Thither they retired when decrepitude brought their passions to a smouldering state. The French officials had considerable trouble with those native princes, chiefesses, dethroned tribal kings and sad, forgotten queens, who looked upon that prison, with its regular meals, as a godsend to old age. Indeed it required the sternest vigilance of the gendarmes to keep those who had been released from escaping back to the prison precincts! Cast forth upon their ravaged dominions once more, they would yell forth pleading from sunset till dawn, swearing that some mistake had been made in the date of their release: the day, the month, or the year had been grossly miscalculated!
It was pathetic to listen to those royal personages as they rushed from the gates of the jail stockade, when one passed, and started eloquently to shout forth their line of pedigree: how they were each in turn the true decendants of South Sea blue blood, true children of those who had once reigned, and who in their turn were descendants of barbarian kings from time immemorial. Nor were they to be blamed or laughed at, since, having no Who’s Who or Peerage to tell their greatness, no literature of note to hint of their glorious past, it was absolutely enforced upon those sad old convicts to perpetuate their line by word of mouth from decade to decade. So did men distinguish their origin in the South Seas, preserve the glory of the past and gain respect from those around them.
Once more out on the world’s mercy, released, in tears, those old relics of a resplendent barbaric age roamed from grog shanty to grog shanty. In those walls of the white man they could lay their weary heads from dawn to dawn. The dreadful Fate-like call of, “Time, Gentleman, please!” was never heard in those hospitable parts; in fact it was the reverse, for did a man pass a grog shanty door without having a friendly drink after midnight he was in danger of being “chucked in” rather than out.
It is curious how in various parts of the world the conditions of life are turned upside down. My remembrance of Nuka Hiva is as of some glorious reversion of mundane existence tinged with the poetic.
Once again in a dream I stand by those palm-clad, romantic mountains, like sentinels guarding an enchanted land against the perilous faery seas. The wonderful shores of Nuka Hiva are sharply outlined in my memory, lulled by the echoing monotone of the ocean. The winds are all asleep. Even my old schooner the Molyhawk, whose every board and bunk I know, looks unreal, like some painted ship on a painted moonlit tropical lagoon. The half-reefed, hanging canvas sails seem the tired wings of Silence itself; they look unreal, as though fixed—a mirage hanging between the crystalline, moonlit sky and sea.
Only the creeping shadows, belated natives by the shore banyans, give a touch of reality that is somehow stranger than the dream.
Like the last of the Mohicans abroad again, a canoe steals across the still lagoon of long ago, crammed with handsome, dusky, tattooed chiefs. They wail a plaintive paddle song, a “himee.” They are the last of their race.
Again I wander like a ghost that cannot sleep. So linked with romantic sounds of song and mythology is the primeval scenery that the very air seems to smell of scented myrrh, sandalwood and ancient life of deep, mysterious, poetic import. I half fancy I hear the hubbub of some ancient Assyrian city’s life floating across the silent, sleeping hills between me and the dark ages. Then I hear the faint boom of drums and realise that the soft-footed natives are speeding along the track that leads to the bustling village below the mountains.
I stare seaward. Was that really a tiny, curling wave breaking on some hidden reef afar, or the skeleton of some dead, home-sick sailor tossing his white arms for a second as the home-bound sailing-ship goes away, out with the tide, ere he sinks once again into the depths. It is only a wave tossing its brief hand to the hidden corals, thank God! I will not think rest is denied the dead; but at times the brain has strange fancies. Perhaps I have listened too much to the legendary song and lore of those Marquesans, who seem ever haunted by death; those stalwart, tattooed men who see some symbol of the supernatural in all around them. No cloud flies beneath the stars without bringing some fearful portent. Its ragged shadows jumping across the moonlit sea are the vast hordes of evil gods after the soul of some late departed. The breath of the mighty god Oro blows through the mountain bread-fruits, ever calling the last of his heathen children to shadow-land. They are frightened of his big, blowing voice in the ranges; for have they not deserted him and bent on their sinful knees to the white man’s God?
No night-bird cries in the forest but it has come from shadow-land to warn the sick chief, or guilty one, that the hour is near, and the gods have observed. The pretty Marquesan maid Talasenga trembles with fright as she sits in the leafy glooms of the forest and hears that twittering while she dreams those things that a maid should never dream. She looks up with fright. She cries, “Awaie! Awaie!” as there they sit, four goddesses with their fingers at their lips, their small eyes bright with discovery. They have been watching from the boughs overhead, those four little O le manu-ao birds, winged messengers from that master-of-all-gods, Tangaloa of Polotu (Elysium). They still wear their blue and crimson feathered tapu robes as they write down, on the hastily plucked bread-fruit leaf, the terrible truth, all that they have read, by magic, in the girl’s soul as she sat below that treacherous tree thinking that she was unobserved. Away they fly to shadow-land to tell the gods! Away! to the great Tangaloi with that indictment safely fastened beneath their wings. Poor Talasenga, it is indeed terrible!