Fiji was a wild enough, God-forsaken, missionary-stricken township in those days, and to finish my last hopes my pal, on the third day, in a paroxysm of grief, eloped into the mountains with a celebrated high chief’s faithless partner—and I saw him no more.
A few days after, being quite fed up with Suva, I secured a berth on a schooner and again went seaward across the Pacific. We called at many wonderful isles, which suddenly loomed on the sky-line like enchanted lands of untravelled seas. I could devote chapters to the wonders of that voyage, the strange peoples I met, people wild and romantic, clad in no clothes, beautifully varnished by the tropical sunlight of ages. How they laughed and sang their wonderful songs to the sailors—songs that seemed to have been composed in deep ocean caves and blown into their heathenish brains on patches of moonlight. But I digress. The climax arrived when we reached Nuka Hiva—the shores of the gloriously romantic Marquesan Isles.
Though I was penniless, I felt as happy as a sand-boy when at last we dropped anchor in the bay off Tai-o-hae.
I was entranced as I stood on deck, and with all the fevered imagination of boyhood drank in the natural beauties of that land-locked bay. The inland mountain slopes, that reached their zenith in the peak of Ua Pu, were clad with feathery palms and beautiful pauroas. Peeping beneath the shore palms were the birdcage-shaped bamboo homes of the native village. It was silent and deserted on that “Pious Morn,” but its inhabitants would return. For lo! floundering in the ocean waters around the schooner, and clambering on the deck, were the handsome, mahogany-hued, scantily attired people of that little village. No wonder that I felt that I had, at last, arrived at the wonderful isles of dim Romance.
I made no delay in getting ashore. A large silk handkerchief contained my worldly goods, which consisted of a violin and bow, two flannel shirts, a small-tooth comb and one flask of bug-powder. It was terrifically hot. Leaving the curious traders loafing on the beach, I made my way up a track that led to the jungle-like scenery that overlooked the bay. I longed to be alone. I yearned to think out of earshot, away from the oaths and grousing of the crew who had been informed that the beer in the shore shanty had gone quite sour through the hot weather.
As I went up the track I was enthusiastically welcomed by vast crowds of sandflies. How happy I was! Turning seaward I saw the unrivalled blaze of the sun’s dying splendour flood the horizon.
I vividly recall the beauty of that sunset when, a romantic lad, I watched the tremulous stains of the western sea-line. Standing beneath the interlacing boughs of scarlet-flowered tropical trees, I seemed to be staring down upon some enchanted hamlet of romance that was nestling at the rugged feet of the mountains. That hamlet, the small, semi-pagan city of old Tai-o-hae, lay silent, like some little sculptured city beautifully engraved on a slope that fronted the sea. Its one little shore street of wooden houses stood out in clear relief in the light of the low sunset. The green jungle pauroas and feathery palm groves that sheltered the township of tin roofs were unstirred by one breath of wind. Out in the bay lay two schooners, their canvas hanging as motionless as though they were painted ships on an oil-painted bay of the deepest indigo-blue water.
But it was no painting, for the group of huddled Chinamen who toiled on the pineapple plantations by Prison Hill moved, and their pigtails tossed, and the grog shanty door by the shore-side opened as two traders emerged and spat violently seaward.
Such was the scene that met my eyes as I stood alone by that capital of Nuka Hiva. With the approaching coolness of night Tai-o-hae awoke from its lethargy, for only the Chinese worked in the heat of the tropic day. The French officials spent the day in a deep siesta, dreaming of La Belle France and sipping absinthe between their yawns.
Walking down the rugged slopes I met a white settler, who dwelt in a neat bungalow near an old mission-room.