White Shadows in the South Seas Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: The pool by the Queen's house]

Our arrival was watched by a score of Marquesan chiefs who had been summoned by Bauda for the purpose, as he told me, of being urged to thrash the tax-tree more vigorously. The meeting adjourned instantly, and they hastened down from the frame building that housed the government offices. Their curiosity could not be restrained. A score of eager hands stripped the coverings from the bra.s.s bed, and exposed the glittering head and foot pieces in the brilliant sunlight.

Exclamations of amazement and delight greeted the marvel. This was another wonder from the white men's isles, indicative of wealth and royal taste.

From all sides other natives came hastening. My bra.s.s bed and I were the center of a gesticulating circle, dark eyes rolled with excitement and naked shoulder jostled shoulder. Three chiefs, tattooed and haughty, personally erected the bed, and when I disclosed the purpose of the mattress, placed it in position. Every woman present now pushed forward and begged the favor of being allowed to bounce upon it. It became a diversion attended with high honor. Controversies meantime raged about the bed. Many voices estimated the number of mats that would be necessary to equal the thickness of the mattress, but none found a comparison worthy of its softness and elasticity.

In the midst of this melee one woman, whose eyes and facial contour betrayed Chinese blood, but who was very comely and neat, pushed forward and pointing to the glittering center of attraction repeated over and over.

"_Kisskisskissa? Kisskisskissa?_"

For awhile I was disposed to credit her with a sudden affection for me, but soon resolved her query into the French "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ca? What is that?"

She was Apporo, wife of Puhei, Great Fern, she said, and she owned a house in which her father, a Chinaman, had recently died. This house she earnestly desired to give me in exchange for the golden bed, and we struck a bargain. I was to live in the house of Apporo and, on departing, to leave her the bed. Great Fern, her husband, was called to seal the compact. He was a giant in stature, dark skinned, with a serene countenance and crisp hair. They agreed to clean the house thoroughly and to give me possession at once.

They were really mad to have the bed, in all its s.h.i.+ny golden beauty, and once the arrangement was made they could hardly give over examining it, crawling beneath it, smoothing the mattress and fingering the springs. They shook it, poked it, patted it, and finally Apporo, filled with feminine pride, arrogated to herself the sole privilege of bouncing upon it.

Lam Kai Oo wailed his loss of a tenant.

"You savee thlat house belong lep'," he argued earnestly. "My sto'e littee dirty, but I fixum. You go thlat lep' house, bimeby flinger dlop, toe dlop, nose he go." He grimaced frightfully, and indicated in pantomime the ravages of leprosy upon the human form.

His appeal was in vain. The Golden Bed, upraised on the shoulders of four stalwart chiefs, began its triumphal progress up the valley road.

Behind it officiously walked Exploding Eggs, puffed up with importance, regarded on all sides with respect as _Tueni Oki Kiki_, Keeper of the Golden Bed, but jostled for position by Apporo, envied of women. Behind them up the rough road hastened the rest of the village, eager to see the installation of the marvel in its new quarters, and I followed the barbaric procession leisurely.

My new residence was a mile from the beach, and off the main thoroughfare, though this mattered little. The roads built decades ago by the French are so ruined and neglected that not a thousand feet of them remain in all the islands. No wheel supports a vehicle, not even a wheelbarrow. Trails thread the valleys and climb the hills, and traffic is by horse and human.

My Golden Bed, lurching precariously in the narrow path, led me through tangled jungle growth to the first sight of my new home, a small house painted bright blue and roofed with corrugated iron. Set in the midst of the forest, it was raised from the ground on a _paepae_, a great platform made of basalt stones, black, smooth and big, the very flesh of the Marquesas Islands. Every house built by a native since their time began has been set on a _paepae_, and mine had been erected in days beyond the memory of any living man.

It was fifty feet broad and as long, raised eight feet from the earth, which was reached by worn steps.

Above the small blue-walled house the rocky peak of Temetiu rose steeply, four thousand feet into the air, its lower reaches clothed in jungle-vines, and trees, its summit dark green under a clear sky, but black when the sun was hidden. Most of the hours of the day it was but a dim shadow above a belt of white clouds, but up to its mysterious heights a broken ridge climbed sheer from the valley, and upon it browsed the wild boar and the crag-loving goat.

Beside the house the river brawled through a greenwood of bread-fruit-, cocoanut-, vi-apple-, mango- and lime-trees. The tropical heat distilled from their leaves a drowsy woodland odor which filled the two small whitewashed rooms, and the shadows of the trees, falling through the wide ungla.s.sed windows, made a sun-flecked pattern on the black stone floor. This was the House of Lepers, now rechristened the House of the Golden Bed, which was to be my home through the unknown days before me.

The next day I watched the _Morning Star_ lift her sails and move slowly out of the Bay of Traitors into the open sea, with less regret than I have ever felt in that moment of wistfulness which attends the departure of a sailing-s.h.i.+p. Exploding Eggs, at my side, read correctly my returning eyes. "Kaoha!" he said, with a wide smile of welcome, and with him and Vai, my next-door neighbor, I returned gladly to my _paepae_.

Vai, or in English, Water, was a youth of twenty years, a dandy; on ordinary occasions naked, except for the _pareu_ about his loins, but on Sundays or when courting rejoicing in the gayest of Europeanized clothes. He lived near me in a small house on the river-bank with his mother and sister. All were of a long line of chiefs, and all marvelously large and handsome.

The mother, t.i.tihuti, would have been beloved of the ancient artists who might have drawn her for an Amazon. I have never seen another woman of such superb carriage. Her hair was blood-red, her brow lofty, and an indescribable air of majesty and pride spoke eloquently of her descent from fathers and mothers of power. She had wonderful legs, statuesque in mold, and tattooed from ankles to thigh in most amazing patterns. To a Marquesan of her generation the tattooed legs of a shapely woman were the highest reach of art.

t.i.tihuti was very proud of her legs. Though she was devout Catholic and well aware of the contempt of the church for such vanities, religion could not entirely efface her pride. During the first few days she pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed my cabin in her walks about her household duties, lifting her tunic each day a little higher. Her vanity would no doubt have continued this gradual course, but that one day I came upon her in the river entirely nude. Her gratification was unconcealed; naively she displayed the innumerable whirls and arabesques of her adornment for my compliments, and thereafter she wore only a _pareu_ when at home, entirely dropping alien standards of modesty and her gown.

She said that people came from far valleys to see her legs, and I could readily believe it. It was so with the leg of the late Queen Vaekehu, a leg so perfect in mold and so elaborately and artistically inked that it distinguished her even more than her rank.

Casual whites, especially, considered it a curiosity, and offended her majesty by laying democratic hands upon the masterpiece. I had known a man or two who had seen the queen at home, and who testified warmly to the harmonious blending of flesh color with the candle-nut soot. Among my effects in the House of the Golden Bed I had a photograph showing the multiplicity and fine execution of the designs upon Vaekehu's leg, yet comparing it with the two realities of t.i.tihuti I could not yield the palm to the queen.

The legs of t.i.tihuti were tattooed from toes to ankles with a net-like pattern, and from the ankles to the waistline, where the design terminated in a handsome girdle, there were curves, circles and filigree, all in accord, all part of a harmonious whole, and most pleasing to the eye. The pattern upon her feet was much like that of sandals or high moca.s.sins, indicating a former use of leg-coverings in a cold climate. t.i.tihuti herself, after an anxious inch-for-inch matching of picture and living form, said complacently that her legs were _meitai ae_, which meant that she would not have hesitated to enter her own decorations in beauty compet.i.tion with those of Vaekehu.

Kake, her daughter, had been christened for her mother's greatest charm, for her name means Tattooed to the Loins, though there was not a tattoo mark upon her. She was a beautiful, stately girl of nineteen or twenty, married to a devoted native, to whom, shortly after my arrival, she presented his own living miniature. I was the startled witness of the birth of this babe, the delight of his father's heart.

My neighbors and I had the same bathing hour, soon after daylight, and usually chose the same pool in the clear river. Kake was lying on a mat on their _paepae_ when I pa.s.sed one morning, and when I said "Kaoha" to her she did not reply. Her silence caused me to mount the stairway, and at that moment the child was born.

Half an hour later she joined me in the river, and laughing back at me over her shoulder as she plunged through the water, called that she would give the child my name. That afternoon she was sitting on my _paepae_, a bewitching sight as she held the suckling to her breast and crooned of his forefather's deeds before the white had gripped them.

CHAPTER VI

Visit of Chief Seventh Man Who is So Angry He Wallows in the Mire; journey to Vait-hua on Tahuata island; fight with the devil-fish; story of a cannibal feast and the two who escaped.

"The Iron Fingers That Make Words," the Marquesans called my typewriter. Such a wonder had never before been beheld in the islands, and its fame spread far. From other valleys and even from distant islands the curious came in threes and fours. They watched the strange thing write their names and carefully carried away the bits of paper.

"Aue!" they cried as I showed them my speed, which would be a shame to a typist.

Chiefs especially were my visitors, thinking it proper to their estate and to mine that they should call upon me and invite me to their seats of government.

So it happened that one morning as I sat on my _paepae_ eating a breakfast of roasted breadfruit prepared for me by Exploding Eggs, my naked skin enjoying the warmth of the sun and my ears filled with the bubbling laughter of the brook, I beheld two stately visitors approaching. Exploding Eggs named them to me as they came up the trail.

Both were leading chiefs of the islands. Katu, Piece of Tattooing, of Hekeani, led the way. His severe and dignified face was a dark blue in color. His eyes alone were free from imbedded indigo ink.

They gleamed like white clouds in a blue sky, but their glance was mild and kindly. Sixty years of age, he still walked with upright grace, only the softened contours of his face betraying that he was well in his manhood when his valley was still given over to tribal warfares, orgies, and cannibalism.

Behind him came Neo Afitu Atrien, of Vait-hua, a stocky brown man with a lined face, stubby mustache, and brilliant, intelligent eyes.

He mounted the steps, shook hands heartily, and poured out his informed soul in English.

"Johnny, I spik Ingrish. You Iris'man. You got 'O,' before name. I know you got tipwrite can make machine do pen. I know Panama Ca.n.a.l.

How is Teddy and Gotali?"

I a.s.sured the chief that both Roosevelt and Goethals were well at last account, and he veered to other topics.

"Before time, come prenty whales.h.i.+p my place," he said. "I know geograffy, mappee, grammal. I know Egyptee, Indee, all country; I know Bufflobillee. Before time, whales.h.i.+p come America for take water and wood. Stay two, t'ree week. Every night sailor come ash.o.r.e catchee girls take s.h.i.+p. Prenty rum, biskit, mola.s.si, good American tobbacee. Now all finish. Whales.h.i.+p no more. That is not good."

His name means The Seventh Man Who Is So Angry He Wallows In The Mire.

"Neo" means all but the number, and for so short a word to be translated by so detailed a statement would indicate that there were many Marquesans whose anger tripped them. Else such a word had hardly been born.

I showed the chiefs the marvels of my typewriter, displayed to their respectful gaze the Golden Bed, and otherwise did the honors. As they departed, Neo said earnestly,

"You come see me you have my house. You like, you bring prenty rum, keep warm if rain."

"A wicked man," said Exploding Eggs in Marquesan when the trail lay empty before us. "One time he drink much rum, French gendarme go to arrest him, he bite--" With an eloquent gesture my valet indicated that Neo's teeth had removed in its entirety the nose of the valiant defender of morals. "No good go see him," he added with finality.

However, the prospect intrigued my fancy, and finding a few days later that Ika Vaikoki, whose discerning parents had named him Ugh!

Dried-up Stream! was voyaging toward Vait-hua in a whaleboat, I offered him ten francs and two litres of rum to take me. Remembering Neo's suggestion, I took also two other bottles of rum.

While our whaleboat shot across the Bordelaise Channel pursued by a brisk breeze, Ugh! a wisp of a man of fifty, held the helm. He was for all the world like a Malay pirate; I have seen his double steering a proa off the Borneo coast, slim, high-cheeked, with a sashful of saw-like knives. Ugh! had no weapon, but his eye was a small flaming coal that made me thankful cannibalism is a thing of the past. He had been carried through the surf to his perch upon the stern because one of his legs was useless for walking, but once he grasped the tiller, he was a seaman of skill.

The oarsmen wore turbans of pink, blue, and white muslin to protect their heads from the straight rays of the white sun. Bright-colored _pareus_ were about their loins, and several wore elastic sleeve-holders as ornaments on tawny arms and legs, while one, the son of Ugh! sported earrings, great hoops of gold that flashed in the suns.h.i.+ne. With their dark skins, gleaming eyes, and white teeth, they were a brilliant picture against the dazzling blue of the sea.

Straight across the channel we steered for Hana Hevane, a little bay and valley guarded by sunken coral rocks over which the water foamed in white warning. Two of the men leaped out into the waves and hunted on these rocks for squids, while we beached the boat on a sh.o.r.e uninhabited by any living creature but rats, lizards, and centipedes.

Several small octopi were soon brought in, and one of the men placed them on some boulders where the tide had left pools of water, and cleaned them of their poison. He rubbed them on the stone exactly as a washerwoman handles a flannel garment, and out of them came a lather as though he had soaped them. Suds, bubbles, and froth--one would have said a laundress had been at work there. He dipped them often in a pool of salt water, and not until they would yield no more suds did he give each a final rinsing and throw it on the fire made on the beach. Suddenly a shout broke my absorption in this task.

The son of Ugh! with the gold earrings, waving his arms from amidst the surf on the reef, called to me to come and see a big _feke_. As his companions were dancing about and yelling madly, I left the laundrying of the small sea-devils and splashed two hundred yards through the lagoon to the scene of excitement. Four of the crew had attacked a giant devil-fish, which was hidden in a cave in the rocks.