It was a beautiful morning. Round the bend, sunrise was bathing the sea with crimson and gold, and the parakeets in flocks, screaming off seaward, passed over my head, and the damp scent of the bread-fruit trees and orange groves gave the place the atmosphere of fairyland. I caught sight of those two hunted men hurrying across the white beach far away, and that was the last I ever saw of them. I hope they got safely off and were better men afterwards.
That same day I bade Adams and his wife farewell, and pretty Papeteo gave me a tortoise-shell with a native engraving on it as a memento, and once more I started on my wanderings.
I eventually arrived at Apia, and going on to a trading cutter with a sailor, whom I had got to know in the town, I saw an opportunity of sailing as a deck hand, and so on the Polly Smith I sailed away bound for Tahiti. We had on board several native passengers, two young girls, and several Samoan men with their wives and children who were going off to the other Islands to secure work on plantations. We had a fine time on those moonlight nights, as we crept along the equatorial Pacific Seas with all sails set, and on the decks the sailors danced with the native women while I fiddled away, delighted to be at sea again. The little Samoan children were the life of that boat; one tiny girl would stand on the deck by the galley and go through all the fantastic Samoan dances, throw her little legs about, stand on her head, wave her legs and hands about while upside down with as much ease as though she were on her feet. There was an English passenger with us, I think his name was Wallace. We became very friendly with each other; he was going to Tahiti on some Government business and came from Sydney. For many days we lay becalmed, and then a fine breeze sprang up and we raced away with full sail set for some days. As a rule the wind slackened by day and strengthened by night, and they were nights too, the fine tropic stars shining away overhead, the clear crystal skies imaged in the waters all around us as the small cutter drifted along, far away out on the lonely Pacific track. There were no islands in that part of the ocean, but we were all happy enough. The native passengers would loaf all day long looking over the vessel’s side singing to themselves, and at night we all congregated and had a sing-song. I would play the violin and do my best to keep time to the natives as they danced and rolled about as the boat heeled over. Mr Wallace sang songs and the half-caste cook got drunk on sly grog, did jigs and afforded us great amusement.
XV
Tahitian Morals and Duplicity—I play the Violin at Government Concert—Death of M’Neil—The Black Slave Traffic
Arriving at Tahiti our passengers went off to the plantations and I went off also as I wanted to see what kind of a place it was. The capital, Papeite, was a much larger and livelier place than Apia. The population consisted of all kinds of half-castes, Chinese, French, and Tahitian brigands. I went inland and tramped around the sugar plantations whereon worked the natives and Chinese. A good deal of the country was under cultivation. I shall never forget the awful-looking people that I came in contact with or forget the debauchery that I witnessed. The sole occupation of a good many of the natives was to drink as much as they could get down them and the women sold their bodies to the first-comer for the price of a drink. The missionaries were there by hundreds, it seemed; they were a mixture of French and English and had exciting times reforming those native women and men. I went into several of the native homes and found them very hospitable people. Some of the women had Chinese husbands and their half-caste children had tiny almond eyes, jet-black and sparkling. The Chinese of Society Islands impressed me as being much more wholesome in their way of living than the Australian Chinamen, and they did not smell half so disagreeable. A Chinaman got jealous of his native wife whilst I was there and struck her with a knife. The Tahitians went for him and when I saw him you could hardly tell which was his head and which his feet; anyway his brother Chinamen came into the village, rolled him up and gave him a decent burial, and his wife screamed and wailed away till I was glad to clear out, for it was a most painful sight to see her grief. She was a pretty woman, in fact all the young women were handsome, and the men too, but as soon as the women get over twenty they start to fade. A South Sea Island girl of ten years of age is as matured as a European girl of sixteen.
I found human nature was just the same there as everywhere else—everyone wanted as much as they could get out of you, and those who were better clothed than their sisters and brothers were vain-glorious and looked down on the others. Girls and boys made love to each other and eloped into the forest with the missionaries after them at full speed, and the brave old chiefs strolled about and spoke of the old times and smacked their lips and spoke on the sly of the missionaries, saying “they were the children of the devil” but addressing them to their faces with some such jargon as, “Me Christian man now. One God. Good God, who no eat other God,” whereupon they would gravely walk away to sell their soul for a drink. They loved their old customs deep down in their heart and rubbed noses with each other and cherished hopes that some day the gods would help them to drive the white men into the sea. But the older ones were even then fast disappearing, and drink and prostitution were raising the death rate of the native children, and so there, as elsewhere all over the South Seas, the race was fast dying out.
There were many traders there, and they all seemed to make plenty of money. You could always recognise a trader by his big hat smashed on his head and his slouching walk and his very often warty nose, that had started to blossom after drinking some oceans of beer. They were generally married men and often got into awful trouble when they were quite unsober by mistaking their Tahitian wife for their Marquesan wife, and mentioning the wrong name to their bride during the night brought down her wrath on to their wicked heads. I have often seen them with a black eye or a terribly scratched, clawed face, for women in Tahiti are as jealous as the European ladies, and will brook no rival; but of course when their husband is away with his other bride on some far-off Isle they do not let the grass grow under their feet, and often a white trader leaves his home in disgust when his native wife presents him with a half-caste baby with slit-almond eyes and a face showing strong Mongolian origin, or a little fair-skinned mite with pretty violet dark eyes that looks suspiciously like the village missionary.
