"News comes via Tahiti from Nukahiva, Marquesas Islands, of the arrival of a shipwrecked crew on a raft, six weeks ago. They were the survivors of a disaster that destroyed the notorious schooner Ikurangi whose master, it will be remembered, kidnapped and marooned the daughter of a British captain some months ago. The schooner, after leaving the island, sailed for Callao, but was wrecked on an uncharted reef three days east of Vaka, and went to pieces. The crew escaped on a raft, and underwent great suffering in their efforts to reach land. The captain and mate were drowned."
"And serve them right, too!" said the audience.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WHITE MAN OF NALOLO
"By Jove! it's a white man," said Saxon, checking like a pointer on the threshold of the low dark doorway.
"Certainly. Very pleased to meet you," observed the figure on the mats. It was sitting cross-legged, clad only in a waist-cloth, and the house was a Fijian chief-house in a mountain village three days' journey from the nearest white settlement—but the thing squatted on the mats was undoubtedly white, and—English? Well, no; Saxon thought no. The phrase was American in flavour. He stepped across the threshold, and came a little way in, relieved in mind. When you have been dead and buried among the islands for a quarter of a century it is much pleasanter not to run the risk of meeting other ghosts (with university accents, tea-coloured families, and a preference for modest retirement on steamer days) who may possibly have been alive together with you before...
Before.... The word means much in that vast Pacific world, sepulchre of so many lost hopes and forgotten lives. We do not, in the Islands, cultivate curiosity as a virtue, since it would be likely to bring rather more than virtue's own reward after it. We do not ask cross questions, because the crooked answers might involve questions of another sort. And when overfed, sanguineous passengers from smart liners happen along and tell us, as a new and excellent joke, that the proper formula for receiving an introduction in the Islands is: "Glad to meet you, Mr. So-and-so; what were you called before?" we smile an acid smile, and pretend we are amused....
Saxon was very tired, having walked thirty miles that day, and very hungry, being out of luck, and more or less on the tramp. But I think, tired as he was, he would have found another village to rest in if the derelict white on the mats had spoken with the shibboleth of his own class and country.
As things were, the look of the house pleased him, and he came in and folded himself up on the mats. The other man noted that he selected a "tabu kaisi" mat (a kind strictly forbidden to all but chiefs or whites), and that he looked hopefully towards the kava bowl.
"Not the first time you've stopped under a pandanus roof, I guess?" he remarked.