Mystic Isles of the South Seas Part 7

Il etait un excellent roi Dont on ne dit rien dans l'histoire, Qui ne connaissait qu'une Loi: Celle de chanter, rire, et boire.

Fervent disciple de Bacchus Il glorifiait sa puissance, Puis, sacrifiait a Venus Les loisirs de son existence.

REFRAIN:

Toujours joyeux, d'humeur gauloise, Et parfois meme un peu grivoise Le genereux Roi Pomare Par son peuple est fort regrette.

S'il avait eu de l'eloquence Il aurait gouverne la France!

Mais nos regrets sont superflus; Puisqu'il est mort, n'en parlons plus!

"Ah, he was a chic type, that last King of Tahiti," said M. Brault, who had written so many praiseful, merry verses about him. "He would have a hula about him all the time. He loved the national dance. He would sit or lie and drink all day and night. He loved to see young people drink and enjoy themselves. Ah, those were gay times! Dancing the nights away. Every one crowned with flowers, and rum and champagne like the falls of Fautaua. The good king Pomare would keep up the upaupa, the hula dance, for a a week at a time, until they were nearly all dead from drink and fatigue. Mon dieu! La vie est triste maintenant."

Before we parted we sang the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" and the "Star-Spangled Banner." n.o.body knew the words, I least of any; so we la-la-la'd through it, and when we parted for luncheon, we went down the crooked stairway arm in arm, still giving forth s.n.a.t.c.hes of "Le Bon Roi Pomare"

in honor of our host:

Mais, s'il aimait tant les plaisirs, Les chants joyeux, la vie en rose, Le plus ardent de ses desirs, Pour lui la plus heureuse chose, Fut toujours que l'humanite Regnat au sein de son Royaume; De meme que l'Egalite Sous son modeste toit de chaume.

Hallman, with whom I journeyed on the Noa-Noa, dropped into the Cercle Bougainville occasionally, but he was ordinarily too much occupied with his schemes of trade. Besides, he had only one absorbing vice other than business, and with merely wine and song to be found at the club, Hallman went there but seldom, and only to talk about pearl-sh.e.l.l, copra, and the profits of schooner voyages. However, through him I met another group who spoke English, and who were not of Latin blood. They were Llewellyn, an islander--Welsh and Tahitian; Landers, a New Zealander; Pincher, an Englishman; David, McHenry, and Brown, Americans; Count Polonsky, the Russo-Frenchman who was fined a franc; and several captains of vessels who sailed between Tahiti and the Pacific coast of the United States or in these lat.i.tudes.

The Noa-Noa was overdue from New Zealand, by way of Raratonga, and her tardiness was the chief subject of conversation at our first meeting. A hundred times a day was the semaph.o.r.e on the hill spied at for the signal of the Noa-Noa's sighting. High up on the expansive green slope which rises a few hundred feet behind the Tiare Hotel is a white pole, and on this are hung various objects which tell the people of Papeete that a vessel is within view of the ancient sentinel of the mount. An elaborate code in the houses of all persons of importance, and in all stores and clubs, interprets these symbols. The merchants depended to a considerable extent upon this monthly liner between San Francisco and Wellington and way ports, and all were interested in the mail and food supplies expected by the Noa-Noa. Cablegrams sent from any part of the world to New Zealand or San Francisco were forwarded by mail on these steams.h.i.+ps. Tahiti was entirely cut off from the great continents except by vessel. There was no cable, and no wireless, on this island, nor even at the British island of Raratonga, two days'

steaming from Papeete. The steams.h.i.+ps had wireless systems, and kept in communication with San Francisco or with New Zealand ports for a few days after departure.

There were many guesses at the cause of the delay.

"Nothing but war!" said the French post-office clerk who sat at another table, with his gla.s.s of Pernoud. "Germany and England have come to blows. Now that accursed nation of beer-swillers will get their lesson."

The subject was seriously discussed, the armaments of the two powers quoted, and the certainty of Germany's defeat predicted, the Frenchman a.s.serting vehemently that France would aid England if necessary, or to get back Alsace-Lorraine. There were gatherings all over Papeete, the war rumor having been made an alleged certainty by some inexplicable communication to an unnamed merchant.

The natives hoped fervently that the war was between France and Germany, and that France would be defeated. After generations of rule by France, the vanquished still felt an aversion to their conquerors here, as in the Holy Land when Herod ruled.

"I hope France get his," said a chief, aside, to me.

The mail's delay upset all business. Letters closed on the day the liner was expected were reopened. For three days the girls at Lovaina's had worn their best peignoirs, and several times donned shoes and stockings to go to the quay. Pa.s.sengers for San Francisco who had packed their trunks had unpacked them. The air of expectancy which Papeete wore for a day or two before steamer-day had been so heated by postponement that nerves came to the surface.

Tahiti was a place of no exact knowledge. Few residents knew the names of the streets. Some of the larger business houses had no signs to indicate the firms' names or what they sold. Hardly any one knew the names of the trees or the flowers or fishes or sh.e.l.ls.

A story once told, even facts thoroughly well known, changed with each repet.i.tion. A month after an occurrence one might search in vain for the actuality. It was more difficult to learn truthful details than anywhere I had been. The French are n.i.g.g.ardly of publications concerning Tahiti. An almanac once a year contained a few figures and facts of interest, but with no newspapers within thousands of miles, every person was his own journal, and prejudices and interest dictated all oral records.

McHenry hushed war reports to talk about Brown, an American merchant who had left the club a moment before, after a Bourbon straight alone at the bar. McHenry was a trader, mariner, adventurer, gambler, and boaster. Rough and ready, witty, profane, and obscene, he bubbled over with tales of reef and sea, of women and men he had met, of lawless tricks on natives, of storm and starvation, and of his claimed illicit loves. Loud-mouthed, bullet-headed, beady-eyed, a chunk of rank flesh shaped by a hundred sordid deeds, he must get the center of attention by any hazard.

"Brown's purty stuck up now," he said acridly. "I remember the time when he didn't have a pot to cook in. He had thirty Chile dollars a month wages. We come on the beach the same day in the same s.h.i.+p. His shoes were busted out, and he was crazy to get money for a new girl he had. There was a c.h.i.n.k had eighteen tins of vanilla-beans worth about two hundred American dollars each. He got the c.h.i.n.k to believe he could handle the vanilla for him, and got hold of it, and then out by the vegetable garden Brown hit the poor devil of a c.h.i.n.k over the nut with a club."

McHenry got up from the table, and with Llewellyn's walking-stick showed exactly how the blow was struck. He brought down the cane so viciously against the edge of the table that he spilled our rum punches.

"Mac," exclaimed Llewellyn, testily, as he shot him a hot glance from the melancholy eyes under his black thatch of brows, "behave yourself! You know you're lying."

McHenry laughed sourly, and went on:

"I was chums with Brown then, and when I caught up to him,--I was walkin' behind them,--he asked me to see if the c.h.i.n.k was dead. I went back to where he had tumbled him. He was layin' on his back in a kind o' ditch, and he was white instead o' yeller. He was white as Lyin' Bill's schooner. How would you 'a' done? Well, to protect that dirty pup Brown, I covered him over with leaves from head to foot--big bread-fruit and cocoanut-leaves. He never showed up again, and Brown had the vanilla. That's how he got his start, and, so help me G.o.d! I never got a franc from the business."

There was venom in McHenry's tone, and he looked at me, the newcomer, to see what impression he had made. The others said not a word of comment, and it may have been an often-told tale by him. He had emptied his gla.s.s of the potent Martinique rum four or five times.

"Was the Chinaman sure dead when you put the leaves over him?" I asked, influenced by his staring eyes.

McHenry grinned foully.

"Aye, man, you want too much," he replied. "I say his face was white, and he was on his back in the marsh. If he was alive, the leaves didn't finish him, and if he was croaked, it didn't matter. I was obligin'

a friend. You'd have done as much." He took up his gla.s.s and muttered dramatically, "A few leaves for a friend."

I shuddered, but Landers leaned over the table and said to me, sotto voce:

"McHenry's tellin' his usual b.l.o.o.d.y lie. Brown got the vanilla all right, but what he did was to have the bloomin' c.h.i.n.k consign it to him proper', and not give him a receipt. Then he denied all knowledge of it, and it bein' all the bleedin' Chinaman had, he died of a broken heart--with maybe too many pipes of opium to help him on a bit. McHenry and Pincher are terrible liars. They call Pincher 'Lyin'

Bill,' though I 'd take his word in trade or about schooners any day."

I had been introduced to a Doctor Funk by Count Polonsky, who told me it was made of a portion of absinthe, a dash of grenadine,--a syrup of the pomegranate fruit,--the juice of two limes, and half a pint of siphon water. Dr. Funk of Samoa, who had been a physician to Robert Louis Stevenson, had left the receipt for the concoction when he was a guest of the club. One paid half a franc for it, and it would restore self-respect and interest in one's surroundings when even Tahiti rum failed.

"Zat was ze drink I mix for Paul Gauguin, ze peintre sauvage, here before he go to die in les isles Marquises," remarked Levy, the millionaire pearl-buyer, as he stood by the table to be introduced to me.

"Absinthe seul he general' take," said Joseph, the steward.

"I bid fifty thousand francs for one of Gauguin's paintings in Paris last year," Count Polonsky said as he claimed his game of ecarte against Tati, the chief of Papara district. "I failed to get it, too. I bought many here for a few thousand francs each before that."

"Blow me!" cried Pincher, the skipper of the Morning Star. "'E was a bleedin' ijit. I fetched 'im absinthe many a time in Atuona. 'E said Dr. Funk was a bloomin' a.s.s for inventin' a drink that spoiled good Pernoud with water. 'E was a rare un. 'E was like Stevenson 'at wrote 'Treasure Island.' Comes into my pub in Taiohae in the Marquesas Islands did Stevenson off'n his little Casco, and says he, "Ave ye any whisky,' 'e says, "at 'asn't been watered? These South Seas appear to 'ave flooded every bloomin' gallon,' 'e says. This painter Gauguin wasn't such good company as Stevenson, because 'e parleyvoud, but 'e was a b.l.o.o.d.y worker with 'is brushes at Atuona. 'E was cuttin'

wood or paintin' all the time."

"He was a d.a.m.n' fool," said Hallman, who had come in to the Cercle to take away Captain Pincher. "I lived close to him at Atuona all the time he was there till he died. He was bughouse. I don't know much about painting, but if you call that crazy stuff of Gauguin's proper painting, then I'm a furbelowed clam."

"Eh bien," Count Polonsky said, with a smile of the man of superior knowledge, "he is the greatest painter of this period, and his pictures are bringing high prices now, and will bring the highest pretty soon. I have bought every one I could to hold for a raise."

Polonsky was a study in sheeny hues. He was twenty-seven, his black and naturally curled hair was very thin, there were eight or nine teeth that answered no call from his meat, and he wore in his right eyesocket a round gla.s.s, with no rim or string, held by a puckering of cheek and brow, giving him a quizzical, stage-like stare, and twisting his nose into a ripple of tiny wrinkles. He weighed, say, one hundred pounds or less, was bent, but with a fresh complexion and active step. I saw him rise naked from his cot one morning, and the first thing he put on was the rimless monocle. The natives, who name every one, called him "Matat.i.tiahoe," "the one-windowed man." He had journeyed about the world, poked into some queer places, and in j.a.pan had himself tattooed. On his narrow chest he had a terrible legendary G.o.d of Nippon, and on his arms a c.o.c.k and a skeleton, the latter with a fan and a lantern. On his belly was limned a nude woman. He had certain other decorations the fame of which had been bruited wide so that a keen curiosity existed to see them, and they were discussed in whispers by white femininity and with many "Aucs!" of astonishment by the brown. They were Pompeiian friezes in their unconventionality of subject and treatment.

Llewellyn, McHenry, David, and I accompanied the count to his residence on the outskirts of Papeete to taste a vintage of Burgundy he had sent him from Beaune. Like most modern houses in Tahiti, his was solely utilitarian, and was built by a former American consul. It exactly ministered to the comforts of a demanding European exquisite. The house was framed in wide verandas, and was in a magnificent grove of cocoanut-trees affording beauty and shade, with extensive fields of sugar-cane on the other side of the road, and a glimpse of the beach and lagoon a little distance away. A singing brook ran past the door. The bedrooms were large and open to every breeze, and the tables for dining and amus.e.m.e.nt mostly set upon the verandas.

Polonsky's toilet-table was covered with gold boxes and bottles and brushes; scents and powders and pastes. If he moved out, Gaby de Lys might have moved in and lacked nothing. He was a boulevardier, his clothes from Paris, conforming not at all to the sartorial customs of Tahiti, and his varnished boots and alpine hat, with his saffron automobile, marked him as a person. In that he resembled Higby, an Englishman in Papeete, who wore the evening dress of London whenever a steams.h.i.+p came in, though it might be noon, and on the king's birthday and other British feasts put it on when he awoke. He was the only man who went to dinner at the Tiare in the funeral garb of society. He said he was setting up a proper standard in Tahiti. It was suspected really that he was short of clothes, with perhaps only one or two cotton suits, and that when those were soiled he had to resort to full dress during the laundering.

While David and I inspected the house and grounds, McHenry and Llewellyn sat at the wine. Polonsky had a curious and wisely chosen household. His butler was a Javanese, his chef a Quan-tung Chinese, his valet a j.a.panese, his chambermaid a Martinique negress, and his chauffeur an American expert. These had nothing in common and could not ally themselves to cheat him, he said.

As I came back to the front veranda McHenry and Llewellyn were talking excitedly.

"I've had my old lady nineteen years," said McHenry, boastfully, "and she wouldn't speak to me if she met me on the streets of Papeete. She wouldn't dare to in public until I gave her the high sign. You're a b.l.o.o.d.y fool makin' equals of the natives, and throwin' away money on those cinema girls the way you do."

This incensed Llewellyn, who was of chiefly Tahitian blood, and who claimed kings of Wales as his ancestors. Although extremely aristocratic in his att.i.tude toward strangers, his native strain made him resent McHenry's rascally arrogance as a reflection upon his mother's race.

"Shut up, Mac!" he half shouted. "You talk too much. If it hadn't been for that same old lady of yours, you'd have died of delirium-tremens or fallen into the sea long ago."

"Aye," said the trader, meditatively, "that vahine has saved my life, but I'm not goin' to sacrifice my dignity as a white man. If ye let go everything, the d.a.m.n' natives'll walk over ye, and ye'll make nothin'

out o' them."