White Shadows In The South Seas - free ebook by Frederick O'Brien

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White Shadows In The South Seas

Frederick O'Brien

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40 chapters

FREDERICK O'BRIEN

FREDERICK O'BRIEN

There is in the nature of every man, I firmly believe, a longing to see and know the strange places of the world. Life imprisons us all in its coil of circumstance, and the dreams of romance that color boyhood are forgotten, but they do not die. They stir at the sight of a white-sailed ship beating out to the wide sea; the smell of tarred rope on a blackened wharf, or the touch of the cool little breeze that rises when the stars come out will waken them again. Somewhere over the rim of the wor

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Farewell to Papeite beach; at sea in the Morning Star ; Darwin's theory of the continent that sank beneath the waters of the South Seas. By the white coral wall of Papeite beach the schooner Fetia Taiao ( Morning Star ) lay ready to put to sea. Beneath the skyward-sweeping green heights of Tahiti the narrow shore was a mass of colored gowns, dark faces, slender waving arms. All Papeite, flower-crowned and weeping, was gathered beside the blue lagoon. Lamentation and wailing followed the brown sa

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CHAPTER II

CHAPTER II

The trade-room of the Morning Star ; Lying Bill Pincher; M. L'Hermier des Plantes, future governor of the Marquesas; story of McHenry and the little native boy, His Dog. “Come 'ave a drink!” Captain Pincher called from the cabin, and leaving the spray-swept deck where the rain drummed on the canvas awning I went down the four steps into the narrow cabin-house. The cabin, about twenty feet long, had a tiny semi-private room for Captain Pincher, and four berths ranged about a table. Here, grouped

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CHAPTER III

CHAPTER III

Thirty-seven days at sea; life of the sea-birds; strange phosphorescence; first sight of Fatu-hiva; history of the islands; chant of the Raiateans. Thirty-seven days at sea brought us to the eve of our landing in Hiva-oa in the Marquesas. Thirty-seven monotonous days, varied only by rain-squalls and sun, by calm or threatening seas, by the changing sky. Rarely a passing schooner lifted its sail above the far circle of the horizon. It was as though we journeyed through space to another world. Yet

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CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER IV

Anchorage of Taha-Uka; Exploding Eggs, and his engagement as valet; inauguration of the new governor; dance on the palace lawn. As we approached Hiva-oa the giant height of Temetiu slowly lifted four thousand feet above the sea, swathed in blackest clouds. Below, purple-black valleys came one by one into view, murky caverns of dank vegetation. Towering precipices, seamed and riven, rose above the vast welter of the gray sea. Slowly we crept into the wide Bay of Traitors and felt our way into the

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CHAPTER V

CHAPTER V

First night in Atuona valley; sensational arrival of the Golden Bed; Titi-huti's tattooed legs. It was necessary to find at once a residence for my contemplated stay in Atuona, for the schooner sailed on the morrow, and my brief glimpse of the Marquesans had whetted my desire to live among them. I would not accept the courteous invitation of the governor to stay at the palace, for officialdom never knows its surroundings, and grandeur makes for no confidence from the lowly. Lam Kai Oo, an aged C

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CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VI

Visit of Chief Seventh Man Who is So Angry He Wallows in the Mire; journey to Vait-hua on Tahuata island; fight with the devil-fish; story of a cannibal feast and the two who escaped. “The Iron Fingers That Make Words,” the Marquesans called my typewriter. Such a wonder had never before been beheld in the islands, and its fame spread far. From other valleys and even from distant islands the curious came in threes and fours. They watched the strange thing write their names and carefully carried a

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CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VII

Idyllic valley of Vait-hua; the beauty of Vanquished Often; bathing on the beach; an unexpected proposal of marriage. The beach followed the semi-circle of the small bay, and was hemmed in on both sides by massive black rocks, above which rose steep mountains covered with verdure. The narrow valley itself sloped upward on either hand to a sheer wall of cliffs. In the couple of miles from the water's edge to the jungle tangle of the high hills were thousands upon thousands of cocoanut-palms, brea

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CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER VIII

Communal life; sport in the waves; fight of the sharks and the mother whale; a day in the mountains; death of Le Capitaine Halley; return to Atuona. Life in Vait-hua was idyllic. The whites, having desolated and depopulated this once thronged valley, had gone, leaving the remnant of its people to return to their native virtue and quietude. Here, perhaps more than in any other spot in all the isles, the Marquesan lived as his forefathers had before the whites came. Doing nothing sweetly was an ar

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CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER IX

The Marquesans at ten o'clock mass; a remarkable conversation about religions and Joan of Arc in which Great Fern gives his idea of the devil. I was surprised to note that the few natives within view when we landed were dressed in the stiff and awkward clothes of the European; some fête must have been arranged during my absence, I thought. Then with a shock I realized that the day was Sunday. In the lovely, timeless valley of Vait-hua the calendar had dropped below the horizon of memory as my na

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CHAPTER X

CHAPTER X

The marriage of Malicious Gossip; matrimonial customs of the simple natives; the domestic difficulties of Haabuani. Mouth of God and his wife, Malicious Gossip, soon became intimates of my paepae . Coming first to see the marvelous Golden Bed and to listen to the click-click of the Iron Fingers That Make Words, they remained to talk, and I found them both charming. Both were in their early twenties, ingenuous, generous, clever, and devoted to each other and to their friends. Malicious Gossip was

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CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XI

Filling the popoi pits in the season of the breadfruit; legend of the mei ; the secret festival in a hidden valley. On the road to the beach one morning I came upon Great Fern, my landlord. Garbed in brilliant yellow pareu , he bore on his shoulders an immense kooka , or basket of cocoanut fiber, filled with quite two hundred pounds of breadfruit. The superb muscles stood out on his perfect body, wet with perspiration as though he had come from the river. “Kaoha, Great Fern!” I said. “Where do y

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CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XII

A walk in the jungle; the old woman in the breadfruit tree; a night in a native hut on the mountain. Atuona Valley was dozing, as was its wont in the afternoons, when the governor, accompanied by the guardian of the palace, each carrying a shot-gun, invited me to go up the mountain to shoot kukus for dinner. The kuku is a small green turtle-dove, very common in the islands, and called also u'u and kukupa . Under any of these names the green-feathered morsel is excellent eating when broiled or fr

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CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIII

The household of Lam Kai Oo; copra making; marvels of the cocoanut-groves; the sagacity of pigs; and a crab that knows the laws of gravitation. Next morning, after bidding farewell to my hosts, I set out down the mountain in the early freshness of a sunny, rain-washed morning. I followed a trail new to me, a path steep as a stairway, walled in by the water-jeweled jungle pressing so close upon me that at times I saw the sky only through the interlacing fronds of the tree-ferns above my head. I h

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CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XIV

Visit of Le Moine; the story of Paul Gauguin; his house, and a search for his grave beneath the white cross of Calvary. I rose one morning from my Golden Bed to find a stranger quietly smoking a cigarette on my paepae . Against the jungle background he was a strangely incongruous figure; a Frenchman, small, thin, meticulously neat in garments of faded blue denim and shining high boots. His blue eyes twinkled above a carefully trimmed beard, and as he rose to meet me, I observed that the fingers

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CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XV

Death of Aumia; funeral chant and burial customs; causes for the death of a race. On the paepae of a poor cabin near my own lived two women, Aumia and Taipi, in the last stages of consumption. Aumia had been, only a few months earlier, the beauty of the island. “She was one of the gayest,” said Haabunai, “but the pokoko has taken her.” She was pitifully thin when I first saw her, lying all day on a heap of mats, with Taipi beside her, both coughing, coughing. An epidemic of colds had seized Atuo

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CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVI

A savage dance, a drama of the sea, of danger and feasting; the rape of the lettuce. Drums were beating all the morning, thrilling the valley and mountain-sides with their barbaric boom-boom . The savage beat of them quickened the blood, stirring memories older than mankind, waking wild and primitive instincts. Toho's eyes gleamed, and her toes curled and uncurled like those of a cat, while she told me that the afternoon would see an old dance, a drama of the sea, of war, and feasting such as th

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CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVII

A walk to the Forbidden Place; Hot Tears, the hunchback; the story of Behold the Servant of the Priest, told by Malicious Gossip in the cave of Enamoa. It was a drowsy afternoon, and coming up the jungle trail to my cabin I saw Le Brunnec, the trader, accompanied by Mouth of God and Tahiapii, half-sister to Malicious Gossip. Le Brunnec, a Breton, intelligent, honest, and light-hearted, owned the store below the governor's palace on the road to Atuona beach. He lived above it, alone save for a bo

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CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XVIII

A search for rubber-trees on the plateau of Ahoa; a fight with the wild white dogs; story of an ancient migration, told by the wild cattle hunters in the Cave of the Spine of the Chinaman. I went one day with Le Brunnec, the French trader, in search of rubber trees on the plateau of Ahao, above Hanamenu, on the other side of Hiva-oa Island. Mounted on small, but sturdy, mountain ponies, we followed the trail across the river and up the steep mountain-side clad with impenetrable jungle, climbing

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CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XIX

A feast to the men of Motopu; the making of kava , and its drinking; the story of the Girl Who Lost Her Strength. The Vagabond, Kivi, who lived near the High Place, came down to my paepae one evening to bid me come to a feast given in Atuona Valley to the men of Motopu, who had been marvelously favored by the god of the sea. Months of storms, said Kivi, had felled many a stately palm of Taka-Uka and washed thousands of ripe cocoanuts into the bay, whence the current that runs swift across the ch

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CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XX

A journey to Taaoa; Kahuiti, the cannibal chief, and his story of an old war caused by an unfaithful woman. It was a chance remark from Mouth of God that led me to take a journey over the hills to the valley of Taaoa, south of Atuona. Malicious Gossip and her husband, squatting one evening on my mats in the light of the stars, spoke of the Marquesan custom in naming children. “When a babe is born,” said Mouth of God, “all the intimates of his parents, their relatives and friends, bestow a name u

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CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXI

The crime of Huahine for love of Weaver of Mats; story of Tahia's white man who was eaten; the disaster that befell Honi, the white man who used his harpoon against his friends. During my absence in Taaoa there had been crime and scandal in my own valley. André Bauda met me on the beach road as I returned and told me the tale. The giant Tahitian sailor of the schooner Papeite , Huahine, was in the local jail, charged with desertion; a serious offense, to which his plea was love of a woman, and t

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CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXII

The memorable game for the matches in the cocoanut-grove of Lam Kai Oo. Parables are commonly found in books. In a few words on a printed page one sees a universal problem made small and clear, freed from those large uncertainties and whimsies of chance that make life in the whole so confusing to the vision. It was my fortune to see, in the valley of Atuona on Hiva-oa, a series of incidents which were at the time a whirl of unbelievable merriment, yet which slowly clarified themselves into a par

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CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIII

Mademoiselle N——. The Jeanne d'Arc , a beautiful, long, curving craft manned by twelve oarsmen, came like a white bird over the blue waters of the Bay of Traitors one Saturday afternoon, bringing Père Victorien to Atuona. He was from Hatiheu, on the island of Nuka-hiva, seventy miles to the north. A day and a night he had spent on the open sea, making a slow voyage by wind and oar, but like all these priests he made nothing of the hardships. They come to the islands to stay until they die, and d

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CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXIV

A journey to Nuka-hiva; story of the celebration of the fête of Joan of Arc, and the miracles of the white horse and the girl. Père Victorien said that I must not leave the Marquesas before I visited the island of Nuka-hiva seventy miles to the northward and saw there in Tai-o-hae, the capital of the northern group of islands, a real saint. “A wonderful servant of Christ,” he said, “Père Simeon Delmas. He is very old, and has been there since the days of strife. He has not been away from the isl

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CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXV

America's claim to the Marquesas; adventures of Captain Porter in 1812; war between Haapa and Tai-o-hae, and the conquest of Typee valley. America might have been responsible for the death of the Marquesan race had not the young nation been engaged in a deadly struggle with Great Britain when an American naval captain, David Porter, seized Nuka-hiva. A hundred years ago the Stars and Stripes floated over the little hill above the bay, and American cannon upon it commanded the village of Tai-o-ha

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CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVI

A visit to Typee; story of the old man who returned too late. I said, of course, that I must visit Typee, the scene of Porter's bloody raid and Herman Melville's exploits, and while I was making arrangements to get a horse in Tai-o-hae I met Haus Ramqe, supercargo of the schooner Moana , who related a story concerning the valley. “I was working in the store of the Socéité Comerciale de l'Ocean in Tai-o-hae when the Tropic Bird , a San Francisco mail-schooner, arrived. That was ten years ago. An

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CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVII

Journey on the Roberta ; the winged cockroaches; arrival at a Swiss paradise in the valley of Oomoa. I sailed from Tai-o-hae for an unknown port, carried by the schooner Roberta , which had brought the white mare from Atuona and whose skipper had bore so well the white banner of Joan in the procession that did her honor. The Roberta was the only vessel in those waters and, sailing as she did at the whim of her captain and the necessities of trade, none knew when she might return to Nuka-hiva, so

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CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXVIII

Labor in the South Seas; some random thoughts on the “survival of the fittest.” “I pictured myself cultivating many hundreds of acres when I first came here,” said Grelet. “I laid out several plantations, and once shipped much coffee, as good, too, as any in the world. I gather enough now for my own use, and sell none. I grew cotton and cocoanuts on a large scale. I raise only a little now. “There were hundreds of able-bodied men here then. I used to buy opium from the Chinese labor-contractors

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CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXIX

The white man who danced in Oomoa Valley; a wild-boar hunt in the hills; the feast of the triumphant hunters and a dance in honor of Grelet. Grelet had gone in a whale-boat to Oia, a dozen miles away, to collect copra, and I was left with an empty day to fill as I chose. The house, the garden, and the unexplored recesses of Oomoa Valley were mine, with whatever they might afford of entertainment or adventure. Every new day, wherever spent, is an adventure, but when to the enigmatic morning is ad

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CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXX

A visit to Hanavave; Père Olivier at home; the story of the last battle between Hanahouua and Oi, told by the sole survivor; the making of tapa cloth, and the ancient garments of the Marquesans. Grelet said that the conch I had heard at night sounding off Oomoa must have been in a canoe or whale-boat bound for Hanavave, a valley a dozen miles away over the mountains, but only an hour or so by sea. It might have brought a message of interest, or perhaps would be a conveyance to my own valley, so

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CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXI

Fishing in Hanavave; a deep-sea battle with a shark; Red Chicken shows how to tie ropes to shark's tails; night-fishing for dolphins, and the monster sword-fish that overturned the canoe; the native doctor dresses Red Chicken's wounds and discourses on medicine. Grelet returned to Oomoa in the whale-boat, but I remained in Hanavave for the fishing. My presence had stimulated the waning interest of the few remaining Marquesans, and the handful of young men and women went with me often to the sea

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CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXII

A journey over the roof of the world to Oomoa; an encounter with a wild woman of the hills. Père Olivier tried to dissuade me from walking back to Oomoa, and offered me his horse, but I determined to go afoot and let Orivie, a native youth, be my mounted guide. Orivie is named for Père Olivier; there being no “l” in the Marquesan language, the good priest's name is pronounced as if spelled in English Oreeveeay. The horse, the usual small, tough mountain-pony, was caught, and upon him we strapped

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CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIII

Return in a canoe to Atuona; Tetuahunahuna relates the story of the girl who rode the white horse in the celebration of the féte of Joan of Arc in Tai-o-hae; Proof that sharks hate women; steering by the stars to Atuona beach. The canoe we had followed to Hanavave stopped in Oomoa on its way to Hiva-oa, my home, for I had bargained with Tetuahunahuna, its owner, for my conveyance to Atuona. Grelet would eventually have transported me, but so great was his aversion to leaving Fatu-hiva that I fel

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CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXIV

Sea sports; curious sea-foods found at low tide; the peculiarities of sea-centipedes and how to cook and eat them. With what delight I returned to lazy days in Atuona Valley, lounging on the black paepae of my own small blue cabin in the shadow of Temiteu, idling on the sun-warm sands of the familiar beach, walking the remembered road between banana hedges heavy with yellowing fruit! The heart of man puts down roots wherever it rests; it is perhaps this sense of home that gives the zest to wande

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CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXV

Court day in Atuona; the case of Daughter of the Pigeon and the sewing-machine; the story of the perfidy of Drink of Beer and the death of Earth Worm who tried to kill the governor. The Marquesan was guaranteed his day in court. There was one judge in the archipelago and one doctor, and they were the same, being united in the august person of M. L'Hermier des Plantes, who was also the pharmacist. The jolly governor, in his twenties, with medical experience in an African army post and in barracks

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CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVI

The madman Great Moth of the Night; story of the famine and the one family that ate pig. Le Brunnec, the trader, was opening a roll of Tahiti tobacco five feet long, five inches in diameter at the center, and tapering toward the ends. It was bound, as is all Tahiti tobacco, in a purau rope, which had to be unwound and which weighed two pounds. The eleven pounds of tobacco were hard as wood, the leaves cemented by moisture. Le Brunnec hacked it with an axe into suitable portions to sell for three

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CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVII

A visit to the hermit of Taha-Uka valley; the vengeance that made the Scallamera lepers; and the hatred of Mohuto. Le Verogose, a Breton planter who lived in Taka-Uka Valley, was full of camaraderie , esteeming friendship a genuine tie, and given to many friendly impulses. He had a two-room cabin set high on the slope of the river bank, unadorned, but clean, and though his busy, hardworking days gave him little time for social intercourse, he occasionally invited me there to dinner with him and

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CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Last days in Atuona; My Darling Hope's letter from her son. Exploding Eggs was building my fire of cocoanut-husks as usual in the morning to cook my coffee and eggs, when a whistle split the sultry air. Far from the bay it came, shrill and demanding; my call to civilization. Long expected, the first liner was in the Isles of the Cannibals. France had begun to make good her promise to expand her trade in Oceania, and the isolation of the dying Marquesans and empty valleys was ended. The steamship

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CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XXXIX

The chants of departure; night falls on the Land of the War Fleet. On the eve of my going all the youth and beauty of Atuona crowded my paepae . Water brought his ukulele , a Hawaiian taro -patch guitar, and sang his repertoire of ballads of Hawaii—“Aloha Oe,” “Hawaii Ponoi,” and “One, Two, Three, Four.” Urged by all, I gave them for the last time my vocal masterpiece, “All Night Long He Calls Her Snooky-Ukums!” and was rewarded by a clamor of applauding cries. Marquesans think our singing stran

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