The Pearl Lagoon by Charles Nordhoff - HTML preview

XIII
 TAHITI

There is little more to tell of our days at Iriatai. For a fortnight, while I lay bored and convalescent in a steamer-chair, the diving went on. Then each man's share of the shell was laid out for my uncle's inspection, sacked, weighed, and loaded in the Tara's hold. There were a hundred and twenty tons of it, of a quality unknown in the lagoons of the Eastern Pacific, and Uncle Harry was jubilant over our good luck. His safe held a little fortune in pearls, and the divers had others they were keeping to sell on their own account.

A day came at last when the village on the islet was dismantled; when the people crowded our decks, noisy and gay with the joy of being homeward-bound; when the Tara, deeply laden, turned her sharp bows toward the pass, away from the anchorage which had been our home so long.

Pahuri was at his accustomed place in the engine-room—the old man had soon recovered from the rough handling he had endured. Ivi, with his left arm in a sling, was the hero of the forecastle; the divers never tired of discussing the memorable night when he had received his wound, and I could see that in the future the story would be passed from island to island, growing to epic proportions as the years went by. Marama and I had thriven under Maruia's care; his feet were healed by now, and I was able to get about the deck, though my leg still gave me an occasional twinge.

The Cholita, with Tua in command and our two prisoners stowed away below, followed us southward toward the pass. Rairi was out of danger at last, after days of raging fever when there seemed small chance that he would live. The copra-makers had been on Iriatai for more than a year, and Schmidt's schooner halted off their village to take them aboard and load the twenty tons of copra stacked under the shed on the beach.

Outside the pass, when the Tara dipped her nose into the long Pacific swell, I lay alone on the after deck, gazing back at the line of palm-tops that was Iriatai, fast disappearing beyond the slope of the world. I thought of Schmidt, sleeping forever under a wooden cross on the deserted islet; of the woman in the shallow coral grave beside him, the half-savage girl he had stolen from her home in the far-off Carolines—Raita, who had been my friend, and whose hand, at the last, had ended his strange life. I felt a lump in my throat, as I realized that in all probability my eyes would never again rest on Iriatai, this dot of land, immeasurably lonely and remote.

A week later we dropped anchor in Faatemu Bay. The other schooner had gone on to Tahiti and would await us there. The village hummed with the excitement of our arrival; there were long stories to be told, friends and relatives to be greeted, and good fortune to be shared. Forty pigs were killed for the feast that Taura, the gray-haired chief, gave in our honor. Fat old Hina welcomed me like a mother, with easy native tears. I had not forgotten her kindness, and on the last day I tendered my parting gift: two handsome pearls—one for her, and one for my former playmate, Marama's little sister. When the Tara sailed out through the Nao Nao Passage and I went below, I found my stateroom littered with their presents—fans, hats, baskets, wreaths of bright-colored shell.

Marama and his father accompanied us to Tahiti. At dawn of the second day I was awakened by my uncle's voice, calling me on deck to see the land. The schooner was slipping through a calm gray sea, running before a light breeze from the north, and a glimmer along the horizon told of the approaching day. Close on our starboard beam, and so unreal that I half-expected the vision to fade before my eyes, I saw the fantastic pinnacles of Eimeo. Tahiti lay straight before the Tara's bows—faint, lofty outlines rising from the sea to disappear in veils of cloud. We were standing side by side at the rail, and at last my uncle spoke.

"This is my home-coming," he said quietly. "To me, that island is the most beautiful thing in all the world."

At ten o'clock we were opposite the pass, and I saw for the first time the little island port of Papeete: the masts of trading-schooners rising along the docks; the warehouses and the line of sheds for freight; the narrow, shaded streets running inland from the waterfront; the background of green, jagged mountains, cleft by the Fautaua Gorge.

A crowd gathered while the Tara docked. There were shouted greetings in native, in English, and in French. As the schooner was warped alongside and the gangplank came out, the people began to stream aboard. The Cholita had brought news of our coming, with the story of our gold-lipped shell and Schmidt's attempted piracy. My uncle had given Tua a letter to the authorities, turning over the schooner and the prisoners to the Government, exonerating the crew, and giving a detailed account of the affair. The news had caused a stir in this peaceful and remote community; we refused a dozen invitations to lunch, and Uncle Harry was forced to tell the story twenty times—to traders, to officials, to his own agents in Papeete—before his friends would give him peace. And through it all I heard a chorus of exclamations at the gold-lipped shell.

I spent the afternoon wandering about the town. It was all new and strange to me: the strolling bands of sailors, the Chinese shops, the houses with their deep, cool verandas shaded by exotic trees. At four o'clock I met my uncle by appointment at the bank. He took me to a private room upstairs, and as he opened the door a man rose and came toward us with outstretched hand. He was small and dapper—a shade too well dressed. His nose was long, and his black eyes bright and beady as shoe-buttons; his radiant smile, under a little waxed moustache, disclosed teeth like the pearls in which he dealt.

"Monsieur Sikorsky," murmured my uncle, "my nephew, Charles."

"It is a pleasure," said the Jew, shaking my hand warmly, "to meet the nephew of my old friend. I have been aboard the Tara this afternoon and have heard much of you! They told me you had been diving with the natives—a wonderful experience, young man, but dangerous, hein? Ah, those sharks—those great man-eating fish—it is épouvantable!" He shuddered delicately, offered my uncle a cigarette from a case of tortoise-shell, and blew out a cloud of perfumed smoke.

"Yes," he went on, "Monsieur Selden has told me how old Maruia's kinsman was taken by the tonu, and how you dove down to the cave for the old oysters your native boy had seen. And he said that if I came here this afternoon you might show me the matched pearls you found that day."

"I have them here," put in my uncle, drawing the familiar tobacco-tin from his pocket. "We'll show them to Sikorsky, eh? Perhaps he'll want to make you an offer." He drew up three chairs about a table close to the window, and pulled back the blinds to admit the afternoon sunlight into the room. Then he opened the little box and laid the pearls side by side on the green tablecloth.

"Well, what do you think of them?" he asked. "You've never seen a finer matched pair, eh?"

For a moment Sikorsky lost his urbane composure. His black eyes glittered and his hand trembled a little as he reached out to take up the pearl nearest him. As he turned it over and over in his palm, admiring the perfection of its form and the play of light on its flawless surfaces, he muttered to himself in a language I had never heard. Presently he laid down the first pearl and took up the other for examination; rose to fetch a black leather case from a corner of the room; laid out his jeweler's scales and measuring instruments. Without a word to us, he weighed and measured to his satisfaction, took out writing-materials and covered a sheet of paper with the figures of a complex calculation. Then he took up the pearls for a last glance, and leaned back, lighting another of his perfumed cigarettes.

"There is no need of beating about the bush," he said. "You know pearls, Selden—such a pair does not turn up twice in a lifetime. They would make a gift for an empress! It has been a privilege to see them, even though nothing comes of it. If they were mine, I would go hungry before I would part with them!"

"What are they worth?" asked my uncle.

"Ah, that is hard to say—they are for sale?"

"Yes, at a price; I would buy them myself if I could afford to own such luxuries."

"I will make you an offer, then, though the responsibility is more than I am authorized to take. They are matched almost to the weight of a hair—Let me see—for one of them, alone, I could safely offer you twelve thousand dollars. Double that for the matching—forty-eight thousand for the pair—Yes—I will make my offer fifty thousand."

He raised his hand as my uncle was about to speak.

"That is a fair offer," went on the Jew, "I assure you, a long time might elapse before my firm could find a purchaser. I would not make it except that they love fine pearls as I do. But if you think that this is not enough, name your own price and give me time to wire my people in Paris. One thing I ask of you as an old friend: show them to no one else till I have had my chance!"

"A fair enough offer, I should say," remarked my uncle, as he put the pearls in their box and rose to leave. "I must go down to the schooner now; my nephew and I will talk over your price to-night. Can you meet us here after breakfast to-morrow? We'll let you know our decision in the morning."

The pearl-buyer ushered us to the door and bowed us out with another radiant smile.

That evening, when we were sitting alone on the balcony of our hotel, Uncle Harry told me something of the Jew. "If you met Sikorsky at home," he said; "you'd think he was a little counter-jumper, but as a matter of fact there's no squarer or more decent fellow in this part of the world. I've known him for years. He speaks half a dozen languages and has been in most of the odd corners of the earth. What do you think of his offer? In your place I'd be inclined to accept. I doubt, in fact, if the Twins would fetch much more. One might take them abroad, of course, and find some rich fancier who would pay twice as much, but peddling jewels is not in our line. What do you say?"

"Oh, let's accept his offer!" I exclaimed. I had been thinking of nothing else since our visit to the bank. Half of fifty thousand dollars seemed a tremendous sum to me.

"Very well," said Uncle Harry with a smile. "To-morrow will be a great day for Marama and the old man!"

He drew from his pocket the familiar case of worn brown leather and selected a cigar. When it was drawing to his satisfaction he tossed the match into the street and cocked his feet against the railing of the balcony.

"I've good news," he remarked. "We have a week before your steamer sails. I want you to see my place in the country. When does your school begin? The first of October? That's good—you'll be home in plenty of time. Now about the money; it's yours to do with as you like, of course, but let me give you a bit of advice. If I were you, I'd turn the bulk of it over to your father—he's in need of cash, and a few thousands would put the Santa Brigida on its feet. It will be yours eventually; stick by the land, old fellow—it doesn't pay to knock about the world as I have done. By the way, there'll be something coming to you from your lay in the season's work, though it will look small beside Sikorsky's check. Well, it's getting late—time we were turning in."

In the morning, when we had finished breakfast, we met the pearl-buyer at the bank. Half an hour later, as we shook hands and strolled out the door, I carried in the inner fold of my pocketbook a draft for twenty-five thousand dollars, on a San Francisco banking house. We found Marama and his father aboard the schooner. Their eyes were bright with wonder when my uncle told them of the bargain he had made, and they were glad to accept his offer to look after the money for them, letting them draw on him whenever they were in need of funds.

"I'm having some friends to dinner to-morrow," he told me as we walked down the gangplank. "We must be getting out to Fanatea now. My boat got in early this morning—come along and have a look at her."

She was lying a quarter of a mile down the beach, moored to the sea-wall under the old trees bordering the avenue. On her narrow stern I saw the word "Marara" lettered in gold, and her lean lines and the six great exhaust-pipes standing in a row left no doubt that she could show the speed of her namesake, the flying fish. A native in a suit of oily overalls sprang ashore to greet us and smiled when I spoke to him in his own tongue.

"What do you think of her?" asked my uncle. "Isn't she a beauty? I built her myself—every plank. That's a French engine—ninety horsepower—and it drives her at better than twenty knots!"

The mechanician fetched our bags from the hotel. We took our places in the cockpit, the spray-hood was raised, the anchor came up, and the stern line was cast off. The deep-throated roar of the exhaust brought a little crowd to the quay while the man turned up grease cups and oiled a bearing here and there. He raised his head and glanced at my uncle with the odd native lift of the eyebrows which means "All ready!" The motor burst into a deeper and a fiercer roar; my uncle took the wheel and pulled back the lever of the clutch. The boat quivered and sprang forward swiftly, heading for the docks where the stevedores were dropping their wheelbarrows to watch. She swept around the harbor in a great curve, turned seaward, and headed out through the pass, her bows parting the waves in sheets of spray. Outside the reef we swung southward toward Fanatea, twenty miles off.

An hour later I saw a break in the white line of the reef. As we sped in through the gap, the huge blue combers, with spray whipping back from their crests, raced in on either side of us to topple and crash in thundering foam.

"There's Fanatea!" shouted my uncle, pointing to a long white house at the end of an avenue of pahns.

A path, bordered by ornamental palms, led from the pier to my uncle's house, set on a rise of land a quarter of a mile beyond. The plantation had a long frontage on the beach and extended inland, across the rich alluvial flat, up into the hills. More than two hundred acres were planted with coconuts,—stately young palms in rows ten yards apart,—and lines of fencing divided the land into paddocks, where I saw fat cattle grazing belly-deep in grass.

The house was long and low, plastered with burned coral from the lagoon. The veranda overlooked a matchless view of dark-green foreshore, placid lagoon, white reef, and sparkling sea. Far off across the channel the horizon was broken by Eimeo's jagged peaks. Deep, cool, and airy, the veranda was my uncle's living-room, and at the windward end, in a great glassed-in bay, I found his collection of idols, weapons, and native implements. That night, when the Chinese houseboy rang the gong, I scarcely knew Uncle Harry in pumps, flannel trousers, and a smart white dinner-coat. It was his custom to potter about all day on the plantation, bush-knife in hand and clad only in a cotton pareu; but when evening came and he had had his bath, he never failed to appear immaculate at the dinner hour.

"This is the only home I have," he remarked as we sat down, "and when I'm here I make a little effort to keep up appearances. It saves me from becoming a savage. I have a good many friends scattered about the island—I visit them sometimes and they often come here. As I told you, a few of them will be out to-morrow: Sikorsky is coming and a couple of Government men. Old Jackson said he would come, too—he's my agent here; by the way, he's reserved a deck cabin for you on the steamer. Maruia is the most famous cook on the island—she's promised to come out to superintend the kitchen."

Maruia arrived early the next afternoon, and when she had shaken hands with us she went straight to the back of the house, where the Fanatea people, who stood in awe of such a rich and celebrated character, sprang this way and that to do her bidding.

The motor-boat had gone to town, and just before sunset I heard the hoarse bellow of her exhaust and saw her moving swiftly across the lagoon toward the pier. When he had presented me to his guests, my uncle took the Frenchmen in charge and left me with old Mr. Jackson and Sikorsky. The gold-lipped shell and his adventure with Schmidt had made Uncle Harry the hero of the hour, and since the Jew had showed the Marama Twins to several of his friends, I found myself an object of interest to these older men. But Mr. Jackson, a gaunt old Englishman with friendly eyes and an enormous white moustache, knew how to put me at my ease.

"A beautiful pair of pearls," he remarked when we were walking into the dining-room; "they'll make a sensation in Paris! Sikorsky showed them to me last night; he's planning to take the next boat north, on his way to France. Told me how you found them, too—the tonu and all the rest of it. Bad brutes, those tonus—one nearly had me when I was a lad. Forty years ago, that was—I'm getting old, eh? In those days I was supercargo aboard a schooner of the Maison Brander. We were lying becalmed inside the pass at Mangareva, and in spite of what the natives said, I thought I'd have a bit of a swim. In the nick of time I saw the brute coming up at me—a great spiny, mottled beast, with a mouth like an open door. We were towing a boat, by good luck—I went over her stern so fast I scraped half the skin off my chest!"

"He's off!" said my uncle, at the other end of the table. "Mr. Jackson's our champion spinner of yarns, Charlie; he's a true artist, and you mustn't believe everything he says!"

The old man chuckled—they were friends of many years standing. "I'll promise not to do any more talking," he said. "I'm hungry, and I can tell by that salad of shrimps that old Maruia is somewhere about. Lucky man! How did you persuade her to officiate?"

An hour later, when the Chinese boy had brought coffee, one of the Frenchmen pushed back his chair and rose. He was the treasurer of the colony, a stout, middle-aged man, with keen dark eyes and a close-cropped beard.

"First of all," he said, with a friendly smile at my uncle, "permit me to thank you for an excellent dinner, such as I know how to appreciate. Nor must we forget Maruia, whose skill in her art I have known for so many years. And now let me propose the health of our host, whose discovery of gold-lipped shell in the Paumotus marks an addition to the resources of the colony. To Monsieur Selden, then, whose enterprise has earned the Government's warm thanks!"

My uncle rose as the Treasurer sat down.

"Monsieur Durand has been more than kind," he said. "And speaking of Maruia, she has been good enough to offer to entertain us this evening. You all know the old-time native songs, and how rarely one hears them nowadays. She has composed an uté on our diving-season at Iriatai. I think she is waiting for us on the veranda—bring your coffee along."

We found her in the bay-window, examining a piece of tapa cloth. She seemed known to all the company and perfectly at ease, addressing Mr. Jackson in native and the others in fluent French. Her hair, which was brushed back loosely, was fastened with a pearl-studded clasp at the nape of her neck; golden earrings were in her ears, and she wore a flowing gown of thin black silk. I could scarcely believe that this was the old savage beside whom I had dived day after day, the fierce creature who had leaped overboard, spear in hand and muttering a heathen prayer, to avenge her nephew's death.

I sat down between Mr. Jackson and Sikorsky, on a long lounge covered with a scarlet-bordered mat. Beyond the railing of the veranda a score of natives squatted on the grass.

Maruia took her place cross-legged on the floor, and a boy placed in her hands a great piano-accordion, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. In the silence which proved the interest of her audience, she drew out the bellows and let her fingers play over the stops. Then I heard for the first time the music of the uté—a wild minor melody, stirring, exultant, heathen, and profoundly sad. Suddenly she began to sing, in a high-pitched wail, a song such as our ancestors must have sung in the firelight, centuries before history dawned. Here and there I could catch a word,—enough to piece together the story the verses told,—but the language was full of imagery and many of the words were of the ancient tongue which only a few of the older people understood. She sang of how the Tara came to Faatemu and sailed away to Iriatai; of how Seroni killed the old god in the form of a shark; and of the temple in the cave; of the strange shell with lips like gold, such as no man in the Paumotus had seen; of her nephew's death, and how Teura had been avenged; of Schmidt and the fight aboard the schooner, when the woman from a far land was killed.

All this sounds commonplace enough, as I read over the words I have set down, but there was something far from commonplace in the quality of the woman's voice, in the wild imagery of her words, in the primitive and stirring cadences of her song. At last the music died away, and Maruia leaned back with a sigh as she snapped the hooks of her accordion.

We were silent for a time, and then my uncle spoke. He turned to Mr. Jackson.

"It's curious," he observed—"the spell of those old songs!" The trader looked up at him, raising his snowy eyebrows in the native gesture of assent.

"Either there's real art in a thing of that kind," he answered, "or I've become a savage after forty years!"

The Jew had not moved once while Maruia sang. The perfumed cigarette, forgotten between his fingers, had burned out. The old man's words seemed to rouse him from a reverie.

"Ah, gentlemen," he said, more seriously than I had heard him speak before, "make no mistake—the essence of all art is in such a song! So our old Hebrew minstrels sang, long before my people's captivity in Egypt! So, perhaps, the Greek bards sang of the fall of Troy!"

As the next day was Sunday, we persuaded our guests to stop over, and it was late afternoon when we took our places in the motor-boat, slipped out through the pass, and headed north along the reef. The breeze had died away and the Marara drove through a long, gentle swell, running in from the west. I was beginning to understand my uncle's love of the island: on such an evening, it was impossible to believe that any part of the world could be more beautiful. Beyond the line of breakers the lagoon lay like a mirror in the sunset calm, and I saw the smiling coastal land, with its coconut and breadfruit groves, sheltered at the mouths of valleys which pierced the lofty wooded hills. Out to the west, half hidden in clouds all rosy and edged with gold, Eimeo rose from unruffled waters. A long spit of land ran out to sea ahead of us.

"Point Venus," remarked my uncle, leaning over to speak in my ear. "The speck of white at the end is the lighthouse, the only one in this part of the world. It is built on the site of Captain Cook's observatory; he came here, you know, to observe the transit of Venus in 1769. He was a wonderful man—have you read the account of his voyages? Ah, you've a treat ahead! His ship anchored in Matavai Bay, this side of the point, and he named the group the Society Islands, in honor of the Royal Society, which sent him out. Sometimes I wish I could have lived in those days, when there were still islands left to discover—"

We were turning into the pass. Half an hour later we had bidden our guests good-night, and the Marara was speeding homeward in the dusk.

My week at Fanatea passed with the swiftness of a dream, and the day came all too soon when I said good-bye to the people of the plantation and stepped aboard the boat for the last time. As we entered the pass at Papeete, I saw the mail steamer from New Zealand lying alongside the dock, hideous and huge beside the trim sailing vessels of the port. She was to carry me to San Francisco.

We went aboard at once to look up my stateroom and inquire at what hour the steamer would sail. The captain, a gray-haired Englishman, with a red face and a great jutting stomach, tightly buttoned in a double-breasted coat of drill, was an old friend of my uncle's. He called us to his quarters by the bridge.

"Hello, Selden," he said, "they tell me you've had a row with old Thursday Island. He was done in, eh? Good job, to my way of thinking! An odd bloke; gentleman born, I should say, but a hard case, and crook as they make 'em! I knew him out in the Solomons, in ninety-eight." He turned to me, holding out an enormous hairy hand.

"I've heard about you, young man," he rumbled. "You're the lad who found Sikorsky's pearls, eh? He's going north with us. They're aboard now, safe in the purser's strongbox. I'll tell the chief steward to put you at my table. We'll be sailing by three o'clock."

We lunched aboard the Tara that day, and when the meal was finished my uncle and I sat talking in steamer-chairs on deck. "It's hard to see you go, old fellow," he said, "I'll be lonely without you; but don't forget that you're coming down again. I wish I could go north with you now—I'd give something to be there when your father hears of our good luck, and sees how tall and strong you've grown! But I'll be up next year without fail; perhaps I'll bring the Tara, and you'll see Marama and the rest of them again. I've always wanted a cruise down the Lower Californian coast, to have a look at those Mexican islands and bays. Give my love to your father and mother, and to Marion—tell them how glad I am that they let you come with me. This is for your sister, by the way; take good care of it—perhaps you'd better put it in the purser's safe." He handed me a little plush-lined jewel-case, opening it to display a string of beautifully graduated pearls.

"I've been collecting them for several years," he went on with a smile. "Marion is the only niece I have, and I hope this will give her pleasure for a long time to come. But it's time you were getting aboard—the men are up forward, waiting for you to say good-bye."

I felt a lump in my throat as I shook hands with them, one after the other: Ofai, Ivi with his bandaged arm, Pahuri, Fatu, and the cook. Marama and the chief of Faatemu were standing with Maruia on the dock.

"My heart is heavy to-day," said Marama, as I took his hand, "but Seroni has promised that shall go with him when next he sails away to your land. Perhaps it will not be long before we meet."

"Come back to us one day," said the old woman. "Your welcome will be warm, for your friends are many in these islands!"

"E, parau mau," put in Taura, in his deep voice. "Those are true words!"

The ship was whistling for the last time. Half laughing and half vexed at the delay, my uncle seized my arm to drag me away from the group of kind native friends. As we pushed our way through the crowd about the gangplank, the sailors were casting off the lashings. Uncle Harry grasped my hand.

"Time you were aboard," he said. "Good-bye, old man."

The gangplank came up, lines were cast off, and the propeller began to churn. I stood by the rail, gazing down at the faces of friends among the crowd ashore, while the steamer backed, turned, and headed for the open sea. A handkerchief fluttered on the Tara's deck; her ensign dipped gracefully in a farewell salute. All at once a feeling of sadness came over me—I turned my eyes away from the land, walked blindly to my stateroom, and closed the door.

That evening, when the bugle announced the dinner hour, I went on deck and gazed back across the calm sea astern. The far-away peaks of Tahiti and Eimeo stood like faint blue clouds on the line where sea met sky—lands of enchanted memory, fast disappearing in the fading light.

END