They were Kanakas—brown Polynesians of the islands, akin to the Hawaiian people and to the Maoris of far-away New Zealand. Ivi and Ofai I already knew. Fatu, the mate, was a huge silent fellow with a smile in his quick dark eyes—a nobly proportioned giant. The engineer, Pahuri, was an elderly Rarotongan with a passion for fishing: a small man, gray, wrinkled, and talkative. He had followed the sea since boyhood and had visited many parts of the world on whaling vessels and on merchant ships. His heart was kind, but he possessed a biting tongue and his travels had made him cynical. Then came Rairi, the half-caste cook my uncle had found stranded in San Francisco after a voyage before the mast. He was a shade lighter than the others, with a handsome, sullen face: a tall man and powerfully built, though dwarfed in the presence of the mate. Rairi spoke a little English, picked up along the waterfront, and had a pleasant manner when he wished to make himself agreeable, but at other times his features were of a forbidding cast. He cooked, and cooked well, in his box of a galley, set on the forward deck above the hold. Outside of his duties he had little to do with the men, as if his strain of white blood caused him to hold aloof. Last of all came Marama the cabin boy, who served our meals, polished brasses, and made himself useful whenever there was an odd job on hand. He was a brown lad of my own age, though larger and much stronger than I, and I liked him from the moment we met. He was a cheerful worker, his black eyes were bright with humor and intelligence, and he never lost his temper when a lurch of the deck threw a potful of hot coffee over his feet. His father, Uncle Harry told me, was a chief on Raiatea.
"We're heading straight for Raiatea," said my uncle as we sat at dinner that night. "I want you to stop there while I run across to unload my cargo at Tahiti. It's a fine island and the chief of Faatemu is a great friend of mine. You can put up at his house; I'll leave young Marama to keep you company. He knows a bit of English—that will help you at first. By the way, you'll need to pick up the native as fast as you can; the man who can't speak with them is handicapped. It's easy to learn; why not work at it during our passage South? I'll help you and so will any of the men; it always pleases them to find one of us interested in their language. Try memorizing a few words a day at the start, then the simple phrases will come to you, and before you know it, you'll be yarning with the crew.
"The quieter we keep this business the less trouble we'll have, and for that reason I'm going to pick up my men on Raiatea. There's a Paumotan colony on the island—we'll have no trouble in getting all the divers we need. They work two in a canoe, and we'll want fifteen canoes to be on the safe side. They'll have to be built specially; I want you to stay in Faatemu to see that they are ready when I return. It's a great place for fishing and pig-hunting—you'll have a lot of fun!"
When dinner was over we sat on deck for a time, while my uncle smoked one of his slender black cigars. The sails were furled, for the wind had died away an hour after sunset. An oily swell was running from the west and the pulsing of the Tara's engine drove us steadily away from land. By the dim light of the binnacle I could see that Ofai, at the wheel, was shivering. Finally he called to Ivi, and the other came aft with a thick woollen jacket on his arm. Uncle Harry tossed the stump of his cigar overboard; I heard it hiss for an instant as it struck the sea.
"Come," he said; "let's turn in before we're both frozen. My blood's too thin for these chilly winters of yours!"
Next day we left the zone of coastwise calms and ran into the northeast trade. The engine was stopped and the Tara headed southward with all sails set, running almost free. It is a brave wind, the trade, and it blew strong and fair, making the whitecaps dance on the dark blue swells, and driving us southward day after day till we were within a few degrees of the Line. Each day, at noon, my uncle fetched his sextant on deck to observe the sun, and I watched him afterward, bending over the chart in his stateroom, marking off our position with dividers and scale. Finally, with a very sharp pencil, he made a tiny cross, and I knew that this mark on the great blank spaces of the mid-Pacific was where the schooner had been at twelve o'clock.
Sometimes the wind fell away at sunset and the engine chugged steadily throughout the night; once, when the trade blew day and night without abating, the Tara reeled off two hundred knots from noon to noon.
The weather grew warmer day by day. Shoes, stockings, and warm clothing were stowed away, and the men went about their work in waistcloths, with brown chests bare. One morning Uncle Harry called me into the trade-room at the after end of the hold, and handed me half a dozen pareus—strips of cotton print, dyed in barbaric patterns of scarlet and white, a yard wide and two yards long.
"If I were you," he said, "I'd put away my trousers from now on—shirts too, if you're not afraid of the sun. My friends call me a savage, but aboard my own schooner I dress as I please. The natives invented the pareu, and it's the most sensible dress for this part of the world. It's cooler than pyjamas at night, and in the morning you have merely to hitch a fresh one around your waist and you're dressed for the day. Let me show you the trick of putting it on." He wrapped the cloth about my waist, tucked in the ends and made a tight roll at the top. "There," he remarked with a smile, "that's quick dressing, eh?"
From that day we went barefoot and bare-chested as the sailors did, and I was soon burned to a uniform deep ruddy brown, only a shade paler than the native crew.