Part 14

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.