His prayers had evidently been answered. His neighbour’s chickens were missing, or the adulterously inclined wife of the high chief Grimbo had fallen into his arms—at last.
Withal, they were a fine race. I have seen dethroned kings and stately, tattooed chiefs stalk into the grog shanties for a drink. They still retained something of their erstwhile majesty as they flung the coin (just begged from some white man) carelessly on the bar. Even the well-seasoned shellbacks looked up from their drinks as one old king of other days stalked into the white man’s gin palace. Their oaths were hushed as they saw that handsome, god-like figure with the atmosphere of past barbarian splendour wrapped about him. About his loins was flung a decorated, tasselled loin-cloth. It was drawn down and tied in a bow in true native cavalier fashion at one tawny knee. His handsome, chestnut-brown physique was artistically tattooed with the armorial bearings of his tribe. No laugh or gibe escaped the lips of the white men as he stood there, looking scornfully at them as they sat in rows, and poured the last dregs of the fiery rum down his wrinkled throat. Then that remnant of the past splendour of the South Sea Rome gave us all a glance of defiance and stalked out of the bar door, followed by his obsequious retinue—namely, a mangy dog, three scraggy (once handsome) women and two nude children. To see such fine men and to realise the true independence of their natures made me think of the lost potentialities of the never-to-be South Sea Empire. What would their race have become had their blue sky-lines been adamant crystal walls, whereon ships bringing the reformers from civilised lands would have dashed and been smashed to atoms?
I have often thought what sparkling, terraced cities of heathen beauty might not have arisen on those sunny isles, enshrined by those horizons of mythological stars that shine in the heathen’s poetic imagination.
Yes, they were wonderful lands, more wonderful than romance.
Chiefs would come into the grog shanty and for a drink tell one of the most exciting events of Marquesan history. True enough, they were wont to exaggerate, but a close observer could easily sift the truth from fiction.
I recall Temao. He was a regular travelling volume of Marquesan lore, romance, mythology and breezy barbarian crime.
Temao would stalk into Ranjo’s store and entertain Uncle Sam, Grimes and all the rest with the history of Marquesan royalty for a period of about forty years. As the white men filled him with rum, his eyes would flash with grateful eloquence, and he would tell such tales that even those seasoned shellbacks gasped.
Much that was told me first-hand of the terrors of those heathen times I heard from a white man, one called Mendos, an old-time beachcomber. He, I am sure, was one of the most wonderful characters that ever roamed those Southern Seas. I have heard a lot about Bully Hayes, a South Sea character, but to my mind Mendos stood far from the ruck of the ordinary type of trader, for such he had been. He was well advanced in years and intellectually superior to any man I met in those days. From him I heard much about Queen Vaekehu. Indeed I believe that he was the only white man who had once been the barbarian queen’s lover. But it’s not my intention to dwell here on Mendos and his adventures.
As Queen Vaekehu was one of the most romantic royal personages of her time, I feel that it would be interesting to give a brief account of her, based on hearsay and also my own intimate reminiscences. This I will attempt in another chapter.