Part 8

The French may be wrong from our iron-bound, Anglo-Saxon point of view, but they certainly have the knack of making life a more enjoyable affair under their administration than under any other at the present time.

It was at Papeete that we of the dream ship lost our cook. It may be remembered that in the Galapagos Islands, five thousand miles back on our tracks, we rescued an exquisite Ecuadorean Government official from a delicate position by christening him "Bill" and installing him in our culinary department, where he was expected to work his passage to Australia.

He proved to be an expert cigarette smoker and little more, so that when he approached us after the first night in Papeete and intimated that he found it "necessary" to leave, we were neither surprised nor pained.

And so you may see to this day Bill, of the biscuit-coloured socks and passionate tie, leaning gracefully over the soft-goods counter of a French store, extolling the virtues of a new line in underwear or gallantly escorting a bevy of Tahitian beauty to the movies of an evening.

Bill has found his niche in the scheme of things, and who can say more?

"If you manage to get past here without trouble aboard, you'll be the first yachting party to do it."

So spake that kindliest of men, the acting British Consul of Papeete, and although we of the dream ship were fortunate enough to succeed where others had failed, I recognize the truth of his words. Right down from Bligh of _Bounty_ mutiny fame to the most recent of pleasure cruises there is a succession of enterprises that have found their quietus at Papeete. There is something peculiarly demoralizing about the place. It invites to a laxity of mind and muscle unequalled in the Pacific, which perhaps accounts for its fatal fascination.

How everyone lives, including a goodly sprinkling of whites, is a mystery that intrigues. I know a man hereabouts living in a twelve-by-fourteen corrugated iron shed furnished with empty crates and kerosene tins. At any odd hour that he chances to awaken from a more or less permanent state of torpor, he lounges into town and pays the smaller stores a visit. He pays nothing else. Starting at one end of a counter, with its sample edibles outspread, he systematically talks and eats his way to the other, and by the time the process is complete he leaves with a parting _bon mot_, and a full stomach.

He is a type of the present-day beach-comber, hardly such a romantic figure as his prototype of the "good old days," but in his way interesting. His is the art of getting something for nothing, and who amongst us shall say he has never essayed the feat?

I cannot let this gentleman pass without enlarging upon him, if only to illustrate the mental processes by which a cultured man may descend to the status of a beach-comber.

He had never worked, and declared that he never would, both of which statements I could readily believe. Why should he work? To make a living? He has one without it. To make money for the mere sake of making money? Such a pastime did not attract him. To save himself from boredom? He was never bored. Were not sunsets and cloud effects, and all the strange living things of the beach (including store-keepers) provided for his entertainment? To retain his self-respect? Not at all. If others found it necessary to plan and strive in order to retain their self-respect, let them proceed! Personally, he did not find it necessary, that was all; and he fell to gouging his foul nails with a jackknife.

"Of course," I ventured to murmur, "there is self-respect _and_ self-respect."

"Quite," he agreed, cheerfully.

But the man's real secret, the canker at the back of his diseased mind, was revealed to me--as I have no doubt it has been to many others--in the most startling fashion. Suddenly, and apropos of nothing either of us had said, he sprang to his feet and struck an attitude in front of the rusty hurricane lantern standing on an empty fruit crate.

"Do you notice anything?" he asked me.

All I noticed was an elderly gentleman, inclining to corpulence and baldness, with rather a fine profile terminating in a Vandyke beard, standing rigidly with folded arms and an air of imperiousness that struck me as out of place.

"You see no resemblance?" he suggested, incredulously.

I saw none in particular, and said so. He took his seat with an air of disappointment.

"Then perhaps I may help you," he said. "My mother was lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria when King Edward was Prince of Wales. Does that convey anything to you?"

Naturally, it did, and I was forced to admit a resemblance that had escaped me.

Touched? Perhaps.

Taking this unworthy as the lowest rung of the white Tahitian social ladder, one comes next to the clerks of the larger stores, who, after a year or two with their firm, are marooned in charge of a trading station on some distant island at a wage that makes honesty and prosperity incompatible.

Then comes the store manager in crackling white drills and a luxuriant office, who welcomes you with a winning smile, and speeds you with a staggering bill; the schooner skipper, a genial soul possessed of an enviable independence that empowers him to tell his "owners" to go to the devil for three months of a hurricane season each year, the while his ship lies in port, and he disports himself and his latest yarn over variegated drinks on the balcony of the Bougainville Club; the French Government official, as awe-inspiring in business hours as he is charming out of them.

As for the natives, they are to-day a relic--rather a sad relic when one comes to think of it--of a once-superb race. White man's blight has descended upon them and they have withered like so many of their brothers throughout the milky-way of the Pacific.

When shall we learn that what may be one man's meat is another's poison, and refrain from attempting to instil our ideas of progress into a people on whom they have precisely the opposite effect? The answer is, "Never--so long as there is money in it."

But an additional rung must be added to our social ladder of Tahiti, and a sturdy rung at that. The half-caste--especially the French-Tahitian half-caste--is deservedly becoming a power in the land.

The accepted idea of him is that he retains in his composition all the failings of the white man and none of his virtues, but like so many accepted ideas it is entirely erroneous. He is a human being with the failings and virtues of any other, and there is not a doubt that he possesses a physical and mental virility that carries him further than most toward success in the tropics. He is usually extremely handsome, quietly mannered, and industrious, and the women of his species are among the most beautiful in the world.

Lastly there is the Chinaman; and the more one sees of this bland, uninterfering race, the more one is driven to the conclusion that he has come nearer to solving the riddle of existence than any other.

When Tahiti suffered one of its periodical awakenings to the fact that it must have plantation and road labour, it imported some thousands of Chinese. But what it failed to do was to specify on its indent the kind of Chinaman required, with the result that the majority turned out to be of the store-keeping class, and about as much use for road-making or copra-getting as a sick jelly-fish. Some stayed by the work for which they were intended, but many more, in their own insidious fashion, set up shop, and to-day wield a financial influence in Papeete second to none. "I'd sooner work for the Chinks," a white super-cargo told me. "You know where you are with them. They give you a square deal, expect a square deal from you, and if they don't get it, give you the boot without back-chat. They're not in an ever-lasting, all-fired hurry, either."

So here are one or two secrets of the Chinaman's success. Is it another that he will buy a pearl for no other purpose than to drink it pulverized in tea? Who can say? It is certain that _he_ won't.

It was here in Papeete that I became a _garcon d'honneur_; at least, that is what I was told I was, though at the time I felt, and I am sure looked, like nothing on earth.

If it had not been for Liza I should never have suffered the indignity of transition from the semblance of a man to that of a stuffed and hustled dummy. But who can listen to the pleadings of a particularly attractive half-caste Tahitian by moonlight on the deck of a dream ship without surrender? I cannot.

It was explained to Peter, as intermediary, that she (Liza) needed an escort to her sister's wedding, and thought that I should lend an air of distinction to the proceedings. She had fallen in love with my particular brand of sola topi, and she thought me _tres gentil_. I expect this settled the matter. In any case, at nine o'clock that night, arrayed as ordered, and securely wedged between Liza and one of her innumerable and attractive female relatives, I was conveyed, swift as Ford could fly, to the offices of the _Maire_, where I was dragged forth and pushed into position to form one of a long procession of youths and maidens, the former in white gloves and evening dress ties, the latter in frills.

From, then onward I have no clear recollection of how I came to be in the various places that I found myself. Liza managed it. Liza was the most efficient tug I had ever made fast to. Up a lane of giggling onlookers we trickled and, after the civil ceremony, down it again, to be whirled away to the church, where the same performance, with certain variations, was enacted. Then to the home of the bride, and incidentally of Liza, a palace of light and heat, music and movement, where I found solace in a life-saver before the tug again made fast and towed me in to "breakfast."

I had fancied the marriage complete, the knot irrevocably tied. Not so. We stood about a long table, our hands itching to descend on a glass of inviting champagne, while the native department of the ceremony, and to my mind the most impressive, was conducted by a venerable Tahitian, a relation of the bride's mother.

He spoke, and continued to speak, untroubled by the growing restlessness of his audience. Liza pouted, and whispered in my ear, from which I gathered that the speaker had not been invited, that his mere presence constituted an insult. I failed to see why a representative of one side of Liza's family should receive such scurvy treatment, but lacked the courage to say so, which is perhaps as well. Instead, I asked what he was saying, and elicited the following:

"It is old Tahitian custom--he should not be here! It is old Tahitian custom when you marry you have new name. He is telling new name which must be 'WIND'; and when they have children, they are to be more 'WIND'. He should not be here! There, it is finish; drink your champagne."

Which, ever obedient, I proceeded to do.

Followed dancing, a strange mixture of hula and fox-trot, until four o'clock of the morning, a farewell to Liza under the stars, and a somewhat clumsy boarding of the dream ship.

Such is present-day Papeete, a place of pleasure, interest, or profit, according to taste.

The main trouble in the Societies, as elsewhere in the Pacific islands, is scarcity of labour. Each group in this mighty ocean is struggling with the problem at the present time, and has not yet succeeded in reaching a solution. The native will not work. He does not believe in toiling for others when he is a self-supporting landlord himself, and, when you come to think of it, why should he? The Pacific Islands, ambitious for development, are consequently forced to turn for help to the more congested quarters of the globe, such as India and China, and herein lies the danger. The influx has already begun, and there is not a doubt that in time it will swell from a beneficial stream into an overwhelming flood unless ultimately returned to its source by a conduit of stringent legislation.

We of the dream ship left the pleasures and problems of Papeete with regret, but succeeded in leaving with our ship's company intact, to the lasting wonder of our very good friend the British Consul--to whom salaams from a less salubrious clime.

*THE ISLAND OF MOOREA*

_The land of the lizard men--Facts and fancies, including a few horrors_

*CHAPTER XII*

_The land of the lizard men--Facts and fancies, including a few horrors_

Many an hour of quiet content had we of the dream ship spent while moored off Papeete, in watching the ever-changing beauties of Moorea, a bare fifteen miles distant.

Whether viewed in fair or foul weather, at sunrise or sunset, this island with its fantastic volcanic peaks and deep, mysterious valleys of purple haze attracts the eye of the dreamer like a magnet. What secrets lay hidden in those valleys? What might not be seen from the summit of those peaks? We determined to find out.

But first it was necessary to attend to things practical in the shape of our alleged auxiliary engine. It was perfectly possible, here in Papeete, to hire an expert to diagnose the trouble, but I had had my fill of "experts" the world over. They have an engaging habit of setting the contraption in motion by some happy accident, and declaring that "it is all right now," but never by any chance explaining to the harassed owner what was the matter with it. It is my belief that they do not know themselves. The only point on which they are all agreed is that the "expert" who preceded them "made an unholy mess of the job," and that if it had not been for themselves, it is doubtful if the engine would have ever run again. Moreover, their bill is usually in keeping with their modesty.

After a three-hour heart-to-heart consultation with the patient, I discovered, quite by accident and with Peter's hat pin, that the tiny air-vent in the screw-top of one of the carburetors was clogged. Consequently, when the top was screwed down, the air had no outlet and forced down the float. Hence a persistent flooding.

It sounds absurd. It was absurd, but that was the entire trouble, and the accidental insertion of the hat pin converted lifeless scrap-iron into the power that the dream ship had so often and so sorely needed during the past months.

I hear the "experts" laugh, but I solace myself with the remembrance of one of their number leaping on his hat in an effort to locate an equally trivial trouble in marine motor engines, and draw the moral that it is as well to carry sisters who use hat pins.

A few hours' sail brought us to Moorea, and one of the finest natural harbours in the South Pacific, where we were met by a plantation owner of our acquaintance in an outrigger canoe, and piloted through a tortuous reef channel to an anchorage of firm coral sand.

The entrance to this harbour is fully half a mile wide, so how the captain of a French gunboat contrived to pile his vessel securely on the reef is something of a mystery. It is said that he had dined "not wisely but too well" in Papeete, and was filled with _elan_ to demonstrate how close a shave he could accomplish without cutting himself. And again, that he had been sent to bring back cattle, a mission that, as a naval officer, he so abhorred that he had done the deed deliberately.

In any case, there lies his craft, a fine old hulk, with the rollers rumbling and seething through her vitals; fit warning to the mariner who would toy with coral.

Such grim monuments to mischance, negligence, or deviltry litter the reefs of the Pacific; and what tales they could tell! I know of one on Middleton Reef, now used as a store ship for other possible victims, that was piled there on a lee shore during a south-west gale, and the bottom ripped clean out of her. For a week she lay half-submerged, her crew wading the decks knee-deep in water, and gazing over her sides or down through her hatches at the provisions scattered on the coral. There was water down there--fresh water in breakers and tanks, and food in tins that only needed block and tackle to hoist them up to the poop. But who would dive down and make the tackle fast? It meant almost certain death of an even more hideous kind than faced them as it was, and, unlike the orthodox romance, there were no heroic volunteers. The skipper was ready and willing, but he had his wife aboard who restrained him by swearing that if he did any such thing she would throw herself and their three-year-old daughter after him.

In all, they waited a week without food or water before the threatening attitude of the crew forced the skipper to make the attempt in spite of his wife's entreaties and threats. He dived; he made fast the tackle, but all of him that came to the surface was a severed leg, and the wife followed him with her child in her arms.

It is strange that a region of such beauty as the South Pacific Islands should be the favoured home of tragedy, but so it is. My very good friend the late Louis Becke, who probably knew these parts better than any man of his time, often bemoaned the fact that when choosing a theme for one of his incomparable tales of the South Seas, he could not paint true to life without finding tragedy peering at him from every corner. He claimed the cause of it to be that this sunny realm of bronze gods was never intended to be invaded by the white man, and there are few who, in all fairness, can differ with him.

Even on Moorea, the incomparable, we of the dream ship had not been ashore an hour before encountering a thing too ghastly to ponder on. It was a man with legs so immense that only the toes of the feet protruded beyond them. His neck was thicker than his head, and part of his anatomy he wheeled before him, covered with a _parieu_.

It was a case of elephantiasis, a common disease of the islands, but against a background of such loveliness seeming the more terrible.

Here was a shady, grass-grown beach road overhung with flamboyants, and bordered with crotons and flaming hibiscus; there a cocoanut plantation with its serried ranks of graceful palm trunks fading away into cool green distances like the pillars of a dimly lit temple; a brook, bustling through thickets, its banks carpeted with wondrous ferns and velvety moss--and here a tumble-down, deserted native house--rearing its battered head above a tangle of tropical vegetation. It had once been a home, and the land about it a prosperous banana patch. The first family that had occupied it had developed elephantiasis. A second and a third had met with the same fate, and now no one can be induced to live anywhere near the accursed spot. It is taboo.

Scientists claim they have discovered the germ of this dread disease in the mosquito, but many believe it to be in the earth, like that of tetanus.

But to revert to more pleasant subjects: legends still live on Moorea. It is the land of the lizard men, an agile race of dwarfs who lived on the inaccessible ledges of the mountain range, and descended periodically on the coast-dwellers, bearing off their wives and other valuables. They carried a short staff in either hand, giving them the appearance of lizards as they scrambled back to their fastnesses where none could follow.

To prove his words, the Moorean native of to-day will point out uniform rows of banana plants growing in clefts of rock amongst the clouds--the crops of the lizard men! How, otherwise, came they to be there? And he would be a wise man who could find the answer.

It is in these deep valleys, too, that ancient rites were performed, rites that were rigorously suppressed by the Government, but have survived until quite recent years. Indeed, white settlers assert that they are not entirely eradicated to this day. Tradition, religion, superstition, call it what you will, dies hard.

In this connection it was my good fortune to meet a retired police officer who probably had more to do with the suppression of "witchery" in the Islands than any man living.

"It mostly began with long-pig," he told me. "Long-pig? Well, you know the Kanaka fashion of rolling bush pig in banana leaves and cooking it in the ground. Long-pig doesn't happen to be _pig_, that's all.

"And long-pig was enough for us. We broke up the party by marching the diners off in irons. But there were other things that had us beat. I've lain on my belly of a night, looking through a rat-hole in a native grass house, and seen some queer things: a war club stand on end, and dance on its own over the mats the length of the house. I'm no fool, but I'm darned if I could see how it was done. There was no harm in it, any more than there is in these new-fangled seances where spooks blow trumpets and rattle tambourines; but with Kanakas it may lead to long-pig, and that's what we were after.

"Then again, we watched one place for close on a month, and at the end of it found nothing we could lay hands on, but something _I_ sha'n't forget.

"There must have been close on a hundred Kanakas squatting round the walls of the house in stony silence, when a wind sprang up that nearly blew the roof off and yet never so much as stirred the leaves on the palms twenty yards away. It was still blowing when something dropped through the roof, and squatted on the mats in the middle of the house.

"There wasn't much light--there never is at these chivarees, but there was enough for me to see that whatever it was it was a leper. It wasn't all there. It wasn't the right shape, or colour, but it boomed out answers to questions that the others put to it, and, knowing the lingo, I listened. It was the usual business: So-and-so's father was all right, but hoped that his son would join him before long as he was a trifle lonely. And somebody else's brother was having the time of his life with a brand-new sailing canoe that was the fastest thing yet. And somebody else was going to die soon....

"Now, you can arrest a leper on suspicion, and I did my best, but I never got that one. He just went, and so did the others, though they made more of a fuss about it; and all the time that wind was blowing the hair of my head this way and that.

"Fake? Of course it was a fake, but clever at that. I never got the leper, and that 'somebody else' died all right, because I saw him. But then Kanakas are like that: they die to order...."

True, the foregoing is hearsay, but it is first-hand hearsay, and on the best possible authority.

The only other Island witchcraft that I have encountered and can vouch for personally is fire-walking, a well known Kanaka pastime. That natives can make a pit of stones white hot with burning brush-wood, and then walk bare-footed upon them for upward of two minutes, is not so wonderful to the skeptic who knows that they paint the soles of their feet with a secret preparation that is a non-conductor of heat. But the fact that they can lead a white man, whose feet are not so treated, over the same stones, is a "trick" that needs some explaining.

Then, there is the herb for the unfailing and harmless production of abortion; a preparation of such preservative powers that it will keep the human body for centuries; and an innumerable array of magic potions undreamed of in our philosophy. Undoubtedly the Islands have their secrets, as quaint and wonderful as any in darkest Africa, and some day--which I trust is not far off--I hope to "inquire more closely."