White Shadows in the South Seas Part 7

Vanquished Often, slipping from her white tunic, stepped beneath the stream of crystal water and laughed at the cool delight of it on her smooth skin. It was a picture of which artist's dream, the naked girl laughing in the torrents of transparent water, the wet crimson blossoms was.h.i.+ng from her drowned hair, and beneath the striped shade of the palm-trunks her simple, savage companions waiting their turn, squatting on the sand or crowded on the canoe, their loins wrapped in crimson and blue and yellow _pareus_. Behind them all the mountains rose steeply, a ma.s.s of brilliant green jungle growth, and before them, across the rim of s.h.i.+ning white sand, spread the wide blue sea.

Courtesy suggested that I should be next to feel the refres.h.i.+ng torrent. We let slip the garment of timorous covering very easily when nudity is commonplace. Vait-hua was to teach me to be modest without pother, to chat with those about me during my ablutions without concern for the false vanities of screens or even the shelter of rocks as in the river in Atuona. In such scenes one perceives that immodesty is in the false shame that makes one cling to clothes, rather than in the simple virtues that walk naked and unashamed.

Tacitus recites that chast.i.ty was a controlling virtue among the Teutons, ranking among women as bravery among men, yet all Teutons bathed in the streams together. In j.a.pan both s.e.xes bathe in public in natural hot pools, and that without diffidence. The j.a.panese, though a people of many clothes, regard nudity with indifference, but use garments to conceal the contour of the human form, while we are horrified by nakedness and yet use dress to enhance the form, especially to emphasize the difference between s.e.xes. Our women's accentuated hips and waistlines shock the j.a.panese, whose loose clothing is the same for men and women, the broader belt and double fold upon the small of the back, the obi, being the only differentiation.

Mohammedan women surprised in bathing cover their faces first; the Chinese, the feet. Good Erasmus, that Dutch theologian, said that "angels abhor nakedness." Devout Europeans of his day never saw their own bodies; if they bathed, they wore a garment covering them from head to feet. Thus standards of clothing vary from age to age and from country to country.

Missionaries bewilder the savage mind by imposing their own standards of the moment and calling them modesty. The African negro, struggling to harmonize these two ideas, wore a tall silk hat and a pair of slippers as his only garments when he obeyed Livingstone's exhortations to clothe himself in the presence of white women.

Vait-hua was all savage; whatever bewilderments the missionaries had brought had faded when dwindling population left the isle to its own people. In the minds of my happy companions at the _vai puna_, modesty had no more to do with clothing than, among us, it had to do with food. The standards of the individual are everywhere formed by the ma.s.s-opinion of those about him; I came from my bath, replaced my garments, and felt myself Marquesan.

The sensation was false. Savage peoples can never understand our philosophy, our complex springs of action. They may ape our manners, wear our ornaments, and seek our company, but their souls remain indifferent. They laugh when we are stolid. They weep when we are unmoved. Their G.o.ds and devils are not ours.

From our side, too, the abyss is impa.s.sable. Civilization with its refinements and complexities has stripped us of the power of complete surrender to simple impulses. The white who would become like a natural savage succeeds only in becoming a beast. "_Plus sauvage que les kanakas_," is a proverb in the islands. Its implications I had occasion to heed ere the evening was ended.

Wrapped only in a gorgeous red _pareu_, I sat on the _paepae_ of the chief's house, now become mine. I was the especial care of Mrs. Seventh Man Who Wallows, who all afternoon long had sat on her haunches over a cocoanut husk fire stirring savory foods for me. Fish, chickens, pigs, eggs, and native delicacies of all kinds she had cooked and sauced so appetizingly that I conferred on her the t.i.tle of "Chefess"

_de Cuisine_, and voiced my suspicions that some deserting cook from a flags.h.i.+p had traded his lore for her kisses. Her laughter was spiced with pride, and the chief himself smilingly nodded and gestured to a.s.sure me that I had guessed right.

Now in the quiet of the evening, empty bowls removed, panda.n.u.s-leaf cigarettes lighted, and pipe pa.s.sing from hand to hand, we sat rejoicing in the sweet odors of the forest, the murmur of the stream, and the ease of contentment. Many elders of the village had come to meet the stranger, to discuss the world and its wonders, and to marvel at the ways of the whites. The glow of the pipe lighted shriveled yet still handsome countenances scrolled with tattooing, and caught gleams from rolling eyes or sparkles from necklace and earring. Above the mountains a full moon rose, flooding the valley with light and fading the brilliant colors of leaf and flower to pale pastel tints.

Vanquished Often sat beside me, her dark hair falling over my knee, and listened respectfully to the conversation of her elders, who discussed the G.o.ds of the stranger.

They wondered what curious motive had impelled the Jews, the _Aati-Ietu_, to kill _Ieto Kirito_ the Savior of the world.

They discussed the strange madness that had possessed _Iuda Iskalota_, that he had first bought land with his forty pieces of silver and then hanged himself to a _purau_ tree. Was it cocoanut land? they asked. Was it not good land?

Often across the worn stones of the _paepae_ stole a _vei_, a centipede, upon which a bare foot quickly stamped. The chief said casually, "If he bite you, you no die; you have h.e.l.l of a time."

They were not natives of the Marquesas originally, he said; they came in the coal of s.h.i.+ps. His patriotism outran his knowledge, for the first discoverers bitterly berated these poisonous creatures, though no more warmly than Neo, who drew heavily upon his stock of English curses to tell his opinion of them.

When the time came for saying _apae kaoha_ my kindly hosts sought to confer upon me the last proof of their friendliness. They proposed that I marry Vanquished Often.

My refusal was incomprehensible to them, and Vanquished Often's happy smile in the moonlight quickly faded to a look of pain and humiliation. They had offered me their highest and most revered expression of hospitality. To refuse it was as uncustomary and as rude as to refuse the Alaskan miner who offers a drink at a public bar.

"_Menike_," pleaded the chief, "that Hinatini more better marry white man, friend of Teddy, from number one island. She some punkins for be good wife. Suppose may be you like Vait-hua you stay long time; suppose you go soon, make never mind!"

The fair chieftess shook her earrings and smiled archly. "Bonne filly pooh voo, Menike," she urged in her Marquesan French.

"Good wife for you. It is my pleasure that you are happy. She is beautiful and good. You will be the son of our people while you are here."

Vanquished Often, who had a vague notion of the greatness of her uncle's Menike friends, Teddy and Gotali, and of the desirability of an alliance with one of their tribe, approached me softly and rubbed my back in a circle the while she crooned a broken song of the whaling days, concerning the "rolling Mississippi" and the "Black Ball line." Seventh Man Who Wallows in the Mire himself began to make concentric circles on my breast with his heavy hand, so that I was beset fore and aft by the most tender and friendly advances of the Marquesan race. Never was hapless guest in more unfortunate plight.

She was but a child, I said; Americans did not mate with children.

They smiled as at a pleasantry, and again extolled her charms.

Desperately I harked back to the ten commandments in an endeavor to support my refusal by other reasons than distaste or discourtesy, but laughter met my text. "White man does not follow white man's _tapus_," said my hostess, gently placing my hand in that of Vanquished Often. The slender fingers clung timorously to mine.

Unhappy Hinatini feared that she was about to be disgraced before her people by the white man's scorn of her beauty.

I was fain to invent a romance upon the spot. I was madly enamoured of an Atuona belle, I said. She waited for me upon my own _paepae_; she was a mighty woman and swift to anger. She would wreak vengeance upon me, and upon Vanquished Often. I would adopt Vanquished Often as my sister. In token of this I pressed my lips upon her forehead and kissed her hands. She smiled bewitchingly, pleased by the novel honor.

My hosts and their friends departed with her, half pleased, half puzzled at this latest whimsy of the strange white, and I lay down upon the mats of the chief's house, with Exploding Eggs lying across the doorway at my feet.

The night brought fitful dreams, and in the darkest hour I woke to feel a frightening thing upon my leg. By the light of the dimly burning lantern I saw a thousand-leg, reddish brown and ten inches long, halting perhaps for breath midway between my knee and waist.

It seemed indeed to have a thousand legs, and each separate foot made impresses of terror on my mind, while each toe and claw clutched my bare flesh with threatening touch.

The brave man of the tale who saves himself from cobra or rattler by letting the serpent crawl its slow way over his perfectly controlled body might have withheld even a quiver of the flesh, but I am no Spartan. At my convulsive shudder each horrid claw gripped a death-hold. In one swift motion I seized a corkscrew that lay nearby, pried loose with a quick jerk every single pede and threw the odious thing a dozen yards. A trail of red, inflamed spots rose where it had stood and remained painful and swollen for days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Idling away the sunny hours]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Nothing to do but rest all day]

Whether it was because this experience became mixed with my first dreams in beautiful Vait-hua, or whether my Celtic blood sees portents where they do not exist, certain it is that as the stealthy charm of that idyllic place grew upon me through the days something within me resisted it. I was ever aware that its beauty concealed a menace deadly to the white man who listened too long to the rustle of its palms and the murmur of its stream.

CHAPTER VIII

Communal life; sport in the waves; fight of the sharks and the mother whale; a day in the mountains; death of Le Capitaine Halley; return to Atuona.

Life in Vait-hua was idyllic. The whites, having desolated and depopulated this once thronged valley, had gone, leaving the remnant of its people to return to their native virtue and quietude. Here, perhaps more than in any other spot in all the isles, the Marquesan lived as his forefathers had before the whites came.

Doing nothing sweetly was an art in Vait-hua. Pleasure is nature's sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment. The people of this quiet valley did not crave excitement. The bustle and nervous energy of the white wearied them excessively. Time was never wasted, to their minds, for leisure was the measure of its value.

Domestic details, the preparation of food, the care of children, the nursing of the sick, were the tasks of all the household. Husband and wife, or the mates unmarried, labored together in delightful unity. Often the woman accompanied her man into the forests, a.s.sisting in the gathering of nuts and breadfruit, in the fis.h.i.+ng and the building. When these duties did not occupy them, or when they were not together bathing in the river or at the _via puna_, they sat side by side on their _paepaes_ in meditation. They might discuss the events of the day, they might receive the visits of others, or go abroad for conversation; but for hours they often were wrapped in their thoughts, in a silence broken only by the rolling of their panda.n.u.s cigarettes or the lighting of the mutual pipe.

"Of what are you thinking?" I said often to my neighbors when breaking in upon their meditation.

"Of the world. Of those stars," they replied.

They would sympathize with that Chinese traveler who, visiting America and being hurried from carriage to train, smiled at our idea of catching the fleeting moment.

"We save ten minutes by catching this train," said his guide, enthusiastically.

"And what will you do with that ten minutes?" demanded the Chinese.

To be busy about anything not necessary to living is, in Marquesan wisdom, to be idle.

Swimming in the surf, lolling at the _via puna_, angling from rock or canoe or fis.h.i.+ng with line and spear outside the bay, searching for sh.e.l.l-fish, and riding or walking over the hills to other valleys, filled their peaceful, pleasant days. A dream-like, care-free life, lived by a people sweet to know, handsome and generous and loving.

That he never saw or heard of the slightest quarrel between individuals was the statement a century ago of Captain Porter, the American. Then as now the most perfect harmony prevailed among them.

They lived like affectionate brothers of one family, he said, the authority of the chiefs being only that of fathers among children.

They had no mode of punishment for there were no offenders. Theft was unknown, and all property was left unguarded. So Porter, who, with his s.h.i.+p's company, killed so many Marquesans, was fully aware of their civic virtues, their kindness, gentleness and generosity.

It is so to-day, in Vait-hua where the whites are not. I have had my trousers lifted from my second-story room in a Manila hotel by the eyed and fingered bamboo of the Tagalog _ladron_, while I washed my face, and stood aghast at the mystery of their disappearance with door locked, until looking from my lofty window I beheld them moving rapidly down an _estero_ in a _banca_. I have given over my watch to a gendarme in Cairo to forfend arrest for having beaten an Arab who tripped me to pick my pocket, and I have surrendered to the rapacity of a major-general-uniformed official in Italy, who would incarcerate me for not having a tail-light lit. In San Francisco, when robbed upon the public street, I have listened while the police suggested that I offer a fee to the "king of the dips" and a reward to certain saloonkeepers to intercede with the unknown-to-me highwaymen for the return of an heirloom.

Yet through the darkest nights in Vait-hua I slept serenely, surrounded by all the possessions so desirable in the eyes of my neighbors, in a house the doors of which were never fastened. There was not a lock in all the village, or anything that answered the purpose of one. The people of this isolated valley, forgetting their brief encounter with the European idea of money and of the acc.u.mulation of property, had reverted to the ways of their fathers.

Before interference with their natural customs the Marquesans were communists to a large degree. Their only private property consisted of houses, weapons, ornaments, and clothing, for the personal use of the owner himself. All large works, such as the erection of houses, the building of large canoes, and, in ancient days, the raising of _paepaes_ and temples, were done by mutual cooperation; though each family provided its own food and made provision for the future by storing breadfruit in the _popoi_ pits. Neo, like the long line of chiefs before him, had gathered a little more of the good things of life than had the majority, but he was in no sense a dictator, except as personality won obedience. In the old days a chief was often relegated to the ranks for failure in war, and always for an overbearing att.i.tude toward the commoners. Such arrogant fellows were kicked out of the seat of power unceremoniously.

"Our pure republican policy approaches so near their own," said the American naval captain, Porter, a hundred years ago.