“Did you ever!” said Grimes, as we both watched, fascinated.
“No, I never,” was all I could utter in reply.
I seemed to be gazing on some magical reproduction of primeval life in a world that had long since passed away. They were clapping their hands, swaying their flower-swathed bodies and singing some Marquesan madrigal, a tender, far-off-sounding melody, that might have been the death-song of their fast-vanishing race.
Snug among the leafy pillars of that primitive lyceum of the forest squatted the royal orchestra. One tremendous drum sought to outrival the various melodious but weird effects of the chief soloists. Those players had been hired from far and near, and were the finest performers extant. The ease with which they produced their effects on such simple instruments was astounding. Some blew, by means of the nostrils, through tiny flutes, others puffed with their lips at screaming bamboo fifes, and some twanged on stringed gourds. One tawny old chief, who had both his ears missing, scraped violently on an old German fiddle. It only possessed two strings, but he played it fairly well. Probably he had got it from some sailor who had given him a few lessons with the bargain. He screwed his face up as he played, and when he repeatedly put his tongue out and rolled his eyes, the little children shrieked with delight.
Notwithstanding the pandemonium of sound, the fierce rivalry between each performer as they puffed their lips, crashed drum-sticks, howled and twanged, it seemed as though the soul of some barbarian Wagner had burst, had exploded from a wonderful bomb of pent-up inspiration, and the maestro, in that forest, was chasing the flying echoes in anguish, ere they were lost for ever! I do not exaggerate in this description, and Grimes tugging away at the banjo and I playing the violin felt like two happy barbarians as that forest carnival reached the zenith in a marvellous cataract of sound. Just by my conducting desk—an old egg-box—sat the dethroned king from the Paumotus Group. He had been favourably received in Marquesan society, and seemed to swell with renewed majesty, his very nostrils dilating with the excitement as the maids commenced to dance—and what dances!
Grimes and I forgot to play our parts as the dancers became inspired on that primeval stage before the footlights of the stars! Their feet seemed literally to point and hover skywards, as they performed the equivalent of a Marquesan can-can.
We stood up, gazing breathlessly with astonishment, our hands raised. We must have looked like two gasping idiots—Grimes with scrubby face and mouth wide open, and I attired in my old, tattered, brass-bound midshipman’s suit, and on my head a dilapidated white helmet-hat. Sometimes the moon, in the domed vault of that palladium, became dimmed, as small woolly clouds drifted across the sky. Directly the travelling mist had passed beneath the eye of night, up went the shadowy curtain from that forest drama. And once more the dancing legs, the flying, gauzy veils of figures flitting in rhythmical swerves, and the rows of delighted, excited eyes came into full view. The scenic effect was that of some enchanted forest, where magical waterfalls of moonlight poured down through dark-branched palms from the sky, while dusky, faery-like creatures danced through those magical waterfalls, their eyes bright with wondering delight as one by one their soft feet landed on the forest pae-pae.
Suddenly the leading drum went bang!—the echo travelling like a jumping football of ghostly sound across the hills. That drum-head was made from the tightened, tawny skin of some dead chief! The rim was ornamented with the scalp and beard! As that echo faded seaward, an uncanny thought struck my emotional senses. It seemed that the dead chief’s spirit had haunted that drum, had been imprisoned inside, and now, at that tremendous crash had escaped—in frightened tumult across the hills! That smash was the sign for the orchestra to cease, but still the dancers danced on. A puff of scented, cool sea wind crept through the forest bread-fruits, and touched those performing, dusky figures, sweeping the gauzy robes all one way.
The scenic effect changed, and that moonlit stage looked like some wonderful scene of happy faery creatures dancing in silence, faintly perceived in a vast mirror that reflected the skies, a mirror that some grim humorist in heaven had suddenly turned upside down—so grotesque yet faery-like were the rhythmical contortions of those flower-bedecked, dancing maids.
The high chief from Anaho swayed his war-club with delight. Tattooed warriors, wearing the royal insignia of knighthood (exquisitely tattooed armorial bearings on the shoulders and breast), stood by, drinking toddy from the festival calabash.