Mystic Isles of the South Seas Part 32

Again Tiura spoke of the Scorpion in the sky, and I knew he desired to talk of Pipiri Ma. The other Tahitians were already under the roof on their backs, upon the soft bed of dried leaves gathered by them for all of us, but the long, lean physician listened with unabated interest. He had run away for a change from the desert-like interior of his vast island, where he treated the ills of a large territory of sheep-herders, and to be on this mountain under such a benignant canopy, and to hear the folk-lore of the most fascinating race on earth, was to him worth foregoing sleep all night.

Tiura a.s.sumed a serious pose for the divulgement of secret lore. His language became grandiose, as if he repeated verbatim a rune of his ancestors:

"We Maoris lived at that time in the great peace of our long, quiet years. No outside influence, no evil wind, troubled our dreams. The men and women were hinuhinu, of high souls. At the head of the valley, in a grove of breadfruit, lived Taua a Tiaroroa, his vahine Rehua, and their two children, whose bodies were as round as the breadfuit, and whose eyes were like the black borders of the pearl-sh.e.l.ls of the Conquered atolls. They were named Pipiri and Rehua iti, but were known as Pipiri Ma, the inseparables. One night when the moon, Avae, was at the height of its brilliancy, Taua and Rehua trod the green path to the sea. They lifted their canoe from its couch upon the gra.s.s, and with lighted torch of cocoanut-leaves glided toward the center of the lagoon.

"The woman stood motionless at the prow, and from her right hand issued the flames of their torch with a hissing sound--the flames which fell later in smoky clouds along the sh.o.r.e. A mult.i.tude of fish of strange form, fascinated by the blinding light, swam curiously about the canoe like b.u.t.terflies. Taua stopped padpling, and directed his twelve-p.r.o.nged harpoon toward the biggest fish. With a quick and powerful stroke the heavy harpoon shot like an arow from his hand and pierced the flas.h.i.+ng scales. Soon the baskets of purau-fiber were filled, and they took back the canoe to its resting-place, and returned to their house, again treading the emerald trail which shone bright under the flooding moon. On the red-hot stones of the umu the fish grew golden, and sent forth a sweet odor which exceeded in deliciousness even the smell of monoi, the ointment of the oil of the cocoanut and crushed blossoms. Pipiri Ma rolled upon their soft mats, and their eyes opened with thoughts of a bountiful meal. They awaited with hearts of joy the moment when their mother would come to take them to the cook-house, the fare umu.

"The parents did not come to them. The minutes pa.s.sed slowly in the silence, counted by beats of their hearts. Yet their mother was not far away. They heard the noise of the dried purau-leaves as they were placed on the gra.s.s. They distinguished the sound of the breadfruit as they rolled dully upon the large leaves, and then the silvery sound of cups filled with pape miti and the miti noanoa from which a pleasant aroma arose. They heard also the freeing of the cocoanuts from their hairy covering to release their limpid nectar. On their mats the children became restless and began to cry. Their eyes filled with bitter tears, and their throats choked with painful sobs.

"'All is ready,' said Rehua, gladly, to her husband, 'but before we eat, go and wake our little ones so dear to us.'

"Taua was afraid to break the sweet sleep of the babies. He hesitated and said:

"'No, do not let us wake them. They sleep so soundly now.'

"Pipiri Ma heard these touching words of their father. Why was he afraid to wake them to-night when always they ate the fish with their parents--the fish just from the sea and golden from the umu? Had the love of their father been so soon lost to them, as under the foul breath of a demon that may have wandered about their home?

"Taua eats and enjoys his meal, but Rehua is distracted. A cloud gathers on her brow, and her eyes, full of sadness, are always toward the house where the children are sleeping. The meal finished, she, with her husband, hurry to the mats on which the children slept, but the little ones had heard the noise of their feet upon the dewy leaves.

"'Haere atu! Let us go!' said the brother to the sister. The door is closed, and with his slender arms he parts the light bamboo palings which surround the house, and both flee through the opening.

"A long time they wandered. They followed the reaches of the valley. They dipped their bruised feet in the amorous river that sang as it crept toward the ocean. They broke through the twisted brush which was shadowed by the giant leaves, and while they so hurried they heard often the words of their parents, which the echoes of the valley brought to their ears:

"'Come back! Come back to us, Pipiri Ma! Ma! Haere mai, haere mai, Pipiri Ma!'

"And they called back from the depths of their bosoms, 'No, no; we will never come back. The torchlight fis.h.i.+ng will again yield the children nothing.'

"They hid themselves on the highest mountains which caress the sky with their misty locks. They climbed with great difficulty the lower hills from which they looked down on the houses as small as a sailing canoe on the horizon. They came upon a dark cave where the tupapaus made their terrible noises, and in this cavern dwelt a tahu, a sorcerer. They were afraid, but the sorcerer was kind, and when he awoke, spoke so softly to them they thought they heard the sough of the hupe, the wind of the night, out of the valley below them.

"When he spoke, the spirit with whom the tahu was familiar let down a cloud and from it fell a fringe of varied hues. Pipiri Ma seized the threads that looked the most seducing, threads of gold and rose, and upon these they climbed to the skies. Their parents who saw them as they ascended, begged them, 'Pipiri Ma, come back! Oh, come back to us!' but the babes were already high in the heavens, higher than Orohena, the loftiest mountain, and their voices came almost from under the sun: 'No, we will never return. The fis.h.i.+ng with the torches might be bad again. It might not be good for the children.'

"Taua and Rehua went back to their hut in tears. Whenever the torchlight fis.h.i.+ng was bountiful, and the fish were glowing on the hot stones of the umu, Rehua lifted sorrowful eyes toward the skies, and vainly supplicated, 'Pipiri Ma, return to us!' and Taua answered, shaking his head with a doleful and unbelieving nod, 'Alas! it is over. Pipiri Ma will not come back, for one day the torchlight fis.h.i.+ng was bad for the children.'"

Tiura finished with a finger pointing to Antares, of the Scorpion constellation.

"That," he concluded, "is the cloud which was itself transformed."

The doctor shook out his pipe as we entered the flimsy hut.

"Sounds like it was written by a child who wanted a continuous supply of sweets, but these people are so crazy on children that their legends point a moral to parents and never to the kiddies. They reverse 'Honor thy father and mother.'"

In the morning the Valley of Vaihiria unrolled under the rays of the sun like a spreading green carpet, and the sea in the distance, a mirror, sent back the darts of the beams. After breakfast we built a raft of banana-trunks, which we tied with lianas, and on it we floated about to observe the big-eared eels. Except by the sh.o.r.e the natives warned us against swimming for fear of these monsters, but we were not disturbed. We looked into the dismal pit, Apo Taria, and tumbled rocks down it.

"It has no bottom," said Tiura. "We have sounded it with our longest ropes."

The sun was now climbing high, and we began the descent, moving at a fast pace, leaping, slipping and sliding, with the use of the rope, and arriving at the Chefferie a little after noon.

The long draft of a cocoanut, a full quart of delicious, cooling refreshment, and we were ready for the oysters and the fish and taro.

Chapter XIX

The Arioi, minstrels of the tropics--Lovaina tells of the infanticide--Theories of depopulation--Methods of the Arioi--Destroyed by missionaries.

Lovaina came out to Mataiea with the news and gossip of the capital. A wretched tragedy had shocked the community. Pepe, the woman of Tuatini, had buried her new-born infant alive in the garden of the house opposite the Tiare Hotel. Lovaina was full of the horror of it, but with a just appreciation of the crime as a happening worth telling. The chefferie was filled with aues.

"Aue!" cried Haamoura, the chief's wife.

"Aue!" said the chief, and Rupert Brooke, with whom I had been swimming.

"Aue!" exclaimed O'Laughlin Considine, the Irish poet of New Zealand, stout, bearded, crowned with a chaplet of sweet gardenias, and quoting verses in Maori, Gaelic, and English.

There were laments in Tahitian by all about, sorrow that the mother had so little loved her babe, that she had not brought it to Mataiea, where Tetuanui and Haamoura or any of us would have adopted it. And Lovaina said, in English for Considine, whom she had brought to Mataiea, and for Brooke:

"She had five children by that Tuatini. He is custom-officer at Makatea, phosphate island, near T'ytee. He been gone one year, an' she get very fat, but she don' say one thing. Then she get letter speakin'

he come back nex' week. One ol' T'ytee woman she work for her to keep all chil'ren clean, an' eat, an' she notice two day ago one mornin'

she more thin. She ask her, 'Where that babee?' She say the varua, a bad devil, take it. The ol' woman remember she hear little cry in night, an' when a girl live my hotel tell her she saw Pepe diggin'

in garden, she talk and talk, an' by 'n' by police come, an' fin'

babee under rose-bush. It dead, but Ca.s.siou, he say, been breathe when bury, because have air in lung. Then gendarme take hol' Pepe, and she tell right out she 'fraid for her husban', an' when babee born she go in night an' dig hole an' plant her babee under rosebush. Now, maybe white people say that Pepe jus' like all T'ytee woman."

Lovaina wore a wine-colored peignoir, and in her red-brown hair many strands of the diaphanous reva-reva, delicate and beautiful, a beloved ornament taken from the young palm-leaf. O'Laughlin Considine and Brooke were much concerned for the unhappy mother, and asked how she was.

"She cut off her hair," answered Lovaina, "like I do when my l'i'l boy was killed in cyclone nineteen huner' six. It never grow good after like before." Her hair was quite two feet long and very luxuriant, and like all Tahitian hair, simply in two plaits.

Brooke expressed his curiosity over what Lovaina had said, "jus'

like all T'ytee woman."

"Was that a custom of Tahiti mothers, to bury their babes alive at birth?" he asked.

Lovaina blushed.

"Better you ask Tetuanui 'bout them Arioi," she replied confusedly.

The chief pleaded that he could not explain such a complicated matter in French, and if he did, M. Considine would not understand that language. But with the question raised, the conversation continued about infanticide and depopulation. The chief quoted the death-sentence upon his race p.r.o.nounced by the Tahitian prophets centuries ago:

"E tupu te fau, et toro te farero, e mou te taata!"

"The hibiscus shall grow, the coral spread, and man shall cease!"

"There were, according to Captain Cook, sixty or seventy thousand Tahitians on this island when the whites came," continued the chief, sadly. "That number may have been too great, for perhaps Tooti calculated the population of the whole island by the crowd that always followed him, but there were several score thousand. Now I can count the thousands on the fingers of one hand."

We talked of the sweeping away of the people of the Marquesas Islands and of all the Polynesians. The Hawaiians are only twenty-two thousand. When the haole set foot on sh.o.r.e there, he counted four hundred thousand.

Time was when so great was the congestion in these islands, as in the Marquesas and Hawaii, that the priests and chiefs inst.i.tuted devices for checking it. Infanticide seemed the easiest way to prevent hurtful increase. Stringent rules were made against large families. On some islands couples were limited to two children or only one, and all others born were killed immediately. Race suicide had here its simplest form. The Polynesian race must have grown to very great numbers on every island they settled from Samoa to Hawaii, and perhaps these numbers induced migrations. They doubtless grew to threatening swarms before they began checking the increase. Thomas Carver, professor of political economy at Harvard, says: