Mystic Isles of the South Seas Part 9

When midnight tolled from the cathedral tower, there was an uncalled-for speech from a venerable traveler who apparently was not sure of the date or the exact nature of the fete:

"Fellow-exiles and natives bujus Teetee. We are gathered together this Fourth of July--"

Cries of "Altai" "Ce n'est-pas vrai!" "Shove in your high! It's New Year!"

"--to cel'brate the annivers'ry of the death of that great man--"

Yells of "Sit down!" "Olalala!" "Aita maitai!" and the venerable orator took his seat. He was once a governor of a territory under President Harrison, and now lived off his pension, shaky, sans teeth, sans hair, but never sans speech.

The Englishmen and Americans clattered gla.s.ses and said "Happy New Year!" and the Tahitians: "Rupe-rupe tatou iti! I teienei matahiti api!" "Hurrah for all of us! Good cheer for the New Year!"

Monsieur Lontane, second in command of the police, arrived just in time to drink the bonne annee. He executed a pas seul. He mimicked a great one of France. He drank champagne from a bottle, a clear four inches between its neck and his, and not a drop spilled.

Lovaina sat on her bench in the porch and marked down the debits:

Fat face............3 Roederer..........

New Doctor..........5 champag...........

Hair on nose........2 champ.............

Willi...............4 pol..............

The electric lights went out. There was a dreadful flutter among the girls. Some one went to the piano and began to play, "Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot," and the Americans and English sang, the French humming the air. The wine flattened in the gla.s.ses and open bottles, but no one cared. They gathered in the garden, where the perfume of the tiare scented the night, and the stars were a million lamps sublime in the sky. Song followed song, English and French, and when the lazy current pulsated again, the ball was over.

We walked to the beach, Nance and I.

"It's h.e.l.l how this place gets hold of you," said Nance, who had shot pythons in Paraguay and had a yacht in Los Angeles harbor. "I dunno, it must be the cocoanuts or the breadfruit."

Walking back alone through a by-path, I saw the old folks sitting on their verandas and the younger at dalliance in the many groves. Voices of girls called me:

"Haere me ne!" "Come to us!" "h.o.e.re mai u nei ite po ia u nei!"

The Himene tatou Arearea of our Moorea expedition came from many windows, the accordions sweet and low, and the subdued chant in sympathy with the mellow hour. "The soft lasceevious stars leered from these velvet skies."

Lovaina had gone to bed, but, with the lights on again, patrons of the prize-fight had dropped in. The Christchurch Kid had beaten Teaea, a native, the match being a preliminary clearing of the ground before the signal encounter with the bridegroom.

The gla.s.s doors of the salle-a-manger were broken in a playful scuffle between the whiskered doctor of the hospital, and Afa, the majordomo of the Tiare. The medical man ordered five bottles of champagne, and, putting them in his immense pockets, returned to his table and opened them all at once. He had them spouting about him while their fizz lasted, and then drank most of their contents. He then threw all the crockery of his table to the roadway, and Afa wrestled him into a better state, during which process the doors were smashed. When the bombilation became too fearful, Lovaina called out from her bed:

"Make smaller noise! n.o.body is asleep!"

At two in the morning the gendarmes advised the last revelers to retire, and the Tiare became quiet. But Atupu slept in a little alcove by the bar, and any one in her favor had but to enter her chamber and pull her shapely leg to be served in case of dire need.

The incidents of the departure of the Noa-Noa that day for San Francisco will live in the annals of Papeete. Its calamitous happenings are "in the archives." I have the word of the secretary-general of the Etablissments Francais de l'Oceanie for that, and in the saloons and coffee-houses they talked loudly of the "bataille entre les cochons Anglais et les heros les Francais et les Tahitiens."

It was a battle that would have rejoiced the heart of Don Quixote, and that redoubtable knight had his prototype here in the van of it, the second in command of the police of Papeete, M. Lontane, the mimic of the Tiare celebration.

The Noa-Noa's amateur crew of wretched beach-combers, farm laborers, and impossible firemen, stokers, and stewards, a pitiable set, were about the waterfront all day, dirty, dressed in hot woolen clothes, bedraggled and as drunk as their money would allow. The s.h.i.+p was down to leave at three-thirty o'clock, but it was four when the last bag of copra was aboard. There were few pa.s.sengers, and those who booked here were dismayed at the condition of the pa.s.sageways, the cabins, and the decks. The crowd of "scabs," untrained white sailors, and coal pa.s.sers was supplemented by Raratonga natives, lounging about the gangway and sitting on the rails. On the wharf hundreds of people had gathered as usual to see the liner off. Lovaina was there in a pink lace dress, seated in her carriage, with Vava at the horse's head. Prince Hinoe had gathered about him a group of pretty girls, to whom he was promising a feast in the country. All the tourists, the loafers, the merchants, and the schooner crews were there, too, and the iron-roofed shed in which it is forbidden to smoke was filled with them. The Noa-Noa blew and blew her whistle, but still she did not go. The lines to the wharf were loosened, the captain was on the bridge, the last farewells were being called and waved, but there was delay. Word was spread that some of the crew were missing, and as at the best the vessel was short-handed, it had to tarry.

At last came three of the missing men. They, too, had welcomed the New Year, and their gait was as at sea when the s.h.i.+p rises and falls on the huge waves. They wheeled in a barrow a mate whose mispoise made self-locomotion impossible. The trio danced on the wharf, sang a chantey about "whisky being the life of man," and declared they would stay all their lives in Tahiti; that the "b.l.o.o.d.y hooker could bleedin'

well" go without them. They were ordered on board by M. Lontane, with two strapping Tahitian gendarmes at his back.

If there are any foreigners the average British roustabout hates it is French gendarmes, and the ruffians were of a mind to "beat them up." They raised their fists in att.i.tudes of combat, and suddenly what had been a joyous row became a troublesome incident.

Sacre bleu! those scoundrels of English to menace the uniformed patriots of the French republic! The second in command drew a revolver, and pointing at the hairy breast of the leader of the Noa-Noans, shouted: "Au le vapeur! Diable! What, you whisky-filled pigs, you will resist the law?"

He took off his helmet and handed it to one of the native policemen while he unlimbered the revolver more firmly in the direction of the seamen. The sailor shrank back in bewilderment. Guns were unknown in sh.o.r.e squabbles.

"I'll 'ave the British Gov'ment after ye," roared the leader. "I'll write to the Sydney papers. Ye've pulled a gun in me face."

Steadily and with some good nature the Tahitian officers pushed the trio toward the gangway and up it. Once aboard, the gangway was hoisted, the pilot clambered up the side, and it seemed as if the liner was away. But no; the three recalcitrants jumped on the bulwarks, and joined by a dozen others, yelled defiance at the authorities. As the Noa-Noa gradually drew out these cries became more definite, and the honor of France and of all Frenchmen was a.s.sailed in the most ancient English Billingsgate. Gestures of frightful significance added to the insults, and these not producing retorts in kind from the second in command and the populace, a shower of limes began to fall upon them.

Sacks of potatoes, lettuce-heads, yams, and even pineapples, deck cargo, were broken open by the infuriated crew to hurl at the police. The crowd on the wharf rushed for shelter behind posts and carriages, the horses pranced and snorted, and M. Lontane leaped to the fore. He advanced to the edge of the quay, and in desperate French, of which his adversaries understood not a word, threatened to have them dragged from their perches and sent to New Caledonia.

A well-aimed lime squashed on his cheek, and with a "Sapristi!" he fled behind a stack of boxes. The riot became general, the roustabouts heaving iron bars, pieces of wood, and anything they could find. No officer of the Noa-Noa said a word to stop them, evidently fearing a general strike of the crew, and when the missiles cut open the head of a native stevedore and fell even among the laughing girls, the courtesies began to be returned. Coal, iron nuts, stones, and other serious projectiles were thrown with a hearty good-will, and soon the crew and the pa.s.sengers of the Noa-Noa were scuttling for safety.

The storm of French and Tahitian adjectives was now a cyclone, Tahitian girls, their gowns stained by the fruity and leguminous shot of the Australasians, seized lumps of coal or coral, and took the van of the sh.o.r.e legions. Atupu struck the leader of the Noa-Noa snipers in the nose with a rock, and her success brought a paean of praise from all of us.

The entente cordiale with Britain was sundered in a minute. The melee grew into a fierce battle, and only the increasing distance of the vessel from sh.o.r.e stopped the firing, the last shots falling into the lagoon.

The second in command had been reinforced by the first in command, and now, summoned by courier, appeared the secretary-general of the Etabliss.e.m.e.nts Francaises de l'Oceanie, bearded and helmeted, white-faced and nervous, throwing his arms into the air and shrieking, "Qu' est-que ce que ca? Is this war? Are we human, or are these savages?"

Lovaina, in the rear of whose carriage I had taken refuge, exclaimed:

"They say Tahiti people is savage! Why this crazy people must be finished. Is this business go on?"

"Non, non!" replied the secretary-general, with patriotic anger, "We French are long suffering, but c'est a.s.sez maintenant."

He spoke to the first in command, and an order was shouted to M. Wilms, the pilot, to leave the Noa-Noa. That official descended into his boat and returned to the quay, while the liner hovered a hundred yards away, the captain afraid to come nearer, fearful of leaving port without expert guidance, and more so that the crew might renew the combat.

The secretary-general conferred with the private secretary of the governor, the first and second in command, and several old residents. They would apply to the British consul for warrants for the arrest of the ruffianly marksmen, they would wrench them from the rails, and sentence them to long imprisonments.

So for an hour more the steams.h.i.+p puffed and exhausted her steam, while the high officials paced the wharf shaking their fists at the besotted stokers, who shook theirs back.

The stores, closing at five o'clock, sent their quota of clerks to swell the mob at the quay, and the "rubberneck wagon," alert to earn fares, took the news of the fray into the country, and hauled in scores of excited provincials, who had vague ideas that la guerre was on. The wedding party, only six motor-cars full on the second day, all in wreaths of tuberoses and wild-cherry rind, the bride still in her point-lace veil, and the groom and all the guests cheered with the champagne they had drunk, drove under the shed from the suburbs and honked their horns, to the horror of the secretary-general and the others.

The situation was now both disciplinary and diplomatic.

"C'est tres serieux," whispered the secretary to the governor's private secretary, a dapper little man whose flirting had made his wife a Niobe and alarmed the husbands and fathers of many French dames et filles.

"Serious, monsieur?" said the private secretary, twisting his black wisp of a mustache, "it is more than serious now; it is no longer the French Establishments of Oceania. It is between Great Britain and France."

A peremptory order was given to drive every one off the quay, and though the crowd chaffed the police, the sweep of wharf was left free for the marchings and counter-marchings of the big men.

"What would be the result? Would the entire British population of the s.h.i.+p resist the taking away of any of the crew? Oh, if the paltry French administration at Paris had not removed the companies of soldiers who until recently had been the pride of Papeete! And crown of misfortune, the gun-boat, sole guardian of French honor in these seas, was in Australia for repairs. Eh bien, n'importe! Every Frenchman was a soldier. Did not Napoleon say that? Nom de pipe!"

Wilfrid Baillon, a cow-boy from British Columbia, was standing near me with his arms folded on his breast and a look of stern determination on his sunburned face.

"We must look sharp," he said to me. "We may all have to stand together, we whites, against these French frog-eaters."