White Shadows in the South Seas Part 21

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

"Where are you going?" said Pere Orens.

"To Pekia, the High Place, to cook and eat," said Great Sea Slug.

Then for a s.p.a.ce Pere Orens remained silent, holding high the crucifix, and the chief heard from his pocket the voice of the small G.o.d speaking.

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

"_Me mamai oe_. If it is your pleasure, take it," said Great Sea Slug.

"It is a trifle. We have enough, and there is more in Motopu."

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

But The Girl Who Lost Her Strength remained in the house of Pere Orens, who cut her bonds, fed her, and nursed her to strength again.

Baptized and instructed in the religion of her savior, she was secretly returned to her surviving relatives. There she lived to a good age, and died four years ago, grateful always to the G.o.d that had preserved her from the oven.

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

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

"_Veavea?_ Is it hot?"

"_E, mahanahana_. I am very warm," I struggled to reply.

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

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

A peace pa.s.sing the understanding of the _kava_-ignorant was upon me.

Life was a slumbrous calm; not dull inertia, but a separated activity, as if the spirit roamed in a garden of beauty, and the body, all suffering, all feeling past, resigned itself to quietude.

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

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

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

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Pekia, or Place of Sacrifice, at Atuona]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Marquesan cannibals, wearing dress of human hair]

CHAPTER XX

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

It was a chance remark from Mouth of G.o.d that led me to take a journey over the hills to the valley of Taaoa, south of Atuona.

Malicious Gossip and her husband, squatting one evening on my mats in the light of the stars, spoke of the Marquesan custom in naming children.

"When a babe is born," said Mouth of G.o.d, "all the intimates of his parents, their relatives and friends, bestow a name upon the infant.

All these names refer to experiences of the child's ancestors, or of the namers, or of their ancestors. My wife's names--a few of them--are Tavahi Teikimoetetua Tehaupiimouna. These words are separate, having no relation one to another, and they mean Malicious Gossip, She Sleeps with G.o.d, The Golden Dews of the Mountain.

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

"My uncle, the Catechist, is Tioakoekoe, Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted on a Stick, and his brother is called Pootuhatuha, meaning Sliced and Distributed. That is because their father, Tufetu, was killed at the Stinking Springs in Taaoa, and was cooked and sent all over that valley. You should see that man who killed him, Kahuiti!

He is a great man, and strong still, though old. He likes the 'long pig' still, also. It is not long since he dug up the corpse of one buried, and ate it in the forest."

When I said that I should indeed like to see that man, Mouth of G.o.d said that he would send a word of introduction that should insure for me the friendliness of the chief who had devoured his grandfather.

Mouth of G.o.d bore the diner no ill-will. The eating was a thing accomplished in the past; the teachings of that stern Calvinist, his mother, forbade that he should eat Kahuiti in retaliation, therefore their relations were amicable.

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

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

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

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

They were in a fantastic gorge, through which ran a road blasted from solid rock, stained brown and blue by the minerals in the water that bubbled there and had carved the stone in eccentric patterns.

Bicarbonate of soda and sulphur thickened the heavy air and encrusted the edges of the spring with yellow sc.u.m. A fitting scene for a deadly battle, amid smells of sulphur and brimstone! But it was no place in which to linger on a tropic day.

Taaoa Valley was narrow and deep, buried in perpetual gloom by the shadows of the mountains. Perhaps thirty houses lined the banks of a swift and rocky torrent. As we approached them we were met by a st.u.r.dy Taaoan, bare save for the _pareu_ and handsomely tattooed.

His name, he said, was Strong in Battle, and I, a stranger, must see first of all a tree of wonder that lay in the forest nearby.

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

"This tree is older than our people," said Strong in Battle, mournfully regarding its prostrate length. "No man ever remembered its beginning. It was like a house upon a hill, so high and big. Our forefathers wors.h.i.+pped their G.o.ds under it. The white men cut it to make planks. That was fifty years ago, but the wood never dies.

There is no wood like it in the Marquesas. The wise men say that it will endure till the last of our race is gone."

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

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

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

"What does the _Menike_ seek?" they asked.

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

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