His eyes flashed as he blurted out his plans, telling me how easy it was to steal a girl and bolt off into the mountains! His chest swelled visibly over his thoughts. Holding up his glass of vile Papeete beer in one hand, melodramatic fashion, he lifted his chin and burst into some Irish song that told of maids clasped in the arms of impassioned lovers. As he finished his extemporization, the native girls who were standing at the shanty’s door, murmured, “Yorana! Yorana!” One dusky Tahitian belle, with large, lustrous eyes, crossed her bare, smooth arms and one timid knee, and, as she leaned against the door frame, gave a delicious pout, telling with admiring eyes all that a romantic maid can tell when gazing on a man whose favour she yearns to gain.
Though I had sought by wordy wisdom to persuade O’Hara to abandon his mad idea of abducting Fae Fae from Pomare’s palace, my heart was as enthusiastic about it all as was his own. The philosophy of the first fine careless rapture of youth was mine. I felt I was out in the world to live, if somewhat faintly, some of the glorious romance that poets wrote about. I well knew that the great crabbed philosophies were written by perished feathered quills on musty parchments, quills that once fluttered on living wings among the blossoming boughs. I knew that no pen, however inspired, could sing the impassioned philosophy of life as the throbbing red throat of the brown thrush can sing, or as O’Hara and I could live it. And, so, I must confess that the idea of the breadfruit sighing as we sat awaiting the sunset’s close and O’Hara impatiently watching for the favourable moment to abduct a Tahitian princess from a pagan palace on a South Sea isle, seemed the perfect music and the most noble endeavour of the Psalm of Life!
For several moments I compressed my brows as though in deepest meditation over the wisdom or folly of doing what O’Hara proposed.
He watched me closely, then suddenly gripped my hand.
“Pal, I’m with you; it shall be done,” I said.
My Irish comrade was satisfied. He knew me. I hadn’t stowed away on sailing and tramp ships, and lived with rats in coal bunkers on long voyages across tropic seas, without looking a bit determined when I had really made up my mind—well—to make a fool of myself!
I knew that Queen Pomare of Tahiti was allowed a certain amount of authority over her people. Though aged, she was an attractive, powerful-looking woman. It was also hinted by the officials that she still leaned towards her old creed. However that may have been, her retinue was made up of many old-time, ex-cannibal chiefs. One had only to go by night up the mountain slopes by Tamao to hear the low chanting of festival sounds coming from the solitary palace, sounds that were suspiciously like the wild night-wassailing of some frenzied heathenland!
The very next night we made our plans. O’Hara smacked me on the back, and called down the blessings of the Virgin on my head for helping a pal in trouble. It was finally settled that we should set out on our romantic, risky adventure after dusk, the very next day.
The inevitable hour arrived. I stood beneath the palms at the arranged spot.
“Are you ready, pal?” said O’Hara, as he met me.