Mystic Isles of the South Seas Part 11

Your voice, O, Love, calls to us.

O Tahitian children, Love to you!

Let us all drink beer, And wet our throats!

And wet them again To you, Tahitian Children!

The bandsmen were probably all related to Llewellyn, or at least they were of his mother's clan. His own son and nephew by unmarried mothers were among them; so that they were of our party, and yet on a different footing. They were our guests, we paying them nothing, but they not paying their scot. They did not mingle with us intimately, although probably all the whites except myself knew them well, and at times were guests at their houses outside Papeete.

The air to which the himene was sung eluded me for long. It was, "Oh, You Beautiful Doll!" They had changed the tune, so that I had not recognized it. The Tahitians have curious variations of European and American airs, of which they adapt many, carrying the thread of them, but differentiating enough to cause the hearer curiously mixed emotions. It was as if one heard a familiar voice, and, advancing to grasp a friendly hand, found oneself facing a stranger.

None of these island peoples originally had any music save monotones. In fact, in Hawaii, after the missionaries, Kappelmeister Berger, who came fifty years ago from Germany to Honolulu, was largely the maker of the songs we know now as distinctively Hawaiian. He fitted German airs to Hawaiian words, composed music on native themes, and spontaneously and by adaptation he, with others, gave a trend to the music of Hawaii nei that, though European in the main, is yet charmingly expressive of the soft, sweet nature of the Hawaiians and of the contrasts of their delightful gaiety and innate melancholy. These native tongues of the South Seas, with their many vowels and short words, seem to be made for singing.

The voyage from Tahiti to Moorea was a two-hours' panorama of magnificence and anomalism in the architecture of nature. Facing my goal was Moorea, and behind me Tahiti, scenes of contrary beauty as the vessel changed the distance from me to them. Tahiti, as I left it, was under the rays of the already high sun, a s.h.i.+mmering beryl, blue and yellow hues in the overpowering green ma.s.s, and from the loftiest crags floating a long streamer-cloud, the cloud-banner of Tyndal.

Moorea was the most astonis.h.i.+ng sight upon the ocean that my eyes had ever gazed on. It was as if a mountain of black rock had been carved by the sons of Ura.n.u.s, the mighty t.i.tans of old, into gigantic fortresses, which the lightnings, temblors, and whirlwinds of the eons had rent into ruins. Its heights were not green like Tahiti's, but bare and black, true children of the abysmal cataclysm which in the time of the making of these oases of the sea thrust them up from the fires of the deep.

Far up near the peak of Afareaitu, nearly a mile above the wave, in one of the colossal splinters of the basalt rocks, was an eye, an immense round hole through which the sky shone. One saw it plainly from Tahiti. It was made by the giant Pai of Tautira when he threw his spear a dozen miles and pierced a window in the solid granite that all might know his prowess. One felt like a fool to rehea.r.s.e to a Tahitian, telling one the tale, the statement of scientists that the embrasure had been worn by water when Afareaitu was under the ocean during its million-year process of rising from the mud. It would be like asking Flammarion, the wisest of French astronomers, to cease believing in the mystery of transubstantiation. He would smile as would the autochthon.

There was one picture in murky monochrome which never could be forgotten--a long sierra of broken pinnacles and crags which had all the semblance of a weathered and dismantled castle. It stood out against the tender blue of the morning sky like the ancient stronghold of some grisly robber-baron of medieval days; towers of dark sublimity, battlements whence invaders might have been hurled a thousand feet to death, slender minarets, escarpments and rugged cas.e.m.e.nts through which fleecy clouds peeped from the high horizon. I once saw along the Mediterranean in Italy or France the fastness of a line of n.o.bles, set away up on a lonely hill, glowering, gloomy, and unpeopled, the refuge, mayhap, of the mountain goat, the abiding-place of bats and other creatures of the night. Moorea's fortress conjured up the vision of it, its wondrous ramparts and unscalable precipices strangely the counterpart of the Latin castle.

But if one dropped one's eyes from the hills, gone was the recollection of aught of Europe. There was a scene which only the lavish colors of the tropics could furnish. The artist had spilled all his shades of green upon the palette, and so delicately blended them that they melted into one another in a very enchantment of green. The valleys were but darker variants of the emerald scheme.

The confused ma.s.s of lofty ridges resolved into chasms and combes, dark, sunless ravines, moist with the spray of many waterfalls, which nearer became velvet valleys of pale green, ma.s.ses of foliage and light and shadow. The mountains of Moorea were only half the height of Tahiti's, but so artfully had they been piled in their fantastic arrangement that they seemed as high, though they were entirely different in their impress upon the beholder. Tahiti from the sea was like a living being, so vivid, so palpitating was its contour and its color, but Moorea, when far away, was cold and black, a beautiful, ravis.h.i.+ng sight, but like the avatars of a race of giants that had pa.s.sed, a sepulcher or monument of their achievements and their end.

As about Tahiti, a silver belt of reef took the rough caresses of the lazy rollers, and let the glistening surf break gently on the beach. Along this wall of coral, hidden, but charted by its crown of foam, we ran for miles until we found the gateway--the blue buckle of the belt, it appeared at a distance.

Within the lagoon the guise of the island was more intimate. Little bays and inlets bounded themselves, and villages and houses sprang up from the tropic groves. The band, which so far as I knew had not been silent a moment to awaken me from my adoration of the sculpture and painting of nature, now poured out the "Himene Tatou Arearea" in token of our approaching landing, which was at Faatoai, the center of population. All its hundred or two inhabitants were at the tiny dock to greet us, except the Chinese, who stayed in their stores.

Headed by the pipe and accordion, the bra.s.s and wood, now playing "Onward, Christian Soldier,"--which, if one forgot the words, was an especially carnal melody,--we tramped, singing a parody, through the street of Faatoai, and into a glorious cocoanut grove, where breakfast was spread.

A pavilion had been erected for our feasting. It was of bamboo and panda.n.u.s, the interior lined with tree ferns and great bunches of scarlet oleander, and decorated with a deep fringe woven of hibiscus fiber. The roof was a thatch of panda.n.u.s and breadfruit leaves, the whole structure, light, flimsy, but a gamut of golds and browns in color and cool and beautiful.

A table fifty feet or longer was made of bamboo, the top of twenty half sections of the rounded tubes, polished by nature, but slippery for bottles and gla.s.ses. A bench ran on both sides, and underfoot was the deep-green vegetation that covers every foot of ground in Moorea except where repeated footfalls, wheels, or labor kills it, and which is the rich stamp of tropic fertility.

The barrels of beer were unheaded, the demi-johns from Bordeaux were uncorked, and from the opened bottles the sugary odor of Tahiti rum permeated the hot air. The captain of the Potii Moorea and the hired steward began to set the table for the dejeuner and to prepare the food, some of which was being cooked a few feet away by the steward's kin. The guests disposed themselves at ease to wait for the call to meat, the bandsmen lit cigarettes and tuned their instruments or talked over their program, while they wetted their throats with the rum, as admonished by the "Himene Tatou Arearea."

I strolled down the road along the sh.o.r.e of the lagoon. Here was erected the first Christian church in this archipelago. British Protestant missionaries, who had led a precarious life in Tahiti, and fled from it to Australia in fear of their lives, were induced to come here and establish a mission. The King of Tahiti, Pomare, had fled to Moorea after a desperate struggle with opposing clans, and he welcomed the preachers as additions to his strength. The high priest of the district, Patii, collected all the G.o.ds under his care, and they were burned, with a Bible in sight, to the exceeding fear of the native heathen, and the holy anger of the other native clergy, who felt as Moses did when he saw his disciples wors.h.i.+ping a golden calf. On the very spot I stood had been the marae, or Tahitian temple, in which the images were housed, now a rude heap of stones. A hundred years ago exactly this exchange of deities had been made. Alas! it could not have been the true Christ who was brought to them, for they had flourished mightily under Oro, and they began almost at once to die. Not peace, but a sword, a sword of horrors, of frightful ills, was brought them.

There was a little canoe under a n.o.ble cocoanut-tree on the sh.e.l.l-strewn and crab-haunted coral beach, the roots of the palm partly covered by the salt water, and partly by a tangle of lilac marine convolvulus. I pushed the tiny craft into the brine, and paddled off on the still water of the s.h.i.+ning lagoon.

No faintest agitation of the surface withheld a clear view of the marvelous growths upon the bottom. I peered into a garden of white and vari-colored flowers of stone, of fans and vases and grotesque shapes, huge sponges and waving bushes and stunted trees. Fish of a score of shapes and of all colors of the spectrum wove in and out the branches and caverns of this wondrous parterre.

Past the creamy reef the purple ocean glittered in the nooning sun, while the motionless waters of the lagoon were turquoise and bice near by and virescent in the distance. Looking toward the sh.o.r.e, the edge of milky coral sand met the green matting of moss and gra.s.s, and then the eye marked the fields of sugar-cane, the forests of false coffee on which grew the vanilla-vines, the groves of cocoanuts, and then the fast-climbing ridges and the glorious ravines, the misty heights and the grim crags.

Chapter IX

The Arearea in the pavilion--Raw fish and baked feis--Llewellyn, the Master of the Revel; Kelly, the I.V.W., and His Himene--The Upaupahura--Landers and Mamoe prove experts--The return to Papeete.

The company was a.s.sembled in the pavilion when I walked through the streets of Faatoai again, and the food was on the bamboo table. One might have thought the feast would have been spread on soft mats on the sward, as is the Tahitian custom, but these whites are perverse and proud, and their legs unbending to such a position.

We had raw fish cut up, with bowls of cocoanut sauce. It was delicious in taste, but raw fish is tough and at first hard to chew until one becomes accustomed to the texture. Whites learn to crave it.

This fish was cut in small pieces thicker and bigger than a domino, and steeped in fresh lime-juice for half a day. The sauce was made by pouring a cup of seawater over grated cocoanuts and after several hours' straining through the fiber of young cocoanut shoots. It was thick, like rich cream.

We had excellent raw oysters and raw clams on the sh.e.l.l, crabs stewed with a wine sauce that was delicious, fish, boiled chicken, and baked pig. I had not tasted more appetizing food. It was all cooked in the native fas.h.i.+on on hot stones above or under ground. We saw the pig's disinterment. On the brink of the stream which flowed past the bower the oven had been made. The cooks, Moorea men, removed a layer of earth that had been laid on cocoa-palm leaves. This was the cover of the oven. Immediately below the leaves were yams and feis and under them a layer of banana leaves. The pig came next. It had been cut into pieces as big as mutton-chops and had cooked two and a half hours. It was on stones, coral, under which the fire of wood had been thoroughly ignited, the stones heated, and then the different layers placed above. The pig was tender, succulent, and the yams and feis finely flavored.

The two native men, in pareus, and with crowns of scarlet hibiscus, waited on us, while the son of Llewellyn uncorked the bottles. As usual, the beverages were lavishly dispensed, beginning with Scotch whisky as an appetizer, and following with claret, sauterne, vintage Burgundy, and a champagne that would have pleased Paris. These more expensive beverages were for us hosts only.

We were an odd company: Llewellyn, a Welsh-Tahitian; Landers, a British New-Zealander; McHenry, Scotch-American; Polonsky, Polish-French; Schlyter, the Swedish tailor; David, an American vanilla-grower; "Lying Bill," English; and I, American. There was little talk at breakfast. They were trenchermen beyond compare, and the dishes were emptied as fast as filled. These men have no gifts of conversation in groups. Though we had only one half-white of the party, Llewellyn, he to a large degree set the pace of words and drink. In him the European blood, of the best in the British Isles, arrested the abandon of the aborigine, and created a hesitant blend of dignity and awkwardness. He was a striking-looking man, very tall, slender, about fifty years old, swarthy, with hair as black as night, and eyebrows like small mustaches, the eyes themselves in caverns, usually dull and dour, but when he talked, spots of light. I thought of that Master of Ballantrae of Stevenson's, though for all I remember he was blond. Yet the characters of the two blended in my mind, and I tried to match them the more I saw of him. He was born here, and after an education abroad and a sowing of wild oats over years of life in Europe, had lived here the last twenty-five years. He was in trade, like almost every one here, but I saw no business instincts or habits about him. One found him most of the time at the Cercle Bougainville, drinking sauterne and siphon water, shaking for the drinks, or playing ecarte for five francs a game.

Below the salt sat his son and his nephew, men of twenty-five years, but sons of Tahitian mothers, and without the culture or European education of their fathers. With them two chauffeurs were seated. One of these, an American, the driver for Polonsky, had tarried here on a trip about the world, and was persuaded to take employment with Polonsky. The other was a half-caste, a handsome man of fifty, whose employer treated him like a friend.

Breakfast lasted two hours for us. For the band it kept on until dinner, for they did not leave the table from noon, when we sat down, until dark. When they did not eat, they drank. Occasionally one of us slipped down and took his place with them. I sat with them half an hour, while they honored me with "Johnny Burrown," "The Good, Old Summertime," and "Everybody Doin' It."

The heavy leads of the band were carried by an American with a two-horsepower accordion. He told me his name was Kelly. He was under thirty, a resolute, but gleesome chap, red-headed, freckled, and unrestrained by anybody or anything. He had no respect for us, as had the others, and had come, he said, for practice on his instrument. He had a song-book of the Industrial Workers of the World, a syndicalistic group of American laborers and intellectuals, and in it were scores of popular airs accompanied by words of dire import to capitalists and employers. One, to the tune of "Marching through Georgia," threatened destruction to civilization in the present concept.

"I'm an I. W. W.," said Kelly to me, with a sh.e.l.l of rum in his hand. "I came here because I got tired o' bein' pinched. Every town I went to in the United States I denounced the police and the rotten government, and they throwed me in the calaboose. I never could get even unlousy. I came here six weeks ago. It's a little bit of all right."

When Kelly played American or English airs and the Tahitians sang their native words, he gave the I. W. W. version in English. Some of these songs were transpositions or parodies of Christian hymns, and one in particular was his favorite. Apparently he had made it very popular with the natives of the band, for it vied with the "Himene Tatou Arearea" in repet.i.tion. It was a crude travesty of a hymn much sung in religious camp-meetings and revivals, of which the proper chorus as often heard by me in Harry Monroe's mission in the Chicago slums, was:

Hallelujah! Thine the glory! Hallelujah! Amen!

Hallelujah! Thine the glory! revive us again!

Kelly's version was:

Hallelujah! I'm a b.u.m! Hallelujah! b.u.m again!

Hallelujah! Give us a hand-out! To save us from sin.

He had the stanzas, burlesquing the sacred lines, one of which the natives especially liked:

Oh, why don't you work, as other men do?

How the h.e.l.l can we work when there 's no work to do?

None of us had ever heard Kelly's songs, nor had any one but I ever heard of his industrial organization, and I only vaguely, having lived so many years out of America or Europe. But they all cheered enthusiastically except Llewellyn. He was an Anglican by faith or paternal inheritance, and though he knew nothing of the real hymns, they being for Dissenters, whom he contemned, he was religious at soul and objected to making light of religion. He called for the "Himene Tatou Arearea." He took his pencil and scribbled the translation I have given.

"This is the rough of it," he said. "To write poetry here is difficult. When I was at Heidelberg and Paris I often spent nights writing sonnets. That merely tells the sense of the himene, but cannot convey the joy or sorrow of it. Well, let's sink dull care fifty fathoms deep! Look at those band-boys! So long as they have plenty of rum or beer or wine and their instruments, they care little for food. Watch them. Now they are dry and inactive. Wait till the alcohol wets them, They will touch the sky."

Llewellyn's deep-set eyes under the beetling brows were lighting with new fires.

His idea of inactivity and drought was sublimated, for the musicians were never still a moment. They played mostly syncopated airs of the United States, popular at the time. All primitive people, or those less advanced in civilization or education, prefer the rag-time variants of the American negro or his imitators, to so-called good or cla.s.sical music. It is like simple language, easily understood, and makes a direct appeal to their ears and their pa.s.sions. It is the slang or argot of music, hot off the griddle for the average man's taste, without complexities or stir to musing and melancholy.