CHAPTER IX
The Starry Threshold

THE only visible reminder which I have now of my residence on "the island where the souls were eaten" is a pocket notebook of penciled comment, with a dozen pages, blank and fair, at the back—in themselves a reminder of the fragmentary nature of that adventure in solitude, of the blank pages at the close of every chapter of experience, awaiting the final comment which is never set down. It is a small notebook of Chinese manufacture, with a pretty fantasy of flowers woven through the word "Memoranda," and butterflies with wings of gold-and-blue hovering over it, meant to suggest, perhaps, that one's memories, however happy or however seemingly enduring, are as ephemeral as they and must soon fade and die. But I am not willing to accept such a suggestion, to believe that I can ever forget even the most trivial of the events which took place at Rutiaro or at Soul-Eaters' Island. By some peculiar virtue of their own they stand out with the vividness of portions of childhood experience which remains fixed in the memory when other more important happenings have been long forgotten.

The casual reader of the notebook would never guess this from the comment written there. Did he know the length and the nature of my residence at the atoll, he would be surprised, merely, that with so much leisure for observation there should be such poverty of recorded fact. I, myself, am surprised and a little appalled when I think how the weeks slipped by, leaving me nothing to show for them. I became a spendthrift of time. I was under the delusion that my own just share of it had been immeasurably increased, that in some unaccountable way I had fallen heir to a legacy of hours and days which could never be exhausted. The delusion was of gradual growth, like the habit of reverie which fastens itself at last upon the most restless of wanderers among the atolls. In the beginning I was full of business. I remember with what earnestness of purpose I wrote on the first page of the notebook, "Rutiaro: Observations on Life and Character in the Low Archipelago." I had ambitious plans. I meant to go back and forth between my hermitage and the village island, notebook in hand, saying, "Eaha tera?" ("What is that?"), "Nafea ia parau Paumotu?" ("How do you say this in Paumotuan?"). And when I had learned the language and had completed my studies of flora and fauna I was to be the Boswell of the atoll, curious, tireless, not to be rebuked by the wind rustling the fronds of the palms nor by the voice of the sea when the wind was low, saying, "Sh-h-h, sh-h-h," on thirty miles of coral reef.

But I was rebuked—or so it seemed to me—and now, I fear, the learned monograph is never to be written. A faltering purpose is plainly indicated in the notebook. It becomes apparent in the first observation on "The Life and Character of the Paumotuans," which reads:

The president of the Polynesian society would say, and rightly, no doubt, that this is not germane to the subject. But at the time I wrote it it was so accurately descriptive of the place where my house stood that it might have been embodied with scarcely the exchange of a word in an exact real-estate announcement of the location of my property. I set it down one evening in early summer, the evening of my first day's residence at Soul-Eaters' Island. The completion of my house had been celebrated with a feast, and toward midnight I was left alone, watching the departure of the last of the villagers, who were returning in their canoes along the ocean side of the atoll. The sea was as calm as I have ever seen it, and as they went homeward, dipping their paddles into the shining tracks of the stars, my guests were singing an old chant. It was one of innumerable verses, telling of an evil earth spirit in the form of a sea bird which was supposed to make its home on the motu, and at the end of each verse the voices of the women rose in the refrain which I could hear long after the canoes had passed from sight:

a lament that a spirit so vindictive, so pitiless, should be so fair to outward seeming.

Standing at the starry threshold, listening to the ghostly refrain, I translated its application—its meaning, too—from the bird to the island where, perhaps, I would one day see it in my rambles. I regretted that it was so inaccessible, so remote and hidden from the world, as though that were not more than half the reason for its untarnished beauty. It is a maudlin feeling, that of sadness at the thought of loveliness hidden from appraising eyes; and I am inclined to think that it springs, not so much from an unselfish desire to share it, as from a vulgar longing to say to one's gregarious fellows: "See what I have found! Can you show me anything to equal it in beauty, you dwellers in cities?" Whatever its source in this case, I was glad that it passed quickly. No tears stained my pillow, even though I knew that Rutiaro could never be the goal of Sunday excursionists. But I was not quite easy in mind as I composed myself for sleep. I had made a poor beginning as a diarist. The first entry was fanciful and, furthermore, not my own. What original contribution to truth or beauty could I make as a result of the day's events? Finally I rose, lit my lamp, and wrote, underneath the Comus quotation:

"The Paumotuans are very fond of perfume. This is probably due to the fact that their islands, being scantly provided with flowers and sweet-smelling herbs, they take this means of satisfying their craving for fragrant odors."

that observation. But I thought when I made it that it was based upon a careful enough consideration of the facts. During the afternoon I had distributed some gifts among my guests, chiefly among the children. I had some bolts of ribbon and dress goods, some earrings and bracelets, thinly washed in gold, which I had bought, on credit, of Moy Ling, the Chinaman, and I had been saving them for just such an occasion as the feast at Soul-Eaters' Island. I also had a case of perfume which Moy had been very reluctant to part with—perfume and toilet waters in fancy bottles, with quaint legends printed on the labels—"June Rose," which the makers admitted had "as much body as higher-priced perfumes"; "Wild Violet: Like a faint breath from the forest floor"; "Khiva Bouquet: The Soul of the Exquisite Orient"; etc. This gift was greatly coveted. Pinga immediately took charge of the three bottles I had given his daughters and packed them carefully in a pareu, together with a bottle of bay rum presented to him by virtue of his office as village barber. Rangituki went among her grandchildren scolding and rating, until she had made a similar collection, and in a short time all of the perfume was in the hands of a few of the older people. This seemed to me rather high-handed procedure, but it was not my place to interfere with parental and grandparental authority. And it was as well, perhaps, that the children should be restrained. Otherwise they would have saturated their clothing and their hair, and the atoll would have smelled to heaven or very near it.

I thought no more of the episode until the following Sunday when I went to church at the village. A combined service of Latter Day Saints and the Reformed Church of Latter Day Saints was being held, an amicable arrangement which would have scandalized the white missionaries of those rival denominations. But at Rutiaro Saints and Reformed Saints live together peaceably enough and, being few in numbers, they often join forces for greater effect in the himines. The meeting was held in the Reformed church, a sightly structure built entirely of niau—the braided fronds of coconut palms—and the earthern floor was covered with mats of the same material. At one end of the room there was a raised platform and a deal table which served as a pulpit. The walls lengthwise were built to prop open outward, giving free circulation to the air and charming views of the shaded floor of the island and the blue waters of the lagoon.

The church was full, the men sitting on one side and the women on the other, according to island custom, and the children playing about on the floor between the benches. Many of the older people, too, sat on the floor with their backs to the posts which supported the roof. Interest lagged during the intervals between the singing, and although Huirai was preaching in his usual forceful, denunciatory manner, I found my own thoughts wandering on secular paths. Of a sudden it occurred to me that June Rose should be discernible among the women of the congregation if it had as much body as had been claimed for it. But I could not detect its presence nor did the faintest breath reach me from the forest floor. I was conscious only of the penetrating odor of drying copra which came through the open windows and the not unpleasant smell of coconut oil.

What had become of the perfume, I wondered. On Sunday, if at all, it should have been in evidence, for the women were in white dresses and before coming to church had made their most elaborate toilet of the week. But Huirai was warming to his theme and demanded attention, at least from me, not having heard him preach before. He had removed his coat and was perspiring and exhorting in a way which would have pleased the most devout and gloomy of missionaries. He had a peculiar oratorical manner. His face foretold clearly the birth of an idea. One could read there the first vague impulse in the brain which gave rise to it; see it gathering lucidity, glimmering, like heat lightning on a summer evening, in his cloudy mind, until it was given utterance in a voice of thunder, which rumbled away to silence as the light of creation died out of his eyes. Then he would stand motionless, gazing on vacancy, profoundly unself-conscious, as though he were merely the passionless mouthpiece of some higher power. The abruptness of his outbursts and his ferocious aspect when delivering them were disconcerting; and it was even worse when, at intervals, his eyes met mine. Even though he were in the midst of a sentence he would pause and his face would beam with a radiant smile, in striking contrast to the forbidding scowl of the moment before. Remembering his mission, he would then proceed in his former manner. Without understanding his discourse, one would have said that he was condemning all of his auditors, who had evidently been guilty of the most frightful sins. But this was not the case. His sentences were short and in the periods of silence between them I had time to make a translation.

"Ua taparahi Kaina ia Abela (Cain killed Abel).... Why did he kill him?... Because he was a bad man, a very bad man—(taata ino roa).... He was jealous of Abel, whom God loved because he willingly brought him gifts from his plantation.... Abel did not keep everything for himself.... He said to God, 'Teie te faraoa na Oe' ('Here is bread for you').... He gave other things, too, many things, and he was glad to give them."

Huirai talked at great length on this theme, the members of the congregation sometimes listening and sometimes conversing among themselves. They had no scruples about interrupting the sermon. While Huirai was awaiting further inspiration hymns were started by the women and taken up at once by the others. Pinga, who sang bass parts, rocked back and forth to the cadence, one hand cupped over his right ear, the better to enjoy the effect of the music. Rangituki, who went to the different churches in turn, because of the himines, had one of her granddaughters in her lap, and while she sang made a careful examination of the child's head, in search of a tiny parasite which favored that nesting place. Nui-Vahine sat with her breast bare, suckling a three-months-old baby. Old men and women and young, even the children, sang. Huirai alone was silent, gazing with moody abstraction over the heads of the congregation as he pondered further the ethical points at issue in the Cain and Abel story.

I had witnessed many scenes like this during the months spent in cruising among the atolls on the Caleb S. Winship—scenes to interest one again and again and to furnish food for a great deal of futile speculation. How important a thing in the lives of these primitive people is this religion of ours which has replaced their old beliefs and superstitions? It would be absurd to say, "how fundamental," for religious faith is of slow growth and it was only yesterday, as time is counted, that the ship Duff, carrying the first missionaries who had ever visited this southern ocean, came to anchor at Tahiti. One of Huirai's remarks called to mind an account I had read of that first meeting between Christian missionaries and the heathen they had come to save. It is to be found in the narrative of the Duff's three years' voyage in the south Pacific, published in 1799, by the London Missionary Society:

How clear a picture one has of the scene, described by men whose purity of faith, whose sincerity of belief, were beyond question. But one smiles a little sadly at the thought of their austerity, their total lack of that other divine attribute—a sense of humor. "Tayo! Tayo!" ("Friend! Friend!") the Tahitians cried, and the missionaries, to requite them for their kindly welcome, organized a prayer meeting an hour and a quarter in length, and sang, "O'er the Gloomy Hills of Darkness." It was a prophecy, that song. The Tahitians and others of the Polynesian family have gone far on that road since 1797.

Of course one doesn't blame the missionaries for this; but it seems to me that the chief benefit resulting from the Christianizing process is that it has offset some of the evils resulting from the rest of the civilizing process. This was not the opinion of Tino, supercargo of the Caleb S. Winship, however. I remember a conversation which I had with him on the subject, when Rutiaro itself lay within view, but still far distant. For the sake of argument I had made some willfully disparaging remark about traders, and Tino had taken exception to it.

"You're wrong," he said. "You know as well as I do—or maybe you don't—what these people used to be: cannibals, and not so many years ago at that. I don't suppose you would call it a genteel practice? Well, what stopped it? I'll tell you what stopped it—tinned beef."

That was a new angle of vision to me. I said nothing, but I thought I could detect a hint of a smile in his eyes as he waited for the statement to sink in.

"I have had some fun in my time," he went on, "arguing this out with the missionaries. I say tinned beef and they say the four gospels. Can't be proved either way, of course. But suppose, right now, every trading schooner in the archipelago was to lay a course for Papeete. Suppose not one of them was to go back to the atolls for the next twenty-five years. Leave the people to themselves, as you say, and let them have their missionaries, with the Golden Rule in one hand and the Ten Commandments in the other. What chance would they have of dying a natural death? The missionaries, I mean. About as much chance as I have of getting old Maroaki at Taka Raro to pay me the eight hundred francs he owes me.

"What makes me laugh inside is that the missionaries are so serious about the influence they have had on the natives. I could tell them some things—but what would be the use? They wouldn't believe me. Just before we left Papeete this time I was talking to one of the Protestants. He told me that his Church had two thousand converts in French Oceania, while the Catholics had only around six hundred, I believe it was. I said that I knew how he could get that extra six hundred into his own fold, and probably a good many more if he wanted to. All he had to do was to charter my schooner, load her with Tahiti produce—bananas, mangoes, oranges, breadfruit; he needn't take a single gallon of rum unless he wanted to. Then we would make a tour of the islands, holding church festivals, with refreshments, at every one; and at the end of the cruise I would guarantee that there wouldn't be a Catholic left in all the Paumotus. He didn't take to the plan at all, and of course it did have one weak point—if the Brothers tried the same game they would have just the same success, and nobody could tell from one week to the next which were Protestants and which were Catholics.

"That's about what happened at Taka Raro the last time I was down there. The population is supposed to be divided about half and half between the Latter Day Saints and the Catholics. There are no missionaries living on the island. The head churches in Papeete send their men around when they can to see how things are going with their flocks. That is usually about once a year for each of them. Boats don't often put in at Taka Raro. I've been there only four times in ten years, myself, and the last time I brought down a young fellow from the Protestant crowd. He had been with me the whole cruise, holding services at the islands where I had put in for copra. I hadn't gone to any of them, but at Taka Raro I felt the need of some religion. I had spent the whole day chasing that Maroaki I spoke about. The old rascal has owed me that eight hundred francs since nineteen ten. He is an elder in his church too. The minute he makes out my schooner standing in toward the pass off he goes on important business to the far end of the lagoon. I went after him that day, with my usual luck. He wasn't to be found, and I came back to the village feeling a bit ruffled up.

"It was just time for the meeting, and I decided that I might as well go as to loaf around finding that old hypocrite while my copra was being loaded. The church was packed when I went in. There wasn't a Catholic in the village that evening. All of those who had been Catholics were taking part in the himine and singing the Protestant songs as well as the Latter Day Saints'. No one seemed to pay much attention to the sermon, though. The young missionary didn't understand the language very well, and the preaching was hard for him. But he seemed to feel pretty good about the meeting, and when we left, the next day, he went down to the cabin to write a report of the progress his church had made at Taka Raro. He must have had a lot to say, for he was at it all the morning. He didn't know that we passed the Ata just after we got out of the pass. That made me feel good, for Louis Germaine, her skipper, has been a rival of mine for years, and I had every kilo of dry copra there was on the island. I got the megaphone and was about to yell, 'Good luck to you, Louis!' when I saw that he had a missionary aboard, too—a priest with a knee-length beard and a black cloak; so I only waved my hand and Louis shook his fist and shouted something I couldn't make out. I was going to the westward, stood close inshore, and passed the village from the outside an hour later. The priest hadn't lost any time getting his congregation together. Since there was no copra to be bought, I suppose Louis told him he had to get a move on. There had been another religious landslide. I was sure of that from the singing, which I heard clear enough, the wind being offshore. Great singers these Paumotuans, and it doesn't make very much difference to them whether the song is 'Happy Day' or 'Jerusalem, the Golden.' Of course I didn't say anything to my missionary. As the old saying is, 'What you don't know won't hurt you.'"

This conversation with Tino was running through my mind as I strolled down the village island after the service. Tino, I decided, was prejudiced. His was the typical trader's point of view. I had heard many other incidents which bore him out in his findings, but they came usually from men interested in exploiting the islands commercially. Huirai's exposition of the old biblical story—was that merely the result of a prolonged tinned-beef crusade? Remembering the kind of sacrifice which was discussed, very likely on this very island, in the days of pure heathendom, such a conclusion seemed fantastical. No, one must be fair to the missionaries. Perhaps they were over-zealous at times, oversanguine about the results of their efforts—so were all human beings in whatever line of endeavor; but their accomplishment had been undeniably great. Here were people living orderly, quiet lives. They didn't drink, although in the early days of their contact with civilization—until quite recently, in fact—there had been terrible orgies of intoxication. To overcome that was, in itself, a worthwhile accomplishment on the part of the Church. Only a few weeks before I had met Monsieur Ferlys, the administrator of the Paumotus, at Taenga. "The reign of alcohol is over," he had said to the islanders there—strange words, coming from the lips of a Frenchman. There was to be no more rum nor gin nor wine for any of the Paumotuans. Henceforth, any trader found selling it or any native drinking it was to be severely punished.

I continued my walk to the far end of the island and, selecting a shady spot, sat down to rest. The pressure of a notebook in my hip pocket interrupted my examination of the problem, "The missionary versus the trader as a civilizing influence." I was reminded that I had made no recent observations on the life and character of the Paumotuans, and the recollection was annoying. Was I never to be able to pursue, in indolence, my unprofitable musings? Why this persistent feeling that I must set them down in black and white? Why sully the fair pages of my notebook? Words, words! The world was buried beneath their visible manifestations, and still the interminable clacking of innumerable typewriters, the roar of glutted presses. In the mind's eye I saw magnificent forests being destroyed to feed this depraved appetite for words, which were piled mountain high in libraries; which encumbered all the attics in Christendom. Words, blowing about the streets and littering the parks on Sundays; filling the ash carts on Mondays. "No," I thought, "I will no longer be guilty of adding to the sum of words. I'll not write my learned monograph." But that inner voice, which itself is a creature born of many words—an artificial thing, however insistent its utterance—spoke out loud and clear: "You idler! You waster of your inheritance of energy! You throwback to barbarism—write!"

"But why?" I replied. "Tell me that! Why?"

"Sir, because it is your vocation. And have you no convictions? Your grandfather had them, and your great-grandfather, and those missionaries of the Duff you have been thinking about. Ah! the decay of convictions in this age! The lack of that old sublime belief in something—anything! Now then, I have come down to you through a long line of ancestors, and I don't mean to die through lack of exercise. You may not believe in me, but you've got to obey me. Write!"

I know that I should have no peace until I did, so I drew forth my notebook and, in line with my thoughts of a moment before, wrote, underneath the last observation on perfume: "The sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages among these islands is now prohibited by law. It is strange to find such legislation in territory under French administration. Is the prohibition movement to become world-wide, then? Is the reign of alcohol doomed in all lands?"

Exhausted by the mental effort, but somewhat easier in conscience, I replaced the notebook in my pocket. It was pleasant then to let the mind lie fallow or to occupy it with the reception of mere visual impressions. At length, although I didn't sleep, I was scarcely more animate then the fluted shell lying close by on the beach or the kopapa bushes which formed a green inclosure around my resting place.

Something whirled through the air over my head and fell with a light splash in the water before me. I sat gazing at it without curiosity, hardly moved, so slowly does one come out of the depths of dreamless reverie. Little waves pushed the object gently shoreward until it lay, rolling back and forth in a few inches of clear water. "What!" I shouted. I didn't actually shout—I didn't open my lips; but the shock of astonishment seemed vocal—as loud as a blare of trumpets or a clash of cymbals. Before me lay a prettily fashioned bottle, half filled with sea water, and the label on it read, "Khiva Bouquet: The Soul of the Exquisite Orient." "Impossible!" I thought. "I am three miles from the village and no one lives at this end of the island." Then I heard voices or, better, one voice which I recognized as that of Rangituki. She was talking in a low monotone, her most effective manner when reciting one of her interminable stories of former days. Cautiously I pushed aside the bushes and looked through. Rangituki was sitting about twenty yards away, in the midst of a company of five. Pinga was one of them and Tevai another—both fathers of families and both much concerned, a few days earlier, lest their children should waste the perfume I had given them. Pinga took a pull at a bottle which I identified as belonging to Wild Violet. He made a wry face as he did it, but he took another and then another, before he set it down. The wind was toward me, and as the corks popped—or, more accurately, as stoppers were lifted—I was forced to admit that June Rose had body, impalpable, perhaps, but authentic.

I passed the furtive revelers unnoticed by going along the lagoon beach, keeping under the screen of kopapa bushes. Should I tell Puarei, the chief, of this evasion of the law? I decided that I would not, for he was a stern man and would punish the culprits severely. After all, on an island where there were so few distractions, what was a little perfume among friends?

All of which proves plainly enough, it seems to me, the folly of keeping a notebook; at any rate, the folly of jumping hastily to conclusions.

Or perhaps, more important than this, it gives further light on the vexed question, Does prohibition prohibit?

I find no other observations on Paumotuan life and character, under this date, unless the word, "Mama-faaamu" scribbled on the margin of a leaf, may be regarded as a discouraged hint at one; a suggestion for a commentary on a curious Polynesian relationship, when—and only when—I should have had time to gather all of the available data concerning it. This relationship has to do with the transfer of a child, or children, from the original blood parents to another set known as "feeding-parents." My interest in the practice dates from the moment when I made my first notebook reference to it, and it was aroused in a very casual, leisurely fashion. For this reason it will be best, I think, to tell the story of it in a leisurely way.

Returning to the village from the scene of the perfume orgy, I found the church still occupied, although the service was long over. The benches had been stacked in one corner; the mats shaken out and spread again on the floor, where fifteen or twenty people were reclining at ease or sitting native fashion—some of them talking, some sleeping, some engaged in light tasks such as hat weaving and the fashioning of pearl-shell fish hooks; others in the yet more congenial task of doing nothing at all. It was the practice, on Sunday, for the village to gather at the Reformed church, which they felt at liberty to use for secular as well as for sacred purposes, for it was a native-built structure, with walls and roof of thatch, like those of their own houses. The two other churches were never so used. They were frame buildings, in the European or American style of church architecture, with formal furnishings and windows of colored glass. To have done any sort of work in either of them would have been regarded as a serious offense, certain to be followed by unmistakable evidence of divine displeasure. As Tuina once told me, sores, illness, even death might result as a punishment for such desecration.

I was thinking of this and other primitive reactions to ecclesiastical furniture, and my hand was faltering toward my notebook pocket when Huirai's little daughter, Manava, entered the church, carrying a white cloth which she spread on the pulpit table. She returned a moment later with a tin of sardines, some boiled rice on a kahaia leaf, and a bowl of tea. I was Huirai's guest for the day, and had been anxiously awaiting some evidence that food was on the way; but I had not expected that it would be served in the church. I had not eaten a church dinner since boyhood, and, strangely enough, the memory of some of those early feasts came back to me while Manava was setting the table. As one scene is superimposed upon another on a moving-picture screen, I saw an American village of twenty years ago—a village of board sidewalks and quiet, shaded streets bright with dandelions, taking ghostly form and transparency among the palms of Rutiaro. Two small boys walked briskly along, ringing hand bells, and shouting, "Dinner at the Pres-by-terian church ri-i-i-ight awa-a-a-ay." The G. A. R. band—a fife, two tenor drums, and one bass—played outside the church where the crowd was gathering, and horses, attached to buggies and spring wagons, were pawing the earth around the hitching posts. Then Mrs. MacGregor appeared in the doorway, her kindly face beaming the warmest of welcomes. "Come on in and set down, folks. Everything's all ready." Members of the Ladies' Relief Corps—mothers of large families, used to catering for large appetites—hurried back and forth with platters of roast turkey and chicken, roast beef, mashed potatoes of marvelous smoothness and flakiness—with everything in the way of food which that hospitable Middle-Western country provides. I heard the pleasant talk of homely things, smelled the appetizing odors, saw plates replenished again and again. Throughout the length of the tables old-fashioned gravy boats sailed from cover to cover—but I spared myself further contemplation of the scene, further shadowy participation in a feast which cost the affluent but a quarter, and a bell ringer nothing at all. The vision faded, but before it was quite gone I heard a voice saying: "Land sakes! You boys ain't eating a thing! Have some more of these dumplings? What's the matter with your appetites? Ain't you feelin' well?" It seemed a thousand years away, that voice; and no doubt it was, and is, even farther than that.

Church dinners at Rutiaro were not such sumptuous affairs. They were not, in fact, an integral part of the community life. In so far as I know, this was the only one ever held there and was the result of Huirai's peculiar notions of the hospitality due a white man. I told him that I was not accustomed to dining in churches at home, even on Sunday, and, furthermore, that I liked companionship at table. But he was not convinced, and he refused to join me. He and his family had already eaten, he said; so I sat on a box at the pulpit table, partaking of a solitary meal, and got through with it as quickly as possible.

I smiled inwardly at the thought of the inheritance of prestige, granted me without question, at Rutiaro, merely because I was the sole representative there of a so-called superior race. No white wasters had preceded me at the atoll. This was fortunate in a way, for it gave me something to live up to—the ideal Rutiaroan conception of the popaa—white man. Huirai was partly responsible for the fact that it was ideal. His tales of San Francisco—which, to the Paumotuan, means America—had been steadily growing in splendor. He seemed to have forgotten whatever he may have seen there of misery or incompetence or ugliness. All Americans were divinities of a sort. Their energy was superhuman; their accomplishment, as exemplified in ships, trains, buildings, automobiles, moving-picture theaters—beyond all belief unless one had actually seen those things. And the meanest of them lived on a scale of grandeur far surpassing that of the governor of the Paumotus at Fakavava. Yes, I had something to live up to at Rutiaro. The necessity was flattering, to be sure, but it cost some effort and inconvenience to meet it. I didn't dare look as slack as I often felt, both mentally and physically. I could not even sit on the floor, or stretch out at my ease, when in a native house; and I was compelled, when eating, to resume the use of my two-pronged fork and the small tin spoon, although it was much simpler and easier to eat with my fingers as the rest of them did.

Having finished my meal, I took what comfort prestige permitted by placing my box by the wall and leaning back against a post. Takiero, a woman of barbaric beauty, was sitting near by playing, "Conquer the North" on my ocharina. I taught her the air in an unguarded moment and had been regretting it ever since. Hunga, her husband, lay at her side, his strong, fine limbs relaxed in sleep. I would have given all my gratuitous prestige as a popaa to have exchanged legs or shoulders or girth of chest with him. It was at about this time, as I remember it, that my thoughts turned to the subject of feeding-parents. Nui-Vahine was present, still—or again—nursing the three months' old baby. It belonged, as I knew, to Takiero, who appeared to be quite capable of nourishing it herself. Why had she given it to Nui-Vahine? And why had Hunga, the father of the child, consented to this seemingly unnatural gift? The transfer of parenthood had been made a month earlier, since which time Takiero and her husband had shown only a slight, proprietary interest in their offspring. Takiero sometimes dandled it on her knee, as any woman might the child of some one else; but no one would have guessed that she was the mother of it. Nui-Vahine fed, clothed, and bathed it, and her husband, Nui-Tane, was as fond of it as she herself. They kept the child at their house, and between them made as much fuss over it as though it were their own flesh and blood. What could have been the origin of this strange practice of parenthood by proxy? It was a common one throughout eastern Polynesia. I had seen a good many instances of it in the Cook islands, the Marquesas, and the Society group. Here was a subject worthy of an important chapter in the Life and Character monograph, and I decided that I might as well begin my researches at once.

Takiero reluctantly left off her playing and placed herself in a receptive mood. Why, I asked, had she given her child to Nui-Vahine? Her reply was, because Nui-Vahine had asked for it. "But, see here, Takiero," I said, "I should think that you and Hunga would want to keep your own baby. It is none of my business, of course. I ask you only because I would like to get some information on this feeding-parent custom. Can't you feed it yourself? Is that the reason you gave it away?"

I blundered atrociously in asking that question. Without meaning to, I touched her pride as a woman, as a mother. Takiero looked at me for a moment without speaking. Then she tore open her dress and gave me absolute proof—not that I wanted it—of her ability to nurse her own or any other child. Following this, she went over to where Nui-Vahine was sitting, snatched the baby from her arms, and almost smothered it against her body. She fondled it, kissed it, covered it with her magnificent hair. I had never before seen such a display of savage and tender maternal passion.

By that time Nui-Vahine had recovered from her astonishment and came to the defense of her own. Her month of motherhood gave her claims to the child, apparently, and she tried to enforce them physically. Takiero stood her ground, her black eyes flaming and, holding the baby in one arm, pushed Nui-Vahine away with the other. I expected to see hair flying, but, luckily, both women found their tongues at the same moment. They were like—they were, in fact—two superb cats, spitting at each other. The torrent of words did not flow smoothly. It came in hot, short bursts, like salvos of machine-gun fire, and, curiously enough, it was almost pure Paumotuan, not the hybrid Paumotuan-Tahitian commonly used in their temperate speech. It bristled with snarling ng's, with flintlike k's from which fire could be struck in passionate argument. Other women took sides in the quarrel. Had I poked an inquisitive pencil into a wasps' nest the effect could hardly have been more disconcerting. Hunga was awakened by the angry voices and looked on with sleepy perplexity. Nui-Tane grinned reassuringly, as much as to say: "Don't be upset. You know what women are." Finally, Puarei, the chief, who had been an impassive spectator, bellowed out a command for silence. The tumult subsided at once, and the fury of the women with it. Five minutes later everything was as it had been before. Hunga was sleeping and Nui-Tane polishing a pearl-shell fish hook; Nui-Vahine had the baby and Takiero the ocharina. Neither of them showed the least resentment, either toward me or toward each other. In intensity and briefness the gust of passion which swept through the little church was precisely like the squalls of wind and rain which darken the seas of the Low Archipelago in the midst of the hurricane season, which burst almost from a clear sky and then as suddenly melt into pure sunlight again.

When I left the village to return to Soul-Eaters' Island Takiero was still playing the old border ballad on my ocharina. It had once been my favorite air for that instrument. I first heard it in northern France on a blustering winter evening when a brigade of English regiments was marching, under heavy shell fire, into one of the greatest battles of the war, to the music of pipes and drums. Humming the air now, although I still feel a tightening of the nerves, a quickening of the pulses, it is not because of the old set of associations. They have been buried forever beneath a newer set. The village at Rutiaro comes into view, and I see Takiero, clutching a baby against her naked breast, standing in the midst of a crowd of turbulent women.

Should there be some other Polynesian scholar who wishes to pursue farther an inquiry into a curious practice of child adoption I would advise extreme caution at an atoll far on the southeasterly fringe of the Low Archipelago.

The place may easily be identified; for he will find there a young woman of barbaric beauty who will be playing "Conquer the North" on an ocharina.

CHAPTER X
Costly Hospitality

FOR an authentic test of one's capacity for solitude—or better, perhaps, for convincing proof of the lack of it—two conditions are essential: complete isolation—that goes without saying, of course; and the assurance that such isolation will not be broken into. At Soul-Eaters' Island I expected to find both of these conditions fulfilled. My house was four miles from the settlement, but in reality I had no more seclusion there than a hermit whose retreat is within easy walking distance of a summer hotel. Visitors came in canoes, in cutters; and as the pass and the reef on either side of it were a favorite fishing ground many of them came prepared to spend the day, or the night, or both.

It is as well, perhaps, that the event fell out as it did. If life is to keep its fine zest many wished-for experiences must be perpetually unrealized, and we perpetually following our alluring phantoms until we tumble headlong out of existence. Not having been put to the proof, I may still persuade myself that I am a lover of solitude, gifted for the enjoyment of it beyond other men. Meanwhile, at Soul-Eaters' Island, I had a further experience with Moy Ling, the Chinese storekeeper, which convinced me of very definite limitations in another direction.

Some time after I had taken up residence there the village came in a body to the adjacent island on the other side of the pass. During the year they moved in this way from one piece of land to another, collecting the ripe coconuts and making their copra on the spot. The land was not owned in common, but they worked it in common; and as house building was a simple matter, instead of going back and forth from the village, they erected temporary shelters and remained at each island in turn until the work there was finished. They were not unremitting toilers. After an hour or two of copra making in the cool of the early morning they were content to call it a day, and spent the rest of the time at more congenial occupations—swimming, fishing, visiting back and forth, talking forever of the arrival of the last trading schooner and the probable date of arrival of the next one.

During all of this time I kept open house, and since I was indebted to nearly all of my friendly visitors for past hospitalities I felt that it was necessary to make returns. Unfortunately, I had nothing to make returns with, except such supplies of provisions and trade goods as I was able to purchase on credit of Moy Ling. Fish were abundant in the lagoon, and a few minutes of fine sport each day more than supplied my wants; but I knew that fish was not acceptable to palates long accustomed to little else. Furthermore, having accepted, at the time of my arrival at Rutiaro, the role of the generous, affluent popaa, I had to carry it through. As previously related, although I had been left at Rutiaro unexpectedly, the inhabitants took it for granted that I had plenty of money. The possession of wealth in the form of banknotes is regarded there as one of the attributes of a white man, as necessary to his comfort and convenience and as much a part of him as arms and legs. Pride prevented my disillusioning them at first when I was in desperate need of a new wardrobe; but it got me into a devil of a hole with Moy, and I dug myself in more deeply every day.

Having traded upon the native tradition of the mysterious affluence of all white men by opening up a credit account with the Chinaman I had to sustain his confidence in my ability to cancel it at once if I choose; and, feeling inwardly abject, it was all the more necessary to maintain a reassuring front in the face of his growing anxiety. It was growing. I could see that. He never actually dunned me, but I escaped the humiliating experience only by making additional purchases on so vast a scale, according to island standards, that even Moy seemed to be awed, for brief periods, into a stupefied acceptance of the mysteriously affluent myth. I, myself, was awed when I thought of the size of my bill. Trade goods carried across thousands of miles of ocean are more than usually expensive. A one-pound tin of bully beef cost nine francs, and other things were proportionally dear. The worst of it was that Moy's stock of supplies was much larger than I had at first supposed. He had a warehouse adjoining his store which was full of them, and so, with guests making constant demands upon my hospitality, I was forced to buy with the greater abandon as his confidence waned. But I returned from these encounters with a washed-out feeling, regretting that I had ever accepted guile as an ally and longing for relief from a state of affairs which I knew could not continue indefinitely.

Relief came in histrionic, eleventh-hour fashion. Providence saved me when I thought Pride was riding me to a starry fall. One evening I paddled across to the other island for further supplies. Huirai and his family had been staying with me for several days. Fishing was better on my side of the lagoon pass, he said, but I think his real purpose in coming had been to eat my, or, rather, Moy Ling's tinned beef. At any rate, when they returned I had nothing left. It was still fairly early, but no one was abroad in the village street. There was a light in Moy's shop, however, and looking through the open window I saw him sitting at a table with his adding machine before him. He was counting aloud in Chinese, his long, slim fingers playing skilfully over the wooden beads which slid back and forth on the framework with a soft, clicking sound, and as he bent over columns of figures the lamp light filled the hollows of his cheeks and temples with pits of shadow. In repose his face was as expressionless as that of a corpse. I felt my courage going as I looked at it. What chance had I of carrying through successfully this game of beggarman's bluff? How long could I hope to maintain the fiction of affluence before a man wise with the inherited experience of centuries of shopkeeping ancestors? I had a moment of panic, and before I realized what I was doing I had entered the shop and had asked for my bill.

Moy slip-slopped into his back room and returned with a large packet of old newspapers. He was a frugal soul and kept his accounts, as he ordered his life—with an eye to avoiding unnecessary expense. The journals were painted over with Chinese characters—the items of my various purchases. He arranged the lists in order, sat down to his counting machine again, and presently gave me the grand total. The amount was something over four thousand francs.

Thank Heaven for righteous anger! Thank Heaven for anger which is only moderately righteous. I knew that I had bought lavishly, but I had kept a rough estimate of the amount of my purchases, and I also knew that Moy had added at least 10 per cent to his legitimate profit. He had reasoned, no doubt, that a man who bought on mere whim, without asking the price of anything, would settle his obligation as thoughtlessly as he had incurred it. And I would of course. This was necessary if I were to live up to native tradition in the grand style. But when I saw how costly the game had become, and how thoroughly Moy had entered into the spirit of it, too, I felt indignant; and instead of confessing my predicament as I meant to do, I ordered another case of tinned beef and a bag of rice and left the shop without further talk.

This righteous wrath was all very well, but now that I had asked for my bill, I would have to settle it. How was this to be done? If only I had my sea chest which Tino, supercargo of the Caleb S. Winship, had carried away with him when he left me at Rutiaro! My pocketbook was in it, containing all of my money, more than enough to cancel the debt with Moy. I had rather an anxious time during the next few days. I remember entertaining as usual, but in a faint-hearted way; sleeping badly, and between times, walking up and down Soul-Eaters' Island, trying to subdue my pride to the point of confession. Then one afternoon, when I was sitting on the ocean beach, watching the surf piling up on the barrier reef, I became aware of a vessel, hull-down, on the horizon. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was like a far halloo from a world which I had almost forgotten existed. All through the afternoon she beat steadily to windward until at dusk she was about two miles distant, and I saw that she was one of the small schooners, without auxiliary power, which are used by Papeete trading companies for collecting copra at the less profitable atolls.

All the village came over to Soul-Eaters' Island, for the anchorage at this end of the atoll lay just behind it. The schooner was recognized. It was the Potii Ravarava which visited the atoll about once a year. She entered the pass with the turn of the tide, lighting her way by the fire which was burning in a primitive galley, a tin-lined box half filled with sand. I could see her native skipper at the wheel, a couple of sailors preparing to take in sail, and two native women sitting on the poop, with a great pile of luggage behind them. One of these was Tepera, daughter of Puarei, chief of the atoll, who had been sent to the Protestant school at Papeete nearly a year ago. The other was Tuarava, her aunt, with whom she had been living there. The crowd on the beach waited in deep silence while the schooner anchored and the sails were being furled. I remember that I could hear very plainly the far-off rumbling of the surf on the windward side of the atoll and the hissing of frying fish, or whatever it was, a native boy was cooking at the galley fire. Then the small boat was lowered and the women brought ashore with their luggage. Tepera went at once to her father and, putting her head on his shoulder, began to cry softly. Not a word was spoken. Tuarava and Poura, her sister, squatted on their heels close by, their arms around each other, moaning in the same softly audible way. The women then went in turn among all their relatives, having their little cry while the rest of the village looked on in sympathetic silence. When they had finished, a fire was lit on the beach and everyone gathered around to hear the news and to examine the schooner's cargo which was being put on shore. More trade goods for Moy Ling, I thought. Remembering my debt, I couldn't summon any great amount of interest in the scene. I was about to return to my house when Huirai came bustling up, carrying my sea chest. "You like this?" he said. What he meant was, "Is this yours?" but for once he misused his English with splendid relevancy. I sat down weakly on the box, holding a letter which he had thrust into my hand. No doubt of it. It was my box, and the letter was addressed to me in Tino's familiar handwriting. It read, in part, as follows: