace that left a wake of foam.  I heard Marama drop his
paddle; knew that he had turned to face the stern and taken the long
bamboo pole from its place on the outrigger-supports.  "_Hoe!  Hoe!_"
he cried.  "Paddle your hardest--the school is turning, and in a moment
we shall be among them!"

Now the birds were all about us, and the sea was alive with the small
fish on which birds and bonito feed, leaping and flashing by thousands
in a frenzy of fear.  A bonito leaped with a heavy plunge, close to the
canoe--another--another; next moment an acre of sea was churned into
foam as they fell upon their prey like wolves.  I was in the bow place,
and now my efforts were redoubled, for everything depended on keeping
the canoe in rapid motion.  Marama was seated on the stern thwart,
facing the rear.  In his right hand he held the butt of the rod, braced
against the thwart.  As the sun was bright, he had selected a dark
lure,--a piece of greenish-black mother-of-pearl, fashioned in the
shape of a four-inch minnow,--and it skittered along behind us in an
extraordinary lifelike way.  Cupping his left hand, Marama leaned over
the side and began to throw water over the lure, five yards astern--a
custom believed to attract the fish.  I heard a shout--a fat bonito
came tumbling through the air and thumped into the bottom of the canoe.
Next instant the hook was free and over the side again, and the native
boy was calling: "Paddle!  Paddle!  You are letting them draw away from
us!"  For a quarter of an hour, with aching muscles and a dry throat, I
held the canoe on the outskirts of the school.  At last the pace became
too much for me, and I dropped my paddle as the rearmost birds left us
in their wake.

We sank into the bottom of the canoe and lay there panting.  Marama was
worn out, for bonito-fishing is a strenuous sport.  In fifteen minutes,
after paddling five hundred yards at racing speed, he had hooked and
swung into our canoe nearly a score of fish, averaging seven or eight
pounds each!  It was still calm, and the dugout rose and fell gently on
the swell as we lay there resting.  The bank of black clouds was moving
imperceptibly toward us, blotting out the horizon with an ominous
violet gloom.  It was time that we went home and I was about to speak
when I saw Marama was pointing eastward.

"The dolphin!" he exclaimed, as my eye caught the glint of half a dozen
small white birds circling rapidly above the sea.  "Shall we paddle out
yonder for a try, or shall we leave the mahimahi for another day?"

"Let us chance it," I suggested.  "Pahuri knows, and from what he said
there must be dolphin yonder.  It may be a long time before we see the
white birds circle again!"

We were young and far from prudent.  In spite of the approaching
squall, we headed the canoe away from land and strained at our paddles
anew.  When first sighted, the birds were not more than half a mile
distant, but they were moving slowly away from us, and twice, before we
caught up, the fish must have sounded, for the terns ceased their
feeding and flew about uncertainly till they fell to circling again.
At last the birds were diving fearlessly about the canoe--beautiful
little creatures, smaller than a pigeon, with pointed wings and dark,
incurious eyes.  Remembering Pahuri's advice, I baited my hook and
stood up in the bow to throw out morsels of lobster.  Then I swung the
line around my head and cast far out in front of the canoe.

"_Te mahimahi!_" cried Marama excitedly; and I saw a great fish,
gleaming with the colors of a fire opal, dart up from the depths, seize
a morsel of bait, and disappear.  At that instant the line tautened
with a jerk that cut the skin of my hand: I was fast to my first
dolphin.

He seemed strong as a wild horse.  Fathom after fathom of line hissed
over the gunwale and into the sea, at a speed that brought a shout to
Marama's lips.  Then the fish turned and shot up to the surface,
rushing this way and that--a streaking flame of azure in the sea.  As
the line shortened, Marama leaned over the side, long-handled gaff in
hand.  The dolphin was growing weary; still fighting, but at a slowing
pace, he passed close to the side of the canoe--and the native boy's
arm shot out.  The dugout lurched and nearly capsized as he brought the
fish alongside, the gaff deep-buried in the gleaming back.  A stroke of
the club, a dying quiver, and we seized gills and tail to drag the fish
aboard, exclaiming in excited admiration at the play of gorgeous color
on his sides.

I had forgotten the impending squall, and now, as I glanced back toward
Iriatai, I saw that there was no land in sight.  Sea and sky were
merged in a thick gloom; the air stirred uneasily; the black clouds
were almost overhead.  Marama was cutting short lengths of fishline to
make fast the loose articles in the canoe; the fish-blub, the baler,
the gaff.  He passed me a bit of line.  "Tie one end to the thwart and
the other to your paddle," he said, "and remember that if we swamp
there will be no cause for fear--there is small chance that the sharks
will find us.  Three times have I been swamped at sea, and each time we
lay in the water till the waves had calmed, and reached the land
without mishap.  Look well to the outrigger-lashings forward there--a
turn of line might make them more secure."

I doubt if any other type of craft as small and light would have
weathered what our canoe went through in the half hour that followed.
Long before the wind reached us we could hear the moaning sound of it
and see an unbroken line of white advancing across the face of the sea.
Then, after a sharp preliminary gust, the squall was on us, shrieking
and raving out of the west.

A spume of torn salt water, white and stinging like sleet, drove from
crest to crest of the seas, mingling with horizontal sheets of rain
which blinded us as we fought desperately to hold the plunging canoe
bow-on.  It was then that I began to realize the wonderful
seaworthiness of the Polynesian canoe--light, sharp, and high-sided,
balanced by its outrigger of hibiscus wood, buoyant as cork.  In riding
such a sea there were sudden fierce strains on outrigger and
outrigger-poles--strains which would have snapped the tough wood in an
instant, save for its strong and flexible cinnet-lashings.  Each time a
sea came rearing high above us the bow tossed up to meet the slope of
broken water--rose up and up, surmounted the wave, and plunged into the
seething trough beyond.

"Bale!" Marama was shouting in a voice that came to me faintly above
the screaming of the wind.  "Bale, or we shall be swamped!"

As I leaned back to take up the baler I saw that the canoe was a third
full of water--mingled sea water and rain.  I set to work in a panic,
while Marama fought to hold us head-on to the seas, with clenched teeth
and a steady eye ahead.  Working at top speed to throw the water out, I
perceived with a sinking heart that the task was beyond his strength;
we had done our best, but in another moment the canoe would fill and
swamp.  Three times, with a sweep of the paddle that knotted his
muscles as though cast in bronze, Marama saved us by a miracle.  A
white-crested roller seized us with a fierce caprice, spinning the
canoe about.  Marama's paddle dug deep to swing our bows to meet the
oncoming sea and then, with a crackling sound audible above the wind,
the haft of hard black wood snapped clean in two.

Next moment the wave burst over the gunwale, and we were struggling in
the sea.

[Illustration: _Next moment the wave burst over the gunwale, and we
were struggling in the sea._]

For a time I felt that the end was near.  The water was warm and I was
clinging to the outrigger-pole, but it seemed impossible to breathe.  I
think I should have suffocated, without my long experience of diving at
Iriatai.  My eyes were filled with water, and each time I strove to get
a breath, the sea broke over me to fill my nose and mouth.  Little by
little I learned to watch my chance, to fill my lungs hastily at
moments when I could get a gulp of air.

Marama worked his way along the gunwale of the swamped canoe and took
hold beside me, on the forward outrigger pole.  The buoyant wood
supported our bodies in the water, and our weight at the forward end
held the long hull bow-on.  The clouds were breaking to the west; the
squall was passing suddenly as it had come.  The ocean was calming
rapidly, steep breaking seas giving place to a long swell, though for
the time being there could be no thought of baling the canoe.  Before
long we were able to speak of our predicament, and I remember that
neither of us mentioned sharks, the subject uppermost in both our
minds.  It is curious that the white man, like his savage cousins,
brown or black, is still the prey of an ancient instinct of the race:
Never speak of the evil thing you dread!

If the sharks had found us that day, our end would have been a sudden
and a ghastly one.

Toward noon the sun shone out through the last of the storm clouds and
the sea had gone down so much that Marama made ready for an attempt to
get the water out of our canoe.  "You have seen it done at Faatemu," he
said; "I will watch the waves carefully till our chance comes--and then
you must do your best!"

We swam aft and took our places on either side of the stern, holding
the canoe head-on while two or three long swells rolled by.  Then, at
the beginning of a lull, the native boy gave the signal, and we put all
our weight on the stern, sinking it deep.  "Now!" cried Marama, and we
dove down, pushing it still deeper and thrusting forward as our hands
let go their hold.  The canoe shot into the air, leaping forward as the
light wood bounded to the surface; the hull smacked down on the sea,
and a rush of water tumbled forward and poured in a cascade over the
bows.  Piloted by Marama's skilled hands, she took the next swell
without shipping a cupful, her gunwale four or five inches clear of the
sea.

"Hold on with one hand and bale with the other," ordered my companion,
"and I will swim forward to keep her head-on till she is dry."

There were still a good fifty gallons of water and my task was a weary
one, but at last she floated high and one after the other we clambered
in gingerly over the stern.  Without a word Marama stood up, balancing
himself with one bare foot on either gunwale as he gazed out intently
to the west.

"There is no land in sight," he said.

I felt no great concern at his words, for I believed the squall could
not have carried us many miles offshore and though we had only one
paddle between us, a few hours would bring us within sight of the palms
of Iriatai.  I learned afterward that we were in the clutch of one of
the uncharted currents of the Paumotus--a current which swept around
the north end of Iriatai and was carrying us farther and farther into
the vast stretch of ocean between the coral islands and the South
American coast.

Toward three o'clock, while I paddled and Marama scanned the empty line
of the horizon from his perch in the bows, he gave a sudden shout.  "_E
pahi!_--a ship!" he cried, and presently I made her out, a two-masted
schooner, hull down in the north.  Could it be the Tara, come out in
search of us?  But no--this was not the first time we had spent a day
away from camp; by evening my uncle would begin to feel anxiety, but
for the present he would think we had been caught in the squall and
forced to land--a stove-in canoe, perhaps, and a weary journey on foot
through thorny bush and over sharp and broken rocks.

A light steady breeze ruffled the sea that afternoon, and anxious
minutes passed before we made certain that the schooner was heading
south.  When she was still miles away I saw that she was not the Tara.
She carried a pair of lofty topsails, a rare sight in these seas; and
unlike the schooners in the island trade, the stranger's mainsail
sported a gaff, cocked at a jaunty yachting angle.  As she came closer,
her towering canvas drawing every ounce of power from the air, she made
a picture to delight more critical eyes than mine.  The Tara had a
sturdy beauty of her own, but she was a "bald-headed" schooner, without
topmasts, and she would have had the look of a barge beside the tall,
graceful vessel approaching us, skimming the sea like a cup-defender
under her press of sail.

Presently she was within hailing-distance and we saw her native crew
along the rail.  The brown men began to shout questions at us, after
the fashion of their race: Who were we--whence did we come--where were
we going?  Then I heard a command, in a roaring voice that made the
sailors spring to their posts.  The schooner shot into the wind with a
crisp shiver of canvas, bobbing and ducking into the head sea as she
moved forward and lost way close alongside.  Lines were passed down,
strong hands came out to help us; the next moment our canoe lay on deck
and we were standing beside it, surrounded by good-natured islanders
who were chattering, gesticulating, grinning with flashes of their
white teeth.

Again the roaring voice boomed out from astern: "Back the
fore-staysail!  Eh, Tua!  Send the Kanaka forward and bring the white
boy aft to me!"

Tua, the mate, a tall native with a handsome determined face, touched
my arm.  Walking aft while the schooner filled away again, I had my
first look at the helmsman, a white man of herculean build.  He wore a
suit of drill, freshly starched and ironed, snowy yachting-shoes, and a
Panama of the finest weave.  The lower part of his face was concealed
by heavy moustaches and a thick blond beard, but the skin above his
cheek-bones was smooth as a woman's.  His eyes were of a blue I have
never seen before nor since: dark and sparkling when his humor was
good--in anger, glittering with the cold glare of ice.  In some subtle
way the eyes reflected the man's whole personality, at once virile,
magnetic, daring, unscrupulous, and cruel.  But I was young and his
cordial manner disarmed me; for the time, my eyes were not open to the
evil in our rescuer.  He smiled and stretched out a hand to me--an
enormous hand with fingers like so many bananas.

"Well, young man," he said, his deep voice and the order of his words
carrying a foreign hint, "from where are you come?  In that direction,
South America is the nearest land!"

I had asked for water as I stepped aboard, and now a black man with a
great shock of hair came aft to hand me a pitcher and a glass.  The
captain watched me, smiling behind his beard as I drank the water to
the last drop.  Finally I set down the glass.

"Excuse me, sir," I said, "I was very thirsty!  It was lucky for us
that you happened to pick us up.  We went fishing this morning and our
canoe was swamped in a squall.  Afterward, when the clouds passed, the
land was out of sight, and we've been paddling ever since."  He glanced
down at a chart unrolled before him on the cockpit floor.

"From Iriatai you are come, then," he remarked.  "That is strange, for
the island is marked as uninhabited.  Well, it is not far out of my
course--I am bound for Mangareva to load shell."

His courteous manner and lack of curiosity made me feel that it would
be boorish to be reticent.  I had no suspicion that he was feeling me
out for information.  And my uncle had nothing to conceal.

"My name is Selden," I told him, "and I have been on the island several
mouths.  My uncle, Henry Selden, has leased Iriatai from the Government
and planted coconuts.  Last year he discovered a patch of shell in the
lagoon, and the French have granted him a season's diving-rights."

I was going to say more, but a sudden sound interrupted my words.  The
ship's bell rang out two sharp and measured beats, paused, and sounded
twice again.  It was six o'clock.  The watch was changing, and at a
word from the captain the tall mate came aft to take the wheel.

"Keep a man aloft," the skipper said.  "It grows dark, but within half
an hour you will raise the land."  He turned to me.  "Come below," he
suggested, "you will be hungry after your day at sea.  When we have
dined, I shall be interested to hear more of your island."

He followed me down to the saloon, where the table was set with shining
glass and porcelain.  A young woman rose as we appeared, a slender,
graceful girl, with sullen eyes and a great bruise disfiguring one pale
brown cheek.  She wore a loose gown of scarlet silk; crescents of gold
were in her ears; and her dark hair, dressed in a single braid thick as
a man's arm, hung to her knees.  I learned afterward that she was a
half-caste from the Carolines.  The captain spoke to her and glanced at
me.

"Madame Schmidt," he said in introduction; and as I took her hand, I
realized suddenly how I must have appeared.  It was months since
scissors had touched my hair, which stood on my head like a Fijian's,
tangled and bleached by the sun.  My skin was tanned to a sort of
saddle-color, and I was naked save for the torn and faded pareu about
my waist.  The captain seemed to divine my thought.

"Eh, Raita!" he ordered, "get out for our guest some clean clothes.  He
will feel more at ease."

I slipped into a stateroom to put on the garments the woman laid out
for me: an enormous pair of trousers I rolled up at the bottom, and a
coat in which Marama and I could have buttoned ourselves with room to
spare.  The meal was served by the captain's body servant, the black,
shock-headed savage I had seen on deck.  He was an evil-looking
creature, like some fierce ape masquerading in a sailor's clothes.
Several times during the meal Schmidt gave him orders in an outlandish
jargon I had never heard, and once, when the captain told him to fetch
wine, he asked his master a question in a shrill chatter, grimacing
with his eyebrows like a monkey.  The woman ate sullenly, without once
raising her eyes; when she had finished, she rose and left us without a
word.

It was still daylight outside, but the swinging lamp above the table
was lit, and under its light I had an opportunity to study the features
of my host.  I began to change my first opinion of him, for the
scrutiny was not reassuring: the more I looked, the more he puzzled me
and the less I trusted him.  When the black man set cups of coffee
before us Schmidt began to question me.  How long had we been on
Iriatai?  How many divers were at work?  Was there plenty of shell?
Was its quality good?  Had we been lucky with pearls?  But by now I was
on my guard, and returned evasive answers, feigning the stupidity of
weariness--a deception which did not require much acting on my part.  A
long-drawn shout from above brought us suddenly to our feet.

"Land ho!"

When I came on deck the western sky was glowing with a fiery sunset,
and under the crimson clouds I could make out the long dark line of
Iriatai.  Puzzled and vaguely uneasy in my mind, I was leaning on the
rail when my eye fell on a handsome dinghey, slung on davits close to
where I stood.  Her stern was toward me, and there, neatly lettered on
the bright varnished wood, I saw the word, "Cholita."  So Schmidt's
vessel was called Cholita--a pretty name for a pretty schooner--and
then I remembered with a sudden start.  My thoughts flashed back to the
morning when I had paddled out to breakfast with my uncle in Faatemu
Bay--to his account of Thursday Island Schmidt.  My uncle's words came
back to me: "His schooner's as pretty as her reputation is black, and
the way he handled her was a treat to watch."

So this was the Cholita, and I was the guest of the famous Thursday
Island Schmidt!

I felt a touch on my shoulder, Marama was beside me, a serious
expression on his face.  "Listen!" he said in a hurried whisper; "I
must go forward before the captain returns.  If we approach the land
to-night, let us slip overboard and swim ashore.  Seroni must be
warned, for I think that there is evil afoot.  Do you remember Rairi,
the Tara's cook who tried to kill old Pahuri that night on our passage
south?  He is aboard--I have seen him, though his face was turned away
from me.  He has been ordered to keep out of your sight.  This schooner
was bound for Iriatai before she picked us up.  The mate, who is a good
man and beginning to fear for himself, has told me as much."

The captain was approaching with a noiseless step; when I glanced up he
was not four yards off.  He halted and looked at Marama in angry
astonishment.  "Get forward," he bellowed, in a voice that made the
sailors turn their heads, "_verdammt_ Kanaka cheek!"  He turned to me,
the former suavity gone from his manner.  "And you," he ordered--"go
below!"

I obeyed him, choking with anger and a sense of impotence.  The
half-caste girl was sitting on the lounge, she had been sewing, but now
her hands were clenched and her work lay where it had dropped to the
floor.  There was a look of apprehension in her eyes.  When she saw
that I was alone she beckoned me with a swift gesture.

"Come here, boy--me want talk with you," she whispered in quaint broken
English.  "Me hear Schmidt say 'Go below'--he too much bad man!  _Guk_!
Me hate him!--Suppose we go near land tonight, me jump overboard, swim
ashore.  You come too--we go hide in bush."

Her fierce eyes blazed as she pointed to the bruise on her cheek.

"Schmidt do that yesterday," she went on.  "Me like kill him, but too
much 'fraid!  Before, me think him good man.  My father white man--same
you.  Me, my mother, live Ponape, Caroline Island.  One day Cholita
come--everybody think Schmidt good man--spend plenty money--have good
time.  Every day he come my house.  By and by he say: 'To-morrow I go
'way; you my friend--give me orange, pig, drinking-coconut.  To-night
you bring old woman aboard--we have big _kaikai_.'  My mother think he
good man--we go.  Schmidt bring us aboard schooner--we eat, play
accordion, have good time.  Pretty soon hear noise on deck.  My mother
stand up.  'What that?' she say.  Then Kwala hold old woman--Schmidt
throw me in stateroom--lock door.  Outside reef he throw my mother in
canoe--tell her go ashore.  Porthole open--me hear old woman
crying--Guk!  Schmidt never let me go ashore.  In Tahiti--Noumea--me
'fraid--he say suppose me swim ashore, send police fetch."

Her quick ear caught the sound of a footstep on deck and she signaled
me hurriedly to move away.  Next moment Schmidt came down the
companionway, glancing at the woman sharply.  Without a word he
motioned me into the stateroom, slammed the door behind me, and turned
the key.

I heard Raita's voice raised in protest, and the captain's gruff reply.
Then the companionway creaked under his weight as he went on deck again.

Until now I had viewed the Cholita and her master in an adventurous
light; but as I lay there in the dark behind a locked door I began to
feel anxious and a little afraid.  Little by little, as realization
grows at such a time, I put together the scattered recollections in my
mind: what my uncle had said of Schmidt; the half-caste girl's story;
the presence aboard the Cholita of Rairi, our former cook; the old
letter, telling of the gold-lipped shell in Iriatai lagoon; Rairi's
stealthy visit to the Tara after his discharge; Schmidt's treatment of
me; Marama's words, and the brutal stopping of our conversation.  There
was small room for doubt--each detail fitted perfectly into the story
taking form in my mind.

While the schooner lay alongside the Papeete wharf (I thought),
discharging the load of shell of which my uncle had spoken, Rairi must
have made the acquaintance of Schmidt.  Our one-time cook had looked
through the papers snatched up in hope of doing my uncle an injury, and
had come upon Turia's letter, written to her son.  It was a chance in a
thousand, but how was Rairi to make use of it?  Then, meeting Schmidt
and knowing something of his character from gossip along the
waterfront, the vengeful Paumotan must have seen his opportunity.  A
few cautious questions to feel out his man, increasing confidence, the
final disclosure of Turia's old letter--and the compact made.  It would
be a daring bit of robbery in these modern days; I wondered how Schmidt
could hope to keep out of trouble in the long run.  He might scuttle
the Tara, of course, and leave us marooned on Iriatai, but our
whereabouts was known to many people, and before many months had passed
someone was bound to set out with a schooner to see what had become of
us.  But he was a resourceful scoundrel, from all I had heard; he must
have weighed his chances before embarking on such a piece of barefaced
piracy.  And robbery was the Cholita's errand.  I knew it now as surely
as if Schmidt had disclosed his plans to me.

As I lay there in the berth, tired and frightened, I began to blame
myself for not having played a more cunning game.  Now that my chance
had gone, I saw that I might have played the part of a talkative and
unsuspecting lad, answered Schmidt's questions freely, and perhaps have
kept my liberty until we drew near the land.  Then I might have gone
overboard in the darkness, made my way to my uncle and given him
warning of the Cholita's approach.  Now it was too late.  They would
take the Tara by surprise.  There might be bloodshed.  A terrible
thought flashed into my mind--Uncle Harry stretched out on his
schooner's deck--

I sat up in the berth, clenching my hands.  I had no dearer friend in
the world.  But at last excitement and weariness overcame my anxious
thoughts, and I fell into a dreamless sleep.

When I awoke the morning sun was shining through my porthole, and
looking out, I saw that we lay close to the beach, just inside the pass
of Iriatai.  A noise of thumping and scrubbing overhead told me that
the decks were being washed down.  We were at anchor, I knew, for the
schooner lay motionless, though the current at this place was strong.
An hour passed and as I craned my neck out the port I saw the Cholita's
dinghey approaching us from the north.  The handsome little boat drew
near and I saw Rairi in the stern, a Winchester across his knees and a
bandolier of cartridges over one shoulder.  Schmidt's shock-headed
black was at the oars and at his feet a man lay in the bottom of the
dinghey--an elderly native, bound hand and foot, his gray head matted
with blood and unsheltered from the sun.  It was Pahuri--I knew with a
sudden breathlessness that they had taken the Tara and that Rairi was
enjoying a savage's revenge.

The dinghey passed out of my sight around the schooner's stern.  I
heard the thump of a body flung down roughly on the after deck, Rairi's
voice raised in a sharp command, and the creak of the davit-blocks as
the boat was hoisted to the rail.  Then, for a long time, all was
quiet.  Rairi had gone below for a rest and a nap, leaving the black on
guard, for most of the crew were new men whom neither Rairi nor Schmidt
would trust too far.  Finally the silence was broken by a weak
voice--old Pahuri begging monotonously for water.  Heavy steps came aft
over my head and I heard the mate order the black man to give water to
his prisoner.  But the savage chattered a refusal in his own uncouth
tongue; he had a rifle and he was under orders from Rairi, so Tua
strode forward angrily, muttering to himself.  Then suddenly I heard a
rapid whispering at the keyhole of my door.  It was Raita.

"Eh, boy!" she said, "listen--you asleep?"

"No," I whispered back.

"Last night," she went on, "Schmidt take your schooner--Rairi bring
back old man he no like.  I sorry that man--head hurt--too much blood.
Rairi leave him in sun--no give water.  Schmidt stop aboard your
schooner--suppose wind come up, Cholita go there.  Native boy, your
friend, swim ashore last night.  Me think go too, then think no--me
stop aboard, maybe help you.  Ah--me hear Rairi--me go!"

I heard her move away, quickly and softly, from the door.  Her words
added little to my anxiety, for Pahuri's presence told me that Schmidt
had captured the Tara, but the thought of my uncle tortured me: Where
was he--captured, wounded, perhaps dead?  I glanced out the porthole.
The palms were swaying to the first of the trade wind, heralded by long
blue streaks outside the pass.  Presently there were sounds of activity
on deck; shouting and creaking of blocks as they hoisted the foresail,
the deep-voiced chant of the sailors at the windlass.  Then, heeling a
little to the freshening breeze, the Cholita filled away on the port
tack, turned to leeward as she gathered way, and slacked off for the
long run across the lagoon.

When we drew near the islet, toward midday, I saw that the Tara's
anchorage had been changed: she was lying fully a quarter of a mile off
shore.  Eight bells struck as we rounded into the wind beside her; I
heard the anchor plunge overboard and the prolonged rattle of the
chain.  Then the bellowing voice of Schmidt hailed us, shouting orders
and instructions.  A moment later the key turned in the lock of my door
and Rairi entered to grasp me by the arm.

"Come," he said roughly, "Schmidt want you aboard Tara!"

He half dragged me up the companionway and across the deck, where I had
a glimpse of our engineer lying bound in the sun, his gray hair clotted
with blood.  Rairi motioned me into the dinghey alongside, sprang in
after me and signed to the oarsman to pull us across to the Tara.
Schmidt was standing by the rail.

"Where's the Kanaka boy?" he asked.

"Swim ashore last night; maybe shark take him--no matter."

"Let him go--no harm can he do us.  Wait for me."

I clambered over the rail in obedience to Schmidt's gesture, and he
followed me below.  My uncle's stateroom was open and in great
disorder.  We halted opposite the door of my own cabin.  The German
drew from his belt a heavy Colt's revolver, cocked it, unlocked the
door quickly, and pushed me inside.  As I stood there, dazzled by the
bright light of the porthole, I heard the key turn behind me, and then
my uncle's quizzical voice.

"Well, old fellow," he remarked, "it's good to see you safe and sound.
We seem a bit down on our luck, eh?"

He was lying in my berth, quietly puffing one of his long, thin cigars.




XI

PIRACY

For a moment I was overcome by astonishment and relief; my mouth half
opened and tears came into my eyes.  My uncle stretched out his hand.

"Cheer up!" he said, smiling at my long face.  "We're not beaten yet!
Before I tell you my side of the yarn, let's hear how our friend
Thursday Island happened to pick you up."

Speaking in a low voice, I told him of our fishing, of the squall, how
the canoe was swamped, how we had baled her, and how Schmidt had picked
us up.  His only comment was a soft whistle when I spoke of how I had
nearly drowned before the sea went down.  Then I told him of the
Cholita: her captain, the half-caste girl, Rairi, and the story I had
pieced together.  As I finished, Uncle Harry nodded his head.

"That's it," he remarked--"not a doubt!  That scoundrel Rairi--I wish
I'd handed him over to the authorities as I was tempted to do!  I wish
also that I hadn't built my stateroom doors so well; they're solid oak,
an inch and a half thick, with hinges and locks to match!  And Schmidt
took care to clear away everything movable: even the water-bottle's
gone!  But I must tell you about last night.

"You know the family next door to Maruia's house--their baby died
yesterday, and when dinner was over I gave the men permission to go
ashore for the singing.  It was careless, of course, but we've never
stood an anchor watch since we've been here.  Pahuri stopped aboard--he
was asleep up forward--and I was in a pareu, working on my ledger.  I
keep the books in the safe, you know, and the door of the safe, like
the stateroom door, was open.  At about eleven o'clock I heard a boat
bump softly against the Tara's side, but Fatu was due to bring the men
aboard and I paid no attention to the sound.  I glanced up from my work
a moment later, and there was Mr. Thursday Island Schmidt in the
doorway, with a big revolver cocked and aimed at my chest.  He
requested me, very politely, to hold up my hands and keep them there,
and as my own gun was in a drawer behind me, I could see no way of
refusing him!

"The only men with Schmidt, I believe, were Rairi and some sort of
outlandish nigger.  All I saw of the black man was a glimpse of his
fuzzy head outside the door, but Schmidt still keeping me covered,
ordered Rairi in to go through the contents of the safe.  He wanted to
get me out of the way, but he saw that the safe was open and he was too
wise to turn his back on his partner, even for a moment.  He's a cheeky
devil, Rairi: he gave me a sour grin that must have done him good.
First he pulled out the little drawer where I keep my loose money for
emergencies--about a thousand dollars in gold.  He laid it on the
table, and as Schmidt glanced down I was tempted to have a go at him.
But I knew his reputation, and I knew that Rairi was aching for a
chance at me.  At that moment, when I was half decided to try to knock
Schmidt out, I was distracted by a glimpse of something that escaped
him altogether.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rairi's hand shoot
out suddenly behind his back and come up to his waist, where he seemed
to fumble for an instant with the tuck of his pareu.  I looked more
closely--one of the small round tobacco-tins was missing from the row
on the shelf!  Rairi stooped down as though he had just perceived them,
gathered the little boxes in a double handful, and stepped across the
room to lay them on the table beside the drawer of gold.  'Pearls,
perhaps,' he said.

"Schmidt showed signs of interest at that.  He ordered Rairi to open
them, and gave each lot a glance, one after the other, but he never
relaxed his watch on me.  Thursday Island is not a man to trifle
with--he's proved that over and over again!  'A nice lot of pearls, Mr.
Selden,' he observed, grinning behind his beard; 'there will be a
sensation on Tahiti when they learn that the gold-lipped shell has been
acclimatized.  The Government will owe you a debt for the discovery.'

"I'd been keeping an eye on the pearls and when the last tin was opened
I saw that the Twins were missing: by the purest chance, Rairi's
thieving hand had landed on their box.  I was on the point of telling
Schmidt that the pearls he had seen were not bad, but that the finest
of the lot were in the tuck of his partner's waistband.  I don't know
why I didn't speak,--they might have had a row which would have given
me my chance--but for some reason I kept my mouth shut.  When Rairi had
made a bundle of my papers and made sure that there was nothing else of
value in the safe, Schmidt told him to clear all the loose stuff out of
the stateroom across the way.  Then he invited me to make myself at
home here until his business was done.  He spent some time in assuring
himself that the door and lock were strong.  'It may ease your mind,'
he said, polite as a dancing-master, 'to know that your nephew is safe;
I picked him up yesterday at sea; he'll join you presently.'

"They must have overlooked Pahuri when they first came aboard.  As the
German left my door I heard a racket up forward: that half-caste,
mauling the old man in a way that made me see red.  I was fool enough
to try to break down the door until Schmidt bellowed out something that
stopped the noise."

My uncle held up his hands to show me the knuckles, bruised and clotted
with blood.

"The noise must have given the alarm to Fatu," he went on, "for a few
minutes afterward he put off with Ivi and Ofai in the boat.  The
current had swung the Tara around so that I could see what followed out
of the porthole.  Schmidt heard them launching the boat and called his
men.  He had a powerful electric torch and when he flashed it toward
the land I saw my boys taking their places at the oars, Fatu in the
stern, and ten or a dozen divers on the beach.  Schmidt growled out an
order to his partner and I heard Rairi's voice raised to warn the boat
away.  But our men paid no attention; the light showed them making for
the Tara at top speed.

"'Let them have it, then!' bawled Thursday Island.  I heard two rifles
crack, the snap and click of the levers, and two more quick shots.  Ivi
dropped his oar and sank down on the grating with a hand to his
shoulder.  Fatu sprang to his feet, snatched up the oar, and took the
wounded man's place, to pull straight for the schooner.  Rairi and the
nigger would have slaughtered them like sheep, but they held their fire
when I shouted through the porthole, telling my men to go back; that a
strange schooner was in the lagoon, that her skipper had made me
prisoner, and that they had best leave the affair in my hands.  There
isn't a gun of any sort ashore and I don't want to be rescued at the
cost of half a dozen lives!  Well, they obeyed me and went ashore.  The
sound of the shooting roused the whole camp--things have been humming
ever since.  Perhaps Fatu has some scheme for setting me free; Schmidt
seems to think so at any rate, for he and his men went to work on the
windlass, got the anchor off the bottom, and allowed the Tara to drift
offshore with the current before they anchored her again.  As for the
fix we're in, the worst that can happen is that we'll lose our pearls.
I doubt if even Schmidt has the audacity to load a hundred tons of
shell under the noses of the men ashore--I wonder if he would dare?
What sort of crew has he--many men he can trust for this sort of
villainy?"

I said that I believed most of Schmidt's men were newly shipped, that
aside from Rairi and the black they seemed an average lot of natives,
not particularly bad.  From Marama's words and what I had seen of the
man himself, I judged that Tua, the mate, was a first-class fellow,
beginning to feel qualms about the company in which he found himself.

"Tua," remarked Uncle Harry, musingly, "Tua--that's not a common name!
Did he ship in Papeete?  He isn't by any chance a youngish chap, rather
light brown and more than six feet tall?  That's the man?  By Jove!
I'd like fifteen minutes alone with him--he's Maruia's foster son!"

A sound of voices put an end to our talk.  Schmidt and the black man
had come across in the dinghey and were making her fast alongside.
Raita was with them, for I heard the captain order her roughly to climb
aboard.  There was a step on the deck overhead; a sound made me look up
and I saw that a basket of food had been lowered to our porthole.
Schmidt hailed us.

"I am sorry, Mr. Selden," he said, "that your lunch comes late.  For
me, these are busy days!"  He spoke with a kind of cool politeness he
had not troubled to affect toward me.  I never heard any man speak
rudely to my uncle; even now, while he lay helpless to resent an
injury, Schmidt chose to address him courteously.  Water was to be had
at the tap, and we ate with good appetites while Schmidt conversed with
my uncle through the stateroom door.  He had come below for a yarn, he
said, and he seemed in a communicative mood.

"My friend Rairi," he began abruptly, "does not love that old man of
yours.  Last night, when he tied his hands, he hurt him more than I
thought necessary--I believed that he was taking him back to the
schooner that he might bind up his wounds.  To-day I found that old man
delirious in the sun, and I was forced to speak plainly.  Ach!  A
savage--I have had more than enough of the native--It would be good if
business did not deprive me of your company."

"See here, Schmidt," remarked my uncle good-naturedly, "do you realize
that this business of yours is apt to deprive you of all company except
your own, for a good many years to come?  You have brains, man--use
them!  So far, you've played your cards well: we'll grant that you are
able to get away from Iriatai with the pearls.  You know pearls.  I'll
be frank: they're worth forty or fifty thousand at least.  But think of
the future--you can't do this sort of thing nowadays.  Matters were
different twenty years ago.  Sooner or later this affair will be the
talk of the Pacific.  Think of the wireless, man--they'll be looking
for you in every port in the world!  Don't mistake me,--I'm not telling
you this for your own good,--but the lawyers have a very unkind name
for what you are doing.  Think it over, Schmidt.  If you're wise,
you'll return what you've taken and clear out of Iriatai.  As a matter
of fact I rather admire your nerve.  If you'll turn over Rairi to me,
I'll let the matter drop at that."

The answer to my uncle's words was a rumbling chuckle; I could fancy
the ironical glint in the German's cold blue eyes.  "A handsome offer,"
he said mockingly.  "You are more than kind!  Since you are good enough
to be frank, I will be frank as well.  As for thinking, mine was done
long ago.  I do not fear all the warships and all the wireless in the
world!  There can be no harm in telling you, for that matter; in
estimating my chances of escape, you can amuse yourself for the next
day or two.

"This morning I took my glasses and had a look ashore.  A nice stack of
shell you have made ready for me, under the shed!  That I must have.
If there is trouble in loading it and any of your men are hurt, they
will have themselves to blame.  Bloodshed I do not like: it is always
foolishness!  Without an axe you will not break out of your stateroom.
Matches I have left you and you could set fire to the schooner, but
that would be for you unpleasant and would only save me trouble in the
end.  If you should succeed in breaking out, always there will be one
of my men to deal with.  Kwala, the black, is a Malaita boy--not a man
to trifle with.  And Rairi I do not trust overmuch myself; he is a
primitive, and he bears you an old grudge.  I was nervous last night
when he brought me in through the pass; did you know that long ago he
lived on this island?  Yes--his mother was one of the savage women
deported by the French.  So you see, I put you out of my mind."

"Well," said my uncle in an amused voice, "suppose you do load the
shell and get away from Iriatai.  Can't you see that your troubles
would only be beginning then?"

"Ach, Mr. Selden," said Schmidt with reproachful irony, "you do me
injustice!  Remember, please, I am a man of resource.  There can be no
harm in it: I shall open my heart to you and tell the truth--what my
vulgar Australian friends used to call, in their picturesque way, the
'straight griffin,' or the 'dinkum oil.'  First of all, much though I
regret, I must scuttle your pretty Tara.  When I am ready to leave and
the holes are bored, the key will be given you through the porthole in
time, that you may swim to land before the schooner goes down.  Your
boats I shall tow to sea with me.  I hope you are not foolhardy enough
to venture to sea in the native canoe.  Many months will pass before
information can be laid against me.  One chance I take--that a schooner
might put in here soon after I leave; but that chance is small.  Like
your schooner, the Cholita is of French registry now; on paper, my
mate, Tua, is her captain; I am cleared for the Paumotus, to pick up
copra and shell.  What shall I do?  The simple thing, which all my life
I have found the wisest: go straight to Tahiti, sell my cargo to the
highest bidder, and clear once more for the Paumotus within a week.  As
for the gold-lipped shell, there will be a hint of a discovery in a
remote lagoon; I can see now the wise ones among the traders hastening
to a place five hundred miles from Iriatai!  My men may talk, but two
things will close their mouths, I think--love of money and fear of me.
Clear of Tahiti, my beard and my schooner's topmasts will come off; she
will have a new name and a new set of papers.  At filling them out, I
am clever--you would be surprised!  Then, one fine day, long before
they have come to look for you on Iriatai, a strange schooner will put
into a far-away port, South America, perhaps, or among the Dutch East
Indies--Ach--who knows?  There is a Chinaman in Gillolo who would
gladly take the schooner off my hands.  It is a sad thing to grow old,
my friend; I am tired of the Pacific and of this wandering life.  Much
is forgotten in twenty years; it is my dream to settle quietly in the
German village where I was born--But you must excuse me--I hear my good
Rairi calling!"

I heard Rairi's voice and the sound of Schmidt's footsteps as he
climbed on deck.  Then all was silent for an hour or more, while my
uncle and I spoke in low tones of our predicament.  Suddenly there was
a whispering at our door--the voice of Raita.  the half-caste girl.

"Eh, boy," she said rapidly, "you hear me?  No talk loud--Kwala, that
black man, on deck!  Schmidt, Rairi, they go aboard Cholita.  You got
_kaikai_--got water?  Good--me 'fraid you hungry.  Listen: Raita tell
you what they do.  Schmidt go Cholita tell that mate, Tua, go ashore.
Tua tell people on island stop in bush to-morrow; suppose they come on
beach, they get shot!  When Tua come back, Schmidt, Rairi come aboard
this schooner sleep.  Keep pearls here.  When dark, maybe me swim
ashore hide in bush."

"Raita," I called softly, as a sudden idea came to me, "wait by the
door for a minute.  I want to speak to you when I've talked with my
uncle."

I climbed into the upper berth and squeezed my head and shoulders
through the porthole.  It was as I thought; no man could have passed
through such a narrow aperture, but the feat was possible for a slender
boy.  "Listen, Uncle Harry," I whispered as I climbed down to his side,
"you heard what that woman said; now see what you think of the plan I
have in mind.  Schmidt has sent Tua ashore to warn the people to keep
away from the beach while he loads our shell.  Tua, you say, is
Maruia's foster son, and I feel sure that he and most of the crew are
uneasy in their minds.  This is my plan: we can see the shore from our
porthole, and if, by the time it is dark, Tua has not returned to the
Cholita, I will wriggle through the port and swim ashore.  It will be
easy, I think, to explain the situation to Tua and to our divers.  Tua
can go off to the Cholita and tell his crew what kind of venture they
are engaged in.  Once they understand, I'm sure there won't be a hand
raised to help Schmidt to-night.  Then, in the darkness after the moon
has set, I'll swim off quietly with Fatu, Ofai, and a few of the
divers, climb aboard and take the Tara by surprise.  Once we have
Schmidt and his two followers, there'll be no trouble with the others,
I think.  We must decide quickly--let me try!"

For a moment, while I waited in suspense, my uncle puffed meditatively
at his cigar.  His eyes were half closed and he seemed scarcely to have
heard what I had said.  Suddenly, with a shrug of his shoulders, he
spoke.

"Very well, Charlie--see what you can do.  But take care of yourself.
Remember that I'd rather lose the Tara and all the shell than have
anything happen to you!  It's the devil to have to sit here helpless
while those scoundrels sail away with our property.  I was beginning to
believe they held the winning cards!  You've a level head, old man;
this plan of yours has a chance of working out, I should say.  Can you
really squeeze through that porthole?  By Jove!  I'd give something to
have the laugh on our friend Herr Schmidt!"

Before he had finished I was at the door.  "Raita!" I whispered; and
when I heard her answering voice, I told her that I planned to escape
through the porthole and swim ashore.  Knowing her hatred of Schmidt, I
confided the fact that we were going to attack the schooner that night,
and begged her to leave a rope's end hanging over the stern.  The girl
was all eager excitement.  The blood of a fierce and vengeful people
ran in her veins.

"Guk!" she exclaimed.  "Maybe you kill Schmidt, eh?  Me too much happy!
Stop aboard now.  That other man--tell him when plenty dark me get axe
from galley.  He watch porthole, eh?  Suppose you come aboard--he break
door, go help kill Schmidt!  Guk!  Me like see that!"

"It's lucky you made friends with her," remarked my uncle quizzically,
when Raita was gone; "I should dislike to have that young lady for an
enemy!  Well, if she doesn't forget that axe, I'll do my best to
entertain her!"




XII

"BOARDERS!"

The sun went down that night behind banks of crimson clouds, which grew
black as twilight gave place to darkness and blotted out the young moon
sinking in the west.  The evening was calm, but the night promised to
be a stormy one.  The Tara still lay broadside to the beach and a close
watch informed us that Tua had not left the islet.  My time had come.

Our chief concern was to make no sound which might give the alarm to
the sharp ears of the savage on watch.  Pulling together the curtains
of the lower berth and muffling the operation in blankets to avoid the
slightest noise, we tore a sheet into strips and braided a length of
clumsy cord.  Then in the upper berth my uncle knotted our rope to one
of my ankles, and very gently and cautiously I began to squirm my way
out through the porthole.  It was a tighter fit than I had supposed;
after a twist or two it seemed to me that I could neither move forward
nor go back.  I was naked save for a pair of swimming trunks, and
several square inches of my skin remained on the porthole's sharp brass
rim, but at last I was through, hanging by one leg with my head and
arms in the water.  Knowing that the least splash would bring Kwala
instantly to the side, my uncle lowered me little by little into the
lagoon, until I lay motionless in the black water and the end of the
cord fell into my outstretched hand.  I undid the knot, heard Uncle
Harry's faintly breathed "Good luck!" and dove without a sound.  It was
not yet fully dark and I feared that the black man's eyes might discern
my head in the reflections of the sunset.  Thirty yards nearer the
shore I rose to the surface and expelled the breath gently from my
lungs.  All was quiet aboard the Tara.  I had neither been seen nor
heard.

I landed under an overhanging thicket of hibiscus, in a little cove
where Marama and I kept our canoe hauled up.  There were no lights in
the doorways that I passed, but when I came to Maruia's house I found
the population of the islet assembled there, women and children outside
and the divers in the house, surrounding Maruia and Schmidt's mate who
sat in earnest conversation on the floor.  The light of a lamp shone on
the pair and I saw that Tua's face wore an expression of dejection and
perplexity.  A murmur of astonishment went up as I arrived, and indeed
I must have presented a strange appearance--wet, nearly naked, bleeding
in a dozen places.  Maruia rose and put an arm about me, patting my
bare shoulder softly.

"Ah, Tehare," she said, "you have escaped from that wicked man--that is
good.  And Seroni, your uncle?"  I told her how we had been imprisoned
in the stateroom, and how I had escaped through the porthole, too small
for the broader shoulders of a man.  Then I asked for news of Marama.

"He is here," she answered, leading me to her bed, screened off with
mats in a corner of the spacious room; "see, he sleeps, and we must not
wake him.  He followed the western shore on foot, hastening to warn
Seroni, but when he came here it was too late.  His feet are cut to
ribbons by the coral and the sun has given him a fever; I have bandaged
his wounds and brewed a tea of herbs.  But come--there are other things
of which we must speak."  She led me back through the crowd and pointed
to Tua.

"This man is my foster son," she said, "a good man, but he serves an
evil master.  He brings us a message from that German that we must go
to the far end of the islet while our shell and Seroni's is carried
away.  Tua is greatly troubled in his mind.  He has signed papers and
the white man's laws are strict.  Furthermore those men are fierce and
wary; they are armed with rifles, while we have none.  What are we to
do?"

I turned to the mate.  "Saving Schmidt and the black and Rairi," I
asked him, "are the others of the Cholita's crew good men?"

"I know them all," he replied, "and they are like others of their kind,
neither good nor bad.  But like me, they are in fear of Schmidt and of
the white man's prison."

"Listen, then," I went on, "and I will show you how to act the part of
honest men.  Schmidt is indeed an evil captain and to stand by him
means prison in the end.  My own ears have heard him say that after he
has stolen our pearls and our shell he plans to sell the schooner and
leave you deserted and friendless in a foreign land.  Take warning,
therefore, while there is time.  You have heard of Seroni--Maruia will
tell you whether he or Schmidt is the more to be trusted.  Give heed to
my words, then.  Schmidt and that dog Rairi await your coming on the
Cholita.  Go to them now and tell them that you have delivered their
message; that the people will obey, being unarmed and in fear of the
rifles.  In a little while those two men will go to the Tara, where
they will sleep this night.  Once they are gone, arouse the crew softly
without showing lights, and talk to them in the forecastle, telling
them what I have said.  Remember that you on the Cholita need run no
risks: only lie quietly if there are noises from the other schooner.
In the morning the Tara will be ours and those three men our prisoners.
Seroni will see to it that no man of you is wrongly accused.  The truth
is that the Government will praise you for having refused to aid a
captain who is no better than a robber.  Think of old Pahuri, whose
blood is on your decks--is that the work of honest men?"

"Aye, and this!"  A deep voice rang out as Fatu rose from the dark
corner where he had been lying, and pointed downward with a gigantic
outstretched arm.  Then for the first time I saw Ivi, grinning at me
over a shoulder done up in blood-soaked rags.  "It is well said that
Rairi is a dog," Fatu went on.  "If I had my hands on his throat once
more, I would not let go so soon!"  An angry murmur went up from the
divers; I perceived that the moment was ripe for my proposal.

"Who will come with me this night," I asked--"who will follow Fatu to
capture the Tara and to set Seroni free?"  Ofai sprang from his seat at
Ivi's side.  The divers crowded about me eagerly to hear my plan.

"We shall need only six or seven of the strongest," I told them.  "Let
us give Tua time to return and deliver his message, and then, when
Rairi and the bearded captain have gone back to the Tara to sleep we
will swim out without noise, climb softly on deck, and take them by
surprise.  Only one man will be on watch; Seroni waits our coming to
break down the door with an axe that will be given him."

While I lay on a mat, discussing our plan with Maruia and the others,
Tua took leave of us.  I felt a reasonable confidence that he would
play his part and keep his men from interfering on behalf of Schmidt.
Maruia's blood was up; she was keen to go with us and it was not easy
to persuade her to stay behind.  An hour dragged
by--another--another--it was nearly midnight when I gave the word to
set out.  Each man was naked save for a breechclout; our bodies were
well rubbed with coconut oil, and we carried the long keen knives used
for clearing bush.

The moon had set long since, and black clouds blotted out the stars.  A
stir of air from the south caused the palms to rustle and sigh
uneasily.  We were in for a squall.  I saw that unless the wind grew
strong enough to rouse the sleepers on the Tara, the weather was in our
favor: the squall would put the watcher off his guard and drown the
slight noises of our approach.  Presently the wind was sweeping in
gusts across the lagoon, driving a fine rain into our faces.  The
schooner must be facing the south, with her stern toward shore.

"I think there will be a line astern," I told the men crouching beside
me under the dripping hibiscus trees, "and Fatu and I will go aboard
that way.  You others must swim to the bow without a sound and climb up
by the chain or by the jib-boom stay.  We will allow you time to get
aboard.  Wait by the forecastle till you hear the alarm given and then
come aft to take them by surprise.  As I told you, there will be only
one man on watch, and Fatu alone can handle him.  We must not use our
knives unless they drive us to it.  Come--it is time we set out--this
squall will drown the noise of our approach."

"Yes," put in Fatu, whose closest friend was Pahuri, the old engineer,
"let us go quickly!  My hands yearn for the feel of Rairi's throat!"

I led the way into the water, deeper and deeper, till we were swimming
in the black lagoon.  We seemed an hour in reaching the Tara, anchored
no more than four hundred yards offshore.  The little waves slapped
against my face and the rain stung my eyes.  At last, when I was
wondering if we had taken the wrong direction, the clouds broke and the
stars shone out, disclosing the dim outlines of the Tara close ahead
and Schmidt's schooner, riding at anchor a hundred yards away.  At that
moment a man appeared on deck,--whether Schmidt or Rairi I could not
make out,--carrying a lantern in his hand.  He made the lantern fast to
the main boom and left it hanging there.  Then he drew a deck-chair
into the circle of faint light, and sat down, facing the schooner's bow.

With Fatu close behind, I swam under the overhang of the stern, and
next moment my hand touched a heavy rope, trailing overboard from the
rail.  The half-caste girl had kept her word.  The others were
clustering about us, and as the wind was still strong I ventured to
whisper fresh instructions there in the schooner's lee.  "The rope is
here," I told them softly; "do not hurry about getting aboard.  Give
that man time to settle down quietly in his chair.  Be ready to come
running aft in five minutes."

I had not reckoned on Fatu's impatience, nor on the native vagueness
about time.  My companion was roused as I had never seen him before.
For a little while, with the greatest difficulty, I restrained his
eagerness, but finally he shook my hand off his shoulder and began to
pull his huge body up the rope, hand over hand.  I followed: there was
nothing else to do.  The wind was still blowing strongly from the south.

Fatu reached the rail in an instant, heaved himself aboard with uncanny
agility, and dropped to the deck without a sound.  I was desperately
slow in following, for I was tired and chilled, and my arms were not
trained to sailors' work.  When at last my head rose above the rail, I
saw that the giant was stealing toward the unconscious man in the
deck-chair, creeping forward with a stealthy swiftness in the shadow of
the binnacle.  The lantern, flickering in gusts of wind, cast a dim
yellow light on the scene.  Then my hand slipped on the wet rail, and I
fell thumping to the deck.

I was on my feet in an instant, but the man in the chair was quicker
still.  It was Schmidt, and his senses must have been keen as those of
a savage, for his eye was on me before I had taken a step, and the
rifle came to his shoulder with a snap.  In the same instant Fatu
leaped at him from behind the binnacle, springing like a monstrous
cat--but the spring was a breath too late.  I saw a bright tongue of
flame, heard a crashing report, and felt a great blow on my leg--a
shock that spun my body about and sent me sprawling to the deck.  I lay
there sick and numb, yet keenly alive to every detail of the scene that
followed: a swift drama stamped indelibly on my memory.

Fatu seized the rifle with a single mighty wrench, tore it from
Schmidt's hands and sent it flying overboard, then his arms closed
about the German's body.  Schmidt was a very strong and active man.
His foot went out behind the leg of his antagonist; he twisted his body
with the movement of a skilled wrestler, and the pair came crashing to
the deck.  But Fatu's grip never relaxed and I knew that in the hug of
those mighty arms Schmidt's moments of consciousness were numbered.  He
seemed to realize it too, and his right hand, free from the elbow down,
began to move painfully toward the holster at his belt, where I saw the
gleam of an ivory pistol-butt.  Then I heard my uncle's axe thundering
at the stateroom door, and the shouts of the divers, climbing over the
bows.

I raised my eyes, hoping to see the natives running aft.  I glanced
back at the wrestlers and saw Raita there beside them--a slender,
crouching figure in white, her face framed in waves of dusky hair.  She
had drawn Schmidt's revolver in the nick of time, and held it cocked in
her hand.

But Kwala, the black savage, who must have been sleeping on the forward
hatch, still had a part to play.  In the second while Raita crouched
there, fiercely seeking her chance to kill, there was another streak of
flame, and the report of another rifle-shot.  The girl sank down on the
deck.  I saw the shock-headed savage blinking in the lamplight while a
wisp of smoke eddied from the muzzle of his Winchester.  Then, with
fierce shouts and a rush of bare feet on deck, the divers were on him,
and he went down in a smother of brown arms and legs.

For an instant, Raita lay where she had fallen, but though she was
dying, hatred of the German gave strength for the last act of her life.
"Guk!" I heard her exclaim with a weak fierceness, as her hand went out
to take up the pistol a second time.  By chance it had not gone off
when she had dropped it.  With a wavering hand she aimed it at
Schmidt's temple and pulled the trigger.  A third shot rang out above
the tumult--Schmidt's body quivered and relaxed--Fatu rose slowly to
his feet.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man standing at the companionway.
It was Rairi, an expression of angry astonishment on his handsome,
sullen face.

He glanced swiftly about him, seemed to arrive at a decision, and
bounded across the deck.  Before I could cry out, he was over the rail
and into the lagoon.

The appearance of my uncle, dressed in a scarlet waistcloth and
brandishing an axe, smothered the shout on my lips.

"Eh, Fatu!" he cried, as his eye fell on the gigantic figure of the
mate.  "Have you got them safe?  Where's Charlie?"

"Here!" I said in a weak voice, and next moment he was bending over me.
"Schmidt shot me in the leg.  He's dead, I think, and so is that poor
girl.  Ofai and the divers have the black man--look--they're tying him
now!  And Rairi--he dove over the side a second before you came on
deck!  Quick!  Send someone after him!"

At my words Fatu sprang away to lower a boat.  When my uncle had made
sure that Schmidt and the woman were dead and that the black was safely
bound, he took me in his arms and carried me below to dress my wound.
He laid me on the lounge in the saloon, turned up the lamp and bent
over my wounded leg, his face wearing an expression I had never seen.
Then he straightened his back with a great sigh of relief.

"Well, old fellow," he said, patting my bare shoulder, "you've given me
a scare!  But you're not badly hurt: the bullet has passed through the
muscle of your thigh without touching the bone.  Hurts like the deuce,
eh?  That won't last long--we'll have you on foot within a month!"

He made me drink a glass of brandy, the first I had tasted: burning
stuff that made me cough and ran through my veins like fire.  I was
weak from loss of blood, and when he had staunched the bleeding and
bandaged the wound with wet compresses, I fell into an uneasy sleep.

It was later that I was told of the happenings of that night: how one
of the divers swam ashore to tell the people that Seroni was free; how
a great fire was built on the beach and a fleet of canoes put off to
swarm about the Tara; and how her decks were crowded with brown men and
their women and children, all eager to shake my uncle's hand.  It was a
night of rejoicing.  A fire was built in the galley to brew huge pots
of tea, and cases of bully beef and ship biscuit were opened on deck.

The morning found me feverish and in pain with the stiffening of my
wound.  Old Maruia had installed herself in my stateroom.  The season
was over, she declared; she had earned enough for one year, and now she
was going to nurse me till I was well.  I was eating the gruel she had
prepared, when I looked up and saw my uncle standing in the splintered
doorway, a long cigar in his mouth.

"It's tough luck to be laid up this way!" he remarked, "Hurts, eh?  It
will for a few days.  But you've a first-class nurse; I reckon she'll
have you in a steamer-chair inside of a fortnight!  I didn't know how
many friends you had ashore--the whole lot of them were asking after
you last night--Eh, Maruia, don't let him move that leg!

"About Rairi," he went on--"he got clean away.  A Paumotu boy in the
water on a dark night is a hard proposition to catch!  We don't know
which way he swam, of course; we'll search the two islands on the east
side of the lagoon to-day.  I'm leaving now; the boats will follow
along the beach to the pass and meet us there to-night.  With fifteen
men we'll be able to comb the bush so that a dog couldn't pass us!  If
we don't get him to-day, we'll try the west side to-morrow--You've
guessed why I'm going to so much trouble?  Yes, he's gotten away with
your pearls!

"This morning, when the excitement was over, I made an inventory of the
things in the safe.  The door was open; Schmidt had left everything in
place, only taking the precaution to lock the inner door.  I found the
key in his pocket.  He never knew about the Twins--I told you how I saw
Rairi steal them under his eyes.  I was losing hope of coming out of
this affair so well.  I owe you a lot, old man; I'll try to repay part
of it by getting your pearls for you.  We'll catch Rairi, never fear!
Schmidt and the girl were buried this morning.  He was a man, that
German, though he had the morals of a wolf!  It's odd--but there was
something I almost liked about him--It takes courage to play a game
like his, and he might have succeeded if he'd been a little less
contemptuous of the natives he's abused so long.  I wonder who he
really was!  I'm sorry the girl was killed--I would have sent her home.
She couldn't have been more than twenty, poor child--a forlorn way to
die.  The black is in irons aboard the other schooner, where he's not
popular with the crew!"

When my uncle had gone I sent a man ashore for Marama, and presently he
was installed in the upper berth, a mass of bandages about his swollen
feet.  It was good to see my friend once more.

"I do not know where Rairi is now," he said, when Maruia had left us to
smoke her cigarette on deck, "but if he was barefoot when he went
overboard, he will be in no shape to run away!  Aué!  That dry coral is
sharp underfoot!  When I escaped from the Cholita, I had one thought in
mind; to get to Seroni quickly, to warn him and bring help to you.  I
landed close to the village of the copra-makers and there was an old
canoe on the beach, but when I took thought, I saw that the day would
break before I reached the Tara, and that I would run a risk of being
picked up again by that bearded captain who is now dead, so I traveled
the length of the western island afoot.  The sun was high when the time
came to swim, and I was faint with pain and loss of blood--the coral
cuts deep!  If I had been stronger I would have gone directly to the
Tara, for I had no suspicion that Rairi's boat had come to her in the
night.  Fatu was the first man I saw on shore; he told me of the
shooting, of Ivi's wound, and how Seroni was a prisoner on his own
schooner.  All that day I lay in great pain, and my head was light with
the sun."

At midday Maruia dressed our wounds and brought up food, and we dozed
through the long warm afternoon.  It was evening when my uncle returned
with his weary men.  They had scoured the eastern islands from end to
end without finding so much as a footprint.

Next day, when they searched the long island on the western side of the
lagoon, the story was the same, though one of the divers claimed to
have found the half obliterated tracks of a man on a stretch of muddy
beach.  That night my uncle went to bed with scarcely a word; I could
see that he was discouraged, mystified, and very tired.  Marama and I
were silent for a long time after the others had gone to bed.  Finally
the native boy spoke.

"Are you asleep?" he asked in his own tongue.

"No," I whispered back; "I lie here thinking."

"And I too.  Listen, for there is something in my mind.  First of all,
know that Rairi is not a stranger on this land of Iriatai.  His mother
was a woman of the island--one of the wild people the French soldiers
came to take away.  And when he was a boy he came here to labor at the
copra-making, with the woman who lived here before Seroni's coming.
There are true words!  Knowing all this, I have tried to put myself in
his place.  He has our pearls--pearls of great value, for which a man
would endure hardships and long months of waiting.  The question in his
mind must be: 'Where shall I hide myself till the schooners are gone
and I can steal a canoe to chance a passage to the nearest land?'
Where, indeed?  The three islands about the lagoon are long, but they
are flat and narrow.  The bush is thick in places, but not too thick to
be searched as one searches for a dropped fishhook in a canoe.  Where,
then?  Listen, and I will tell you--in the Cave of the Shark!  Is it
not possible that in his boyhood Rairi found the cavern even as we
found it, or that the woman Turia showed it to him as an ancient sacred
place?  He would believe that no other man on the island knew of it;
that he might lie hidden there for months, stealing out by night to
catch fish and to gather coconuts for food and drink.  I tell you that
the thought of losing our pearls has weighed like a lump of lead on my
stomach, but now I feel hope!"

When my uncle had returned that evening, discouraged and empty-handed,
I had felt the full bitterness of disappointment--the hopeless collapse
of all my dreams.  After all, our hopes had been absurd; a three or
four mile swim at night was a risky business, even for a native.
Perhaps Rairi had been seized with cramps; perhaps a roving shark had
picked him up.  In reality, the chances were against his being alive.
But now, as the possibility of the cave grew large in my mind, I could
scarcely wait for the morning, to tell my uncle of Marama's idea.
Eight bells struck.  It was midnight, and the soft breathing in the
upper berth told me that Marama was asleep.  He had a wholesome lack of
nerves, and to him the loss of the pearls meant no more than a passing
disappointment.  In his eyes, money was not a thing that mattered
greatly--if one had none of it, one did without; if one's pockets were
full, it was pleasant to spend.  I envied him, for with me it was far
different.

Hour after hour I lay there, wakeful with anxiety and the fever of my
wound, while the round ship's clock in the saloon struck off the bells.
The glimmer of dawn was in the stateroom when at last I fell asleep.

Maruia woke us with a tray of breakfast, steaming hot from the galley.
The sun was high, and glancing through the door, I could see my uncle,
bending over some papers at his table.  My head was heavy with lack of
sleep, but the fever seemed gone and the pain in my leg diminished.  I
called to Uncle Harry and he rose at the sound of my voice.

"Well, boys," he said, smiling in at us, with a hand on either side of
the doorway, "had a good night?  I was for letting you sleep, but the
old lady thought it was time you were eating breakfast."  I told him
what Marama had suggested the night before, and his eyes lit up with a
brilliant gleam of interest.

"I believe you've hit it!" he exclaimed.  "That's the one place we
haven't searched.  I remember now Schmidt's saying that, as a boy,
Rairi had lived on Iriatai.  I lay awake half the night puzzling over
this business--I was beginning to believe that the man must have been
taken by a shark.  But we must waste no time; I'm off now for a look at
this cave of yours.  Wish me good luck!"

The hours of that day dragged past with interminable slowness.  I grew
depressed as time went on: perhaps we had been unduly sanguine the
night before; the thread supporting our hopes was a slender one, after
all.  Even if Rairi were found, he might have lost the pearls or hidden
them.  Marama laughed at my fears, refusing to share in my renewed
depression.  At noon the old woman brought us lunch and we ate with
good appetites, for by now we were on the way to recovery.  Afterward,
when she had cleared the things away, I fell into a dreamless and
refreshing sleep.

It was late afternoon when I awoke.  There was a hail from the deck and
the sound of a boat, bumping against the schooner's side.  Next moment
my uncle ran down the companionway and burst into our stateroom, a
smile on his lips and in the dark brilliance of his eyes.  Without a
word he placed in my hands a small tin box--a box that I had seen
before.  I opened it with a beating heart, and there, side by side in
their nest of damp cotton-wool, were the Marama Twins!  The native boy,
gazing down over the side of his berth, gave a shrill whoop of joy.

"It was a tame affair," remarked my uncle, when he had answered our
first rapid questions, but your cave is certainly a curious place.  We
had no difficulty in finding the entrance.  I led the way in, with
Fatu, Ofai, and a couple of others close behind.  Whew!  That's a bit
of a swim before you can come up to blow!  I had warned the men to make
no noise; it was possible that Rairi might have clung to the
six-shooter I had seen at his belt, and good ammunition is almost
waterproof.  Presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I
made out the idol and the heathen altar, and then, on the ledge a
little to one side, the huddled figure of a man.  It was Rairi--his
eyes were open and he had been watching us all the time.  He's a plucky
scoundrel; when I was standing over him wondering why he had not moved,
he shook his head and grinned at me as he made an effort to hold up his
right arm, blackened and horribly swollen out of shape.  'I glad you
come!' he said in a weak voice.  He was burning with fever.

"Then he told me what had happened.  Swimming across the lagoon in the
dark, he had run squarely on a patch of the purple coral, the poisonous
kind that cuts like a razor-edge.  He managed to get to the cave before
the wounds stiffened, but next morning, when daylight began to appear
through the cranny in the rock, he realized that it was all up with him
unless help came.  Both legs and his right arm are frightfully
infected--I'm not sure that we can pull him through.  Well, if he dies,
it will save the Government from supporting him in jail!  The pearls
were in the pocket of his dungarees--he handed them to me of his own
accord.  We had the deuce of a time getting him out to the boat; he'd
have been drowned if Fatu hadn't been along!"




XIII

TAHITI

There is little more to tell of our days at Iriatai.  For a fortnight,
while I lay bored and convalescent in a steamer-chair, the diving went
on.  Then each man's share of the shell was laid out for my uncle's
inspection, sacked, weighed, and loaded in the Tara's hold.  There were
a hundred and twenty tons of it, of a quality unknown in the lagoons of
the Eastern Pacific, and Uncle Harry was jubilant over our good luck.
His safe held a little fortune in pearls, and the divers had others
they were keeping to sell on their own account.

A day came at last when the village on the islet was dismantled; when
the people crowded our decks, noisy and gay with the joy of being
homeward-bound; when the Tara, deeply laden, turned her sharp bows
toward the pass, away from the anchorage which had been our home so
long.

Pahuri was at his accustomed place in the engine-room--the old man had
soon recovered from the rough handling he had endured.  Ivi, with his
left arm in a sling, was the hero of the forecastle; the divers never
tired of discussing the memorable night when he had received his wound,
and I could see that in the future the story would be passed from
island to island, growing to epic proportions as the years went by.
Marama and I had thriven under Maruia's care; his feet were healed by
now, and I was able to get about the deck, though my leg still gave me
an occasional twinge.

The Cholita, with Tua in command and our two prisoners stowed away
below, followed us southward toward the pass.  Rairi was out of danger
at last, after days of raging fever when there seemed small chance that
he would live.  The copra-makers had been on Iriatai for more than a
year, and Schmidt's schooner halted off their village to take them
aboard and load the twenty tons of copra stacked under the shed on the
beach.

Outside the pass, when the Tara dipped her nose into the long Pacific
swell, I lay alone on the after deck, gazing back at the line of
palm-tops that was Iriatai, fast disappearing beyond the slope of the
world.  I thought of Schmidt, sleeping forever under a wooden cross on
the deserted islet; of the woman in the shallow coral grave beside him,
the half-savage girl he had stolen from her home in the far-off
Carolines--Raita, who had been my friend, and whose hand, at the last,
had ended his strange life.  I felt a lump in my throat, as I realized
that in all probability my eyes would never again rest on Iriatai, this
dot of land, immeasurably lonely and remote.

A week later we dropped anchor in Faatemu Bay.  The other schooner had
gone on to Tahiti and would await us there.  The village hummed with
the excitement of our arrival; there were long stories to be told,
friends and relatives to be greeted, and good fortune to be shared.
Forty pigs were killed for the feast that Taura, the gray-haired chief,
gave in our honor.  Fat old Hina welcomed me like a mother, with easy
native tears.  I had not forgotten her kindness, and on the last day I
tendered my parting gift: two handsome pearls--one for her, and one for
my former playmate, Marama's little sister.  When the Tara sailed out
through the Nao Nao Passage and I went below, I found my stateroom
littered with their presents--fans, hats, baskets, wreaths of
bright-colored shell.

Marama and his father accompanied us to Tahiti.  At dawn of the second
day I was awakened by my uncle's voice, calling me on deck to see the
land.  The schooner was slipping through a calm gray sea, running
before a light breeze from the north, and a glimmer along the horizon
told of the approaching day.  Close on our starboard beam, and so
unreal that I half-expected the vision to fade before my eyes, I saw
the fantastic pinnacles of Eimeo.  Tahiti lay straight before the
Tara's bows--faint, lofty outlines rising from the sea to disappear in
veils of cloud.  We were standing side by side at the rail, and at last
my uncle spoke.

"This is my home-coming," he said quietly.  "To me, that island is the
most beautiful thing in all the world."

At ten o'clock we were opposite the pass, and I saw for the first time
the little island port of Papeete: the masts of trading-schooners
rising along the docks; the warehouses and the line of sheds for
freight; the narrow, shaded streets running inland from the waterfront;
the background of green, jagged mountains, cleft by the Fautaua Gorge.

A crowd gathered while the Tara docked.  There were shouted greetings
in native, in English, and in French.  As the schooner was warped
alongside and the gangplank came out, the people began to stream
aboard.  The Cholita had brought news of our coming, with the story of
our gold-lipped shell and Schmidt's attempted piracy.  My uncle had
given Tua a letter to the authorities, turning over the schooner and
the prisoners to the Government, exonerating the crew, and giving a
detailed account of the affair.  The news had caused a stir in this
peaceful and remote community; we refused a dozen invitations to lunch,
and Uncle Harry was forced to tell the story twenty times--to traders,
to officials, to his own agents in Papeete--before his friends would
give him peace.  And through it all I heard a chorus of exclamations at
the gold-lipped shell.

I spent the afternoon wandering about the town.  It was all new and
strange to me: the strolling bands of sailors, the Chinese shops, the
houses with their deep, cool verandas shaded by exotic trees.  At four
o'clock I met my uncle by appointment at the bank.  He took me to a
private room upstairs, and as he opened the door a man rose and came
toward us with outstretched hand.  He was small and dapper--a shade too
well dressed.  His nose was long, and his black eyes bright and beady
as shoe-buttons; his radiant smile, under a little waxed moustache,
disclosed teeth like the pearls in which he dealt.

"Monsieur Sikorsky," murmured my uncle, "my nephew, Charles."

"It is a pleasure," said the Jew, shaking my hand warmly, "to meet the
nephew of my old friend.  I have been aboard the Tara this afternoon
and have heard much of you!  They told me you had been diving with the
natives--a wonderful experience, young man, but dangerous, _hein_?  Ah,
those sharks--those great man-eating fish--it is _épouvantable_!"  He
shuddered delicately, offered my uncle a cigarette from a case of
tortoise-shell, and blew out a cloud of perfumed smoke.

"Yes," he went on, "Monsieur Selden has told me how old Maruia's
kinsman was taken by the tonu, and how you dove down to the cave for
the old oysters your native boy had seen.  And he said that if I came
here this afternoon you might show me the matched pearls you found that
day."

"I have them here," put in my uncle, drawing the familiar tobacco-tin
from his pocket.  "We'll show them to Sikorsky, eh?  Perhaps he'll want
to make you an offer."  He drew up three chairs about a table close to
the window, and pulled back the blinds to admit the afternoon sunlight
into the room.  Then he opened the little box and laid the pearls side
by side on the green tablecloth.

"Well, what do you think of them?" he asked.  "You've never seen a
finer matched pair, eh?"

For a moment Sikorsky lost his urbane composure.  His black eyes
glittered and his hand trembled a little as he reached out to take up
the pearl nearest him.  As he turned it over and over in his palm,
admiring the perfection of its form and the play of light on its
flawless surfaces, he muttered to himself in a language I had never
heard.  Presently he laid down the first pearl and took up the other
for examination; rose to fetch a black leather case from a corner of
the room; laid out his jeweler's scales and measuring instruments.
Without a word to us, he weighed and measured to his satisfaction, took
out writing-materials and covered a sheet of paper with the figures of
a complex calculation.  Then he took up the pearls for a last glance,
and leaned back, lighting another of his perfumed cigarettes.

"There is no need of beating about the bush," he said.  "You know
pearls, Selden--such a pair does not turn up twice in a lifetime.  They
would make a gift for an empress!  It has been a privilege to see them,
even though nothing comes of it.  If they were mine, I would go hungry
before I would part with them!"

"What are they worth?" asked my uncle.

"Ah, that is hard to say--they are for sale?"

"Yes, at a price; I would buy them myself if I could afford to own such
luxuries."

"I will make you an offer, then, though the responsibility is more than
I am authorized to take.  They are matched almost to the weight of a
hair--Let me see--for one of them, alone, I could safely offer you
twelve thousand dollars.  Double that for the matching--forty-eight
thousand for the pair--Yes--I will make my offer fifty thousand."

He raised his hand as my uncle was about to speak.

"That is a fair offer," went on the Jew, "I assure you, a long time
might elapse before my firm could find a purchaser.  I would not make
it except that they love fine pearls as I do.  But if you think that
this is not enough, name your own price and give me time to wire my
people in Paris.  One thing I ask of you as an old friend: show them to
no one else till I have had my chance!"

"A fair enough offer, I should say," remarked my uncle, as he put the
pearls in their box and rose to leave.  "I must go down to the schooner
now; my nephew and I will talk over your price to-night.  Can you meet
us here after breakfast to-morrow?  We'll let you know our decision in
the morning."

The pearl-buyer ushered us to the door and bowed us out with another
radiant smile.

That evening, when we were sitting alone on the balcony of our hotel,
Uncle Harry told me something of the Jew.  "If you met Sikorsky at
home," he said; "you'd think he was a little counter-jumper, but as a
matter of fact there's no squarer or more decent fellow in this part of
the world.  I've known him for years.  He speaks half a dozen languages
and has been in most of the odd corners of the earth.  What do you
think of his offer?  In your place I'd be inclined to accept.  I doubt,
in fact, if the Twins would fetch much more.  One might take them
abroad, of course, and find some rich fancier who would pay twice as
much, but peddling jewels is not in our line.  What do you say?"

"Oh, let's accept his offer!" I exclaimed.  I had been thinking of
nothing else since our visit to the bank.  Half of fifty thousand
dollars seemed a tremendous sum to me.

"Very well," said Uncle Harry with a smile.  "To-morrow will be a great
day for Marama and the old man!"

He drew from his pocket the familiar case of worn brown leather and
selected a cigar.  When it was drawing to his satisfaction he tossed
the match into the street and cocked his feet against the railing of
the balcony.

"I've good news," he remarked.  "We have a week before your steamer
sails.  I want you to see my place in the country.  When does your
school begin?  The first of October?  That's good--you'll be home in
plenty of time.  Now about the money; it's yours to do with as you
like, of course, but let me give you a bit of advice.  If I were you,
I'd turn the bulk of it over to your father--he's in need of cash, and
a few thousands would put the Santa Brigida on its feet.  It will be
yours eventually; stick by the land, old fellow--it doesn't pay to
knock about the world as I have done.  By the way, there'll be
something coming to you from your lay in the season's work, though it
will look small beside Sikorsky's check.  Well, it's getting late--time
we were turning in."

In the morning, when we had finished breakfast, we met the pearl-buyer
at the bank.  Half an hour later, as we shook hands and strolled out
the door, I carried in the inner fold of my pocketbook a draft for
twenty-five thousand dollars, on a San Francisco banking house.  We
found Marama and his father aboard the schooner.  Their eyes were
bright with wonder when my uncle told them of the bargain he had made,
and they were glad to accept his offer to look after the money for
them, letting them draw on him whenever they were in need of funds.

"I'm having some friends to dinner to-morrow," he told me as we walked
down the gangplank.  "We must be getting out to Fanatea now.  My boat
got in early this morning--come along and have a look at her."

She was lying a quarter of a mile down the beach, moored to the
sea-wall under the old trees bordering the avenue.  On her narrow stern
I saw the word "Marara" lettered in gold, and her lean lines and the
six great exhaust-pipes standing in a row left no doubt that she could
show the speed of her namesake, the flying fish.  A native in a suit of
oily overalls sprang ashore to greet us and smiled when I spoke to him
in his own tongue.

"What do you think of her?" asked my uncle.  "Isn't she a beauty?  I
built her myself--every plank.  That's a French engine--ninety
horsepower--and it drives her at better than twenty knots!"

The mechanician fetched our bags from the hotel.  We took our places in
the cockpit, the spray-hood was raised, the anchor came up, and the
stern line was cast off.  The deep-throated roar of the exhaust brought
a little crowd to the quay while the man turned up grease cups and
oiled a bearing here and there.  He raised his head and glanced at my
uncle with the odd native lift of the eyebrows which means "All ready!"
The motor burst into a deeper and a fiercer roar; my uncle took the
wheel and pulled back the lever of the clutch.  The boat quivered and
sprang forward swiftly, heading for the docks where the stevedores were
dropping their wheelbarrows to watch.  She swept around the harbor in a
great curve, turned seaward, and headed out through the pass, her bows
parting the waves in sheets of spray.  Outside the reef we swung
southward toward Fanatea, twenty miles off.

An hour later I saw a break in the white line of the reef.  As we sped
in through the gap, the huge blue combers, with spray whipping back
from their crests, raced in on either side of us to topple and crash in
thundering foam.

"There's Fanatea!" shouted my uncle, pointing to a long white house at
the end of an avenue of pahns.

A path, bordered by ornamental palms, led from the pier to my uncle's
house, set on a rise of land a quarter of a mile beyond.  The
plantation had a long frontage on the beach and extended inland, across
the rich alluvial flat, up into the hills.  More than two hundred acres
were planted with coconuts,--stately young palms in rows ten yards
apart,--and lines of fencing divided the land into paddocks, where I
saw fat cattle grazing belly-deep in grass.

The house was long and low, plastered with burned coral from the
lagoon.  The veranda overlooked a matchless view of dark-green
foreshore, placid lagoon, white reef, and sparkling sea.  Far off
across the channel the horizon was broken by Eimeo's jagged peaks.
Deep, cool, and airy, the veranda was my uncle's living-room, and at
the windward end, in a great glassed-in bay, I found his collection of
idols, weapons, and native implements.  That night, when the Chinese
houseboy rang the gong, I scarcely knew Uncle Harry in pumps, flannel
trousers, and a smart white dinner-coat.  It was his custom to potter
about all day on the plantation, bush-knife in hand and clad only in a
cotton pareu; but when evening came and he had had his bath, he never
failed to appear immaculate at the dinner hour.

"This is the only home I have," he remarked as we sat down, "and when
I'm here I make a little effort to keep up appearances.  It saves me
from becoming a savage.  I have a good many friends scattered about the
island--I visit them sometimes and they often come here.  As I told
you, a few of them will be out to-morrow: Sikorsky is coming and a
couple of Government men.  Old Jackson said he would come, too--he's my
agent here; by the way, he's reserved a deck cabin for you on the
steamer.  Maruia is the most famous cook on the island--she's promised
to come out to superintend the kitchen."

Maruia arrived early the next afternoon, and when she had shaken hands
with us she went straight to the back of the house, where the Fanatea
people, who stood in awe of such a rich and celebrated character,
sprang this way and that to do her bidding.

The motor-boat had gone to town, and just before sunset I heard the
hoarse bellow of her exhaust and saw her moving swiftly across the
lagoon toward the pier.  When he had presented me to his guests, my
uncle took the Frenchmen in charge and left me with old Mr. Jackson and
Sikorsky.  The gold-lipped shell and his adventure with Schmidt had
made Uncle Harry the hero of the hour, and since the Jew had showed the
Marama Twins to several of his friends, I found myself an object of
interest to these older men.  But Mr. Jackson, a gaunt old Englishman
with friendly eyes and an enormous white moustache, knew how to put me
at my ease.

"A beautiful pair of pearls," he remarked when we were walking into the
dining-room; "they'll make a sensation in Paris!  Sikorsky showed them
to me last night; he's planning to take the next boat north, on his way
to France.  Told me how you found them, too--the tonu and all the rest
of it.  Bad brutes, those tonus--one nearly had me when I was a lad.
Forty years ago, that was--I'm getting old, eh?  In those days I was
supercargo aboard a schooner of the Maison Brander.  We were lying
becalmed inside the pass at Mangareva, and in spite of what the natives
said, I thought I'd have a bit of a swim.  In the nick of time I saw
the brute coming up at me--a great spiny, mottled beast, with a mouth
like an open door.  We were towing a boat, by good luck--I went over
her stern so fast I scraped half the skin off my chest!"

"He's off!" said my uncle, at the other end of the table.  "Mr.
Jackson's our champion spinner of yarns, Charlie; he's a true artist,
and you mustn't believe everything he says!"

The old man chuckled--they were friends of many years standing.  "I'll
promise not to do any more talking," he said.  "I'm hungry, and I can
tell by that salad of shrimps that old Maruia is somewhere about.
Lucky man!  How did you persuade her to officiate?"

An hour later, when the Chinese boy had brought coffee, one of the
Frenchmen pushed back his chair and rose.  He was the treasurer of the
colony, a stout, middle-aged man, with keen dark eyes and a
close-cropped beard.

"First of all," he said, with a friendly smile at my uncle, "permit me
to thank you for an excellent dinner, such as I know how to appreciate.
Nor must we forget Maruia, whose skill in her art I have known for so
many years.  And now let me propose the health of our host, whose
discovery of gold-lipped shell in the Paumotus marks an addition to the
resources of the colony.  To Monsieur Selden, then, whose enterprise
has earned the Government's warm thanks!"

My uncle rose as the Treasurer sat down.

"Monsieur Durand has been more than kind," he said.  "And speaking of
Maruia, she has been good enough to offer to entertain us this evening.
You all know the old-time native songs, and how rarely one hears them
nowadays.  She has composed an _uté_ on our diving-season at Iriatai.
I think she is waiting for us on the veranda--bring your coffee along."

We found her in the bay-window, examining a piece of tapa cloth.  She
seemed known to all the company and perfectly at ease, addressing Mr.
Jackson in native and the others in fluent French.  Her hair, which was
brushed back loosely, was fastened with a pearl-studded clasp at the
nape of her neck; golden earrings were in her ears, and she wore a
flowing gown of thin black silk.  I could scarcely believe that this
was the old savage beside whom I had dived day after day, the fierce
creature who had leaped overboard, spear in hand and muttering a
heathen prayer, to avenge her nephew's death.

I sat down between Mr. Jackson and Sikorsky, on a long lounge covered
with a scarlet-bordered mat.  Beyond the railing of the veranda a score
of natives squatted on the grass.

Maruia took her place cross-legged on the floor, and a boy placed in
her hands a great piano-accordion, inlaid with mother-of-pearl.  In the
silence which proved the interest of her audience, she drew out the
bellows and let her fingers play over the stops.  Then I heard for the
first time the music of the uté--a wild minor melody, stirring,
exultant, heathen, and profoundly sad.  Suddenly she began to sing, in
a high-pitched wail, a song such as our ancestors must have sung in the
firelight, centuries before history dawned.  Here and there I could
catch a word,--enough to piece together the story the verses told,--but
the language was full of imagery and many of the words were of the
ancient tongue which only a few of the older people understood.  She
sang of how the Tara came to Faatemu and sailed away to Iriatai; of how
Seroni killed the old god in the form of a shark; and of the temple in
the cave; of the strange shell with lips like gold, such as no man in
the Paumotus had seen; of her nephew's death, and how Teura had been
avenged; of Schmidt and the fight aboard the schooner, when the woman
from a far land was killed.

All this sounds commonplace enough, as I read over the words I have set
down, but there was something far from commonplace in the quality of
the woman's voice, in the wild imagery of her words, in the primitive
and stirring cadences of her song.  At last the music died away, and
Maruia leaned back with a sigh as she snapped the hooks of her
accordion.

We were silent for a time, and then my uncle spoke.  He turned to Mr.
Jackson.

"It's curious," he observed--"the spell of those old songs!"  The
trader looked up at him, raising his snowy eyebrows in the native
gesture of assent.

"Either there's real art in a thing of that kind," he answered, "or
I've become a savage after forty years!"

The Jew had not moved once while Maruia sang.  The perfumed cigarette,
forgotten between his fingers, had burned out.  The old man's words
seemed to rouse him from a reverie.

"Ah, gentlemen," he said, more seriously than I had heard him speak
before, "make no mistake--the essence of all art is in such a song!  So
our old Hebrew minstrels sang, long before my people's captivity in
Egypt!  So, perhaps, the Greek bards sang of the fall of Troy!"

As the next day was Sunday, we persuaded our guests to stop over, and
it was late afternoon when we took our places in the motor-boat,
slipped out through the pass, and headed north along the reef.  The
breeze had died away and the Marara drove through a long, gentle swell,
running in from the west.  I was beginning to understand my uncle's
love of the island: on such an evening, it was impossible to believe
that any part of the world could be more beautiful.  Beyond the line of
breakers the lagoon lay like a mirror in the sunset calm, and I saw the
smiling coastal land, with its coconut and breadfruit groves, sheltered
at the mouths of valleys which pierced the lofty wooded hills.  Out to
the west, half hidden in clouds all rosy and edged with gold, Eimeo
rose from unruffled waters.  A long spit of land ran out to sea ahead
of us.

"Point Venus," remarked my uncle, leaning over to speak in my ear.
"The speck of white at the end is the lighthouse, the only one in this
part of the world.  It is built on the site of Captain Cook's
observatory; he came here, you know, to observe the transit of Venus in
1769.  He was a wonderful man--have you read the account of his
voyages?  Ah, you've a treat ahead!  His ship anchored in Matavai Bay,
this side of the point, and he named the group the Society Islands, in
honor of the Royal Society, which sent him out.  Sometimes I wish I
could have lived in those days, when there were still islands left to
discover--"

We were turning into the pass.  Half an hour later we had bidden our
guests good-night, and the Marara was speeding homeward in the dusk.

My week at Fanatea passed with the swiftness of a dream, and the day
came all too soon when I said good-bye to the people of the plantation
and stepped aboard the boat for the last time.  As we entered the pass
at Papeete, I saw the mail steamer from New Zealand lying alongside the
dock, hideous and huge beside the trim sailing vessels of the port.
She was to carry me to San Francisco.

We went aboard at once to look up my stateroom and inquire at what hour
the steamer would sail.  The captain, a gray-haired Englishman, with a
red face and a great jutting stomach, tightly buttoned in a
double-breasted coat of drill, was an old friend of my uncle's.  He
called us to his quarters by the bridge.

"Hello, Selden," he said, "they tell me you've had a row with old
Thursday Island.  He was done in, eh?  Good job, to my way of thinking!
An odd bloke; gentleman born, I should say, but a hard case, and crook
as they make 'em!  I knew him out in the Solomons, in ninety-eight."
He turned to me, holding out an enormous hairy hand.

"I've heard about you, young man," he rumbled.  "You're the lad who
found Sikorsky's pearls, eh?  He's going north with us.  They're aboard
now, safe in the purser's strongbox.  I'll tell the chief steward to
put you at my table.  We'll be sailing by three o'clock."

We lunched aboard the Tara that day, and when the meal was finished my
uncle and I sat talking in steamer-chairs on deck.  "It's hard to see
you go, old fellow," he said, "I'll be lonely without you; but don't
forget that you're coming down again.  I wish I could go north with you
now--I'd give something to be there when your father hears of our good
luck, and sees how tall and strong you've grown!  But I'll be up next
year without fail; perhaps I'll bring the Tara, and you'll see Marama
and the rest of them again.  I've always wanted a cruise down the Lower
Californian coast, to have a look at those Mexican islands and bays.
Give my love to your father and mother, and to Marion--tell them how
glad I am that they let you come with me.  This is for your sister, by
the way; take good care of it--perhaps you'd better put it in the
purser's safe."  He handed me a little plush-lined jewel-case, opening
it to display a string of beautifully graduated pearls.

"I've been collecting them for several years," he went on with a smile.
"Marion is the only niece I have, and I hope this will give her
pleasure for a long time to come.  But it's time you were getting
aboard--the men are up forward, waiting for you to say good-bye."

I felt a lump in my throat as I shook hands with them, one after the
other: Ofai, Ivi with his bandaged arm, Pahuri, Fatu, and the cook.
Marama and the chief of Faatemu were standing with Maruia on the dock.

"My heart is heavy to-day," said Marama, as I took his hand, "but
Seroni has promised that shall go with him when next he sails away to
your land.  Perhaps it will not be long before we meet."

"Come back to us one day," said the old woman.  "Your welcome will be
warm, for your friends are many in these islands!"

"_E, parau mau_," put in Taura, in his deep voice.  "Those are true
words!"

The ship was whistling for the last time.  Half laughing and half vexed
at the delay, my uncle seized my arm to drag me away from the group of
kind native friends.  As we pushed our way through the crowd about the
gangplank, the sailors were casting off the lashings.  Uncle Harry
grasped my hand.

"Time you were aboard," he said.  "Good-bye, old man."

The gangplank came up, lines were cast off, and the propeller began to
churn.  I stood by the rail, gazing down at the faces of friends among
the crowd ashore, while the steamer backed, turned, and headed for the
open sea.  A handkerchief fluttered on the Tara's deck; her ensign
dipped gracefully in a farewell salute.  All at once a feeling of
sadness came over me--I turned my eyes away from the land, walked
blindly to my stateroom, and closed the door.

That evening, when the bugle announced the dinner hour, I went on deck
and gazed back across the calm sea astern.  The far-away peaks of
Tahiti and Eimeo stood like faint blue clouds on the line where sea met
sky--lands of enchanted memory, fast disappearing in the fading light.









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