Maru: A Dream of the Sea

A Dream of the Sea
By H. De Vere Stacpoole
Author of “The Blue Lagoon,” “The Pearl Fishers,” etc., etc.
The night was filled with vanilla and frangipanni odours and the endless sound of the rollers on the reef. Somewhere away back amidst the trees a woman was singing, the tide was out, and from the verandah of Lygon’s house, across the star-shot waters of the lagoon, moving yellow points of light caught the eye. They were spearing fish by torchlight in the reef pools.
It had been a shell lagoon once, and in the old days men had come to Tokahoe for sandal wood; now there was only copra to be had, and just enough for one man to deal with. Tokahoe is only a little island where one cannot make a fortune, but where you may live fortunately enough if your tastes are simple and beyond the lure of whisky and civilisation.
The last trader had died in this paradise, of whisky, or gin—I forget which—and his ghost was supposed to walk the beach on moonlight nights, and it was apropos of this that Lygon suddenly put the question to me “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Do you?” replied I.
“I don’t know,” said Lygon. “I almost think I do, because every one does. Oh, I know, a handful of hard-headed super-civilised people say they don’t, but the mass of humanity does. The Polynesians and Micronesians do; go to Japan, go to Ireland, go anywhere, and everywhere you will find ghost believers.”
“Lombrosso has written something like that,” said I.
“Has he? Well it’s a fact, but all the same it’s not evidence, the universality of a belief scorns to hint at reality in the thing believed in—yet what is more wanting in real reason than tabu . Yet tabu is universal. You find men here who daren’t touch an artu tree because artu trees are tabu to them, or eat turtle or touch a dead body. Well, look at the Jews; a dead body is tabu to a Cohen. India is riddled with the business, so’s English society—it’s all the same thing under different disguises.
“Funny that talking of ghosts we should have touched on this, for when I asked you did you believe in ghosts I had a ghost story in mind and tabu comes into it. This is it.”