Mystic Isles of the South Seas Part 17

"The Chinese merchants of Papeete were objects of disgust and horror to the natives. There was no greater shame than for a young woman to be convicted of listening to the gallantries of one of them. But the Chinese were wicked and rich, and it was notorious that several of them, by means of presents and money, had obtained clandestine favors which made amends to them for public scorn."

Had Admiral Julien Viaud returned now to Tahiti, he would have found the Chinese stores thronged by the handsomest girls, their restaurants thriving on their charms, and the Chinese the possessors of the pick of the lower and middle cla.s.ses of young women. Ah Sin is persistent; he has no sense of Christian shame, and as in the Philippines, he dresses his women gaily, and wins their favors despite his evil reputation, his ugliness, and his being despised.

At the Cercle Bougainville I saw more than one Chinese playing cards and drinking. These were Chinese who had made money, and who in the give and take of business have pushed themselves into the club of the other merchants, who feared and watched them.

Women were not allowed in barrooms in Papeete. The result was that they went to the Chinese restaurants and coffee-houses to drink beer and wine at tables, as legalized. A concomitant of this was that men went to these places to meet women, and further that women were retained or persuaded by the Chinese to frequent their places so as to stimulate the sale of intoxicants. The Chinese restaurants naturally became a.s.signation houses.

Walking back, late in the afternoon, from the joss-house, we met Lovaina in her automobile, with the American negro chauffeur, William, and Temanu, Atupu, and Iromea. She invited me to accompany them to swim in the Papenoo River, a few miles towards Point Venus. Other guests of the Tiare Hotel came in hired cars, and twenty or thirty joined in the bath. The river was a small flood, rains having swelled it so that a current of five or six knots swept one off one's feet and down a hundred and fifty feet before one could seize the limb of an overhanging tree. We undressed in the bushes, and the men wore only pareus, while the girls had an extra gown. They were expert swimmers, climbing into the tops of the trees, and hurling themselves with screams into the water. They struck it in a sitting posture making great splashes and reverberations. Their muslin slips outlined their strong bodies, so that they were like veiled G.o.ddesses, their brownblack hair floating free, as they leaped or fought and tumbled with the tide. We stayed an hour at this sport, joined when school was dismissed by all the youth of Papenoo. Under twelve they bathed naked, but those older wore pareus.

It was hard to keep on a pareu in a swift-running stream unless one knew how to tie it. I lost mine several times, and had to grope shamefacedly in the race for it, until finally Lovaina made the proper knots and turned it into a diaper.

"I not go swim now," she said regretfully, "'cep' some night-time. Too big. Before I marry, eighteen seven'y-nine, and before my three children grow up, I swim plenty then."

"Lovaina," I said, "it was hardly eighteen seventynine you were married. You are only forty-three now. Was it not eighty-nine?"

"Mus' be," she replied thoughtfully. "I nineteen when marry. My father give me that house, now Tiare Hotel, for weddin' present. All furnish. You should see that marry! My G.o.d! there was bottle in yard all broken. Admiral French fleet send band; come hisself with all his officer'. Five o'clock mornin'-time still dance and drink. Bigges'

time T'ytee. You not walk barefoot long time 'count broken gla.s.s everywhere."

I had heard that delicious incident before, but it never lost savor.

After dinner and a prolonged session upon the camphor-wood chest to hear Lovaina's chatter, I came leisurely to the Annexe along the sh.o.r.e of the lagoon. It was after midnight, and the heavens sang with stars as the ripe moon dipped into the western sea.

The tropics only know the fullness of the firmament, the myriad of suns and planets, the brilliancy of the constellations, and the overpowering revelation of the infinite above. In less fervent lat.i.tudes one can never feel the bigness of the vault on high, nor sense the intimacy one had here with the worlds that spin in the measureless ether.

Two lofty-sparred s.h.i.+ps but newly from the California coast swung at moorings within a dozen feet of the gra.s.s that borders the coral banks, and on their decks, under the light of lamps, American sailors lifted a shanty of the rolling Mississippi. I remembered when I had first heard it. I was a boy, and had stolen away on a bark, the Julia Rollins, bound for Rio, and as we hauled in the line let go by the tow-boat, a seaman raised the bowline song. To me, with "Two Years Before the Mast" and Clark Russell's galley yarns churning in my mind, it was sweeter far than ever siren voiced to lure her victims to their death, and rough and tarry as was the shanty-man, Caruso had never seemed to me such a glorious figure.

This fascination of the sea and of its border had never left me, though I had pa.s.sed years on s.h.i.+ps and nearly all my life within sound of the surf. It is as strong as ever, holding me thrall in the sight of its waters and its freights, and unhappy when denied them. Best of all literature I love the stories of old ocean, and glad am I

That such as have no pleasure For to praise the Lord by measure, They may enter into galleons and serve him on the sea.

In Tahiti the sea was very near and meant much. One felt toward it as must the mountaineer who lives in the shadow of the Matterhorn; it was always part of one's thoughts, for all men and things came and went by it, and the great world lay beyond it.

But dear or near as the sea might be to such a man as I, a mere traveler upon it to reach a goal, to the Tahitian it was life and road and romance, too. Legends of it filled the memories of those old ones who, though in tattered form, preserved yet awhile the deeds of daring of their fathers and the terrors of storm and sea monster, of long journeys in frail canoes, of discoveries and conquerings, of brides taken from other peoples, and of the G.o.ds and devils who were in turn masters of the deep.

Once a Tahitian stopped the sun as it sank beyond Moorea not to wage war, as Joshua, but to please his old mother. The sea and the heavens are brothers to the Tahitian. The sky had two great tales for him--guidance for his craft and prophecies for his soul; but he did not inhabit it with his G.o.ds or his dead, as do Christians and other religionists, for the mountains, the valleys, and the caves were the abiding-places of spirits, and the Tahitian had named only those stars which blazed forth most vividly or served him as compa.s.s on the sea. He did, however, mark the various phases of the sky, and in his musical tongue named them with particularity.

The firmament is te ao, te rai, and the atmosphere te reva, and when peaceful, raiatea. This is the name of one of the most beautiful islands of this Society group, "Raiatea la Sacree," it is called, "Raiatea the Blessed," and its own serenity is betokened in its name.

E hau maru, e maru to oe rai E topara, te Mahana I Ra' i-atea nei!

So ran the rhyme of Raiatea:

Full of a sweet peace, serene thy sky; Bright are all thy days At Raiatea here.

Rai poia or poiri, they say for the gloomy heavens, and rai maemae when threatening, parutu when cloudy, moere if clear; if the clouds presage wind, tutai vi. The sunset is tooa o te ra, and the twilight marumarupo.

The night is te po or te rui, and the moment before the sun rises marumaru ao. A hundred other words and phrases differentiate the conditions of sky and air. I learned them from Afa and Evoa and others.

The moon is te marama, and the full moon vaevae. Mars is fetia ura, the red star; the Pleiades are Matarii, the little eyes; and the Southern Cross, Tauha, Fetia ave are the comets, the "stars with a tail," and the meteors pao, opurei, patau, and pitau.

The moon was gone, but the stars needed no help, for they shone as if the trump of doom were due at dawn, and they should be no more. Blue and gold, a cathedral ceiling with sanctuary lamps hung high, the dome of earth sparkled and glittered, and on the schooners by the Cercle Bougainville himenes of joy rang out on the soft air.

I pa.s.sed them close, so close that a girl of Huahine who was dancing on the deck of the Mihimana seized me by the arm and embraced me.

"Come back, stranger!" she cried in Tahitian. "There is pleasure here, and the night is but just begun."

A dozen island schooners swayed in the gentle breeze, their stays humming softly, their broadsides separated from the quays by just a dozen or twenty feet, as if they feared to risk the seduction of the land, and felt themselves safer parted from the sh.o.r.e. On all the street-level verandas, the entrances to the shops and the restaurants, the hundreds of natives who had not wanted other lodging slept as children in cradles until they should rise for coffee before the market-bell.

From the Chinese shop at the corner the strains of a Canton actor's falsetto, with the squeak of the Celestial fiddles issued from a phonograph, but so real I fancied I was again on Shameen, listening over the Canton River to the noises of the night, the music, and the singsong girls of the silver combs.

I went on, and met the peanut-man. He sold me two small bags of roasted goobers for eight sous. He wore the brown, oilskin-like, two-piece suit of the Chinese of southern China, and he had no teeth and no hair, and his eyes would not stay open. He had to open them with his fingers, so that most of the time he was blind; but he counted money accurately, and he had a tidy bag of silver and coppers strapped to his stomach. He looked a hundred years old.

When I paid for the two bags, he raised his lids, believed that I was a speaker of English, and said, "Fine businee!"

As I went past the queen's palace, the two mahus were chanting low, as they sat on the curbing, and they glanced coquettishly at me, but asked only for cigarettes. I gave them a package of Marinas, made in the Faubourg Bab-el-oued, in Algiers, and they said "Maruru"

and "Merci" in turn and in unison. Strange men these, one bearded and handsome, the other slender and in his twenties, their dual natures contrasting in their broad shoulders and their swaying hips, their men's pareus and s.h.i.+rts, and bits of lace lingerie. I met them half a dozen times a day, and as I was now known as a resident, not the idler of a month, they bowed in hope of recognition.

In the Annexe all was quiet, but in the great sailing canoe of Afa, on the gra.s.s by the water, there were two girls smoking and humming, and waiting for the cowboy and the prize-fighter who lived beside me, and who were dancing to-night at Fa'a. Like Indians, these Tahitians, especially the women, would sit and watch and wait for hours on hours, and make no complaint, if only their dear one--dear mayhap for only a night--came at last.

I was awakened from happy sleep by the cries of a frightened woman, confused with outlandish, savage sounds. I lit my lamp and leaned over the balcony. Under a flamboyant-tree was a girl defending herself from the attack of Vava. She was screaming in terror, and the Dummy, a giant in strength, was holding her and grunting his b.e.s.t.i.a.l laugh. I threw the rays full in his face, and he looked up, saw me, and ran away up the beach, yelping like a frustrated beast. In voice and action he resembled an animal more than any human I had ever seen. The guilelessness and cunning of child and fiend were in his dumb soul.

Chapter XII

The princess suggests a walk to the falls of Fautaua, where Loti went with Rarahu--We start in the morning--The suburbs of Papeete--The Pool of Loti--The birds, trees and plants--A swim in a pool--Arrival at the cascade--Luncheon and a siesta--We climb the height--The princess tells of Tahitian women--The Fashoda fright.

The falls of Fautaua, famed in Tahitian legend, are exquisite in beauty and surrounding, and so near Papeete that I walked to them and back in a day. Yet hardly any one goes there. For those who have visited them they remain a shrine of loveliness, wondrous in form and unsurpa.s.sed in color. Before the genius of Tahiti was smothered in the black and white of modernism, the falls and the valley in which they are, were the haunt of lovers who sought seclusion for their pledgings.

A princess accompanied me to them. She was not a daughter of a king or queen, but she was near to royalty, and herself as aristocratic in carriage and manner as was Oberea, who loved Captain Cook. I danced with her at a dinner given by a consul, and when I spoke to her of Loti's visit to Fautaua with Rarahu, she said in French:

"Why do you not go there yourself with a Rarahu! Loti is old and an admiral, and writes now of Egypt and Turkey and places soiled by crowds of people, but Rarahu is still here and young. Shall I find you her?"

I looked at her and boldly said:

"I am a stranger in your island, as was Loti when he met Rarahu. Will you not yourself show me Fautaua?"

She gave a shrill cry of delight, and in the frank, sweet way of the Tahitian girl replied:

"We will run away to-morrow morning. Wear little, for it will be warm, and bring no food!"

"I will obey you literally," I said, "and you must find manna or charm ravens to bring us sustenance."