We were in the tropics now. The ocean was of a vivid blue that I had never seen. Shoals of flying fish rose before the Tara's cutwater to skim off above the waves, and sometimes the water about us was alive with the predatory fish which rove the open sea. One afternoon Marama showed me how to catch my first albicore in native fashion.
We were standing by the rail, on the after deck. Suddenly, close to the schooner's side, a dozen great steel-blue fish flashed into the air, leaping like porpoises. "Albicore!" exclaimed my companion, as he darted away toward the forecastle. A moment later he was back, brandishing a twelve-foot pole of heavy bamboo. To the small end of it he made fast a length of strong cotton line, terminating in a lure of mother-of-pearl tinted in iridescent shades of yellow and green and fitted with a barbless hook of brass. The shell was cut and polished to resemble a six-inch flying-fish, with a tuft of white horsehair projecting on either side to represent the wings.
The albicore were still leaping and flashing alongside, now darting ahead, now circling to follow in our wake. Marama tossed his lure overboard and allowed it to skitter on the waves, holding the butt of the rod strongly with both hands. There was a flash of blue in the sea; the lure disappeared; the line snapped taut; the bamboo bent with the struggles of a powerful fish. A yell burst from my companion's lips. He braced himself to heave with all his strength, and a thirty-pound albicore, vibrant and flashing in the sunlight, broke from the water, sailed over the rail, and thudded to the deck.
"Quick!" shouted Marama. "You try! I kill this one—take him forward—Seroni no like blood on deck."
My own blood was up and the hint was enough. In an instant the lure was overboard and I was doing my best with unskilled hands to make it skitter as the native boy had done. The fish had circled and were following astern; I could see the spray of their leaping in the schooner's wake. Then, as I gazed into the clear water, I saw a single monstrous albicore rushing at my hook. His jaws gaped wide—there was a mighty wrench; I found myself doubled over the rail, clinging to the rod with all my strength and shouting for help. Marama had turned to come aft and his quick eye took in the situation at a glance. He bounded to the forecastle and came running along the deck, holding aloft a long, four-pointed spear. "Tapea maitai!" he shouted—"Don't let go!" At that moment, Seroni himself—for that was my uncle's native name—appeared on deck. He seized the spear from Marama's hand and sprang to the rail. I was beginning to learn that Uncle Harry prided himself on excelling the natives in their own pursuits. His arm shot out in a swift dexterous thrust which transfixed the wallowing fish, so heavy that we could not lift it till a noose had been thrown over its tail.
That night, for the first time in my life, I tasted the characteristic dish of Polynesia: raw fillets of fish, soaked in vinegar and served as an appetizer.
The trade wind held for sixteen days, and when it died away at last we were only four hundred miles north of the Line. Then the Tara's sails were furled and for three days and three nights the engine drove us southward over a sea ruffled by light airs from the west. I shall never forget those equatorial nights, when all the others, saving the steersman and myself, were asleep on deck—the steady pulsing of the Tara's motor; the calm sea, heaving gently as a sleeper's breast; the Southern Cross, low down among the blazing constellations. Each day at dawn the air cooled and freshened; presently the sky to the east began to pale, the little clouds on the horizon grew luminous with rosy light, and the sun appeared above the rim of the sea, a disk of dazzling brightness, glaring like burnished brass. The sunsets, on evenings when masses of cloud were piled along the western sky, were still more beautiful. Long after the sun had sunk beyond the slope of the world the clouds were tinted with opal and rose, and pierced by lofty shafts of golden light.
We crossed the Line and met the southeast trade, blowing from the far-off Chilean coast. Then the sheets were close-hauled and the Tara began to beat southward, pitching and bucking into the head sea. Marama brought racks to hold the dishes on our table; we moved about the deck in short runs, grasping at the rail or a convenient stay; and for the first time I felt a landsman's seasick qualms. The constant tossing made all hands irritable, and brought on the trouble between Pahuri and the cook.
I heard from Marama how the affair began. Fatu and the engineer ate their meals forward with the men, old friends and natives like themselves, with whom there was no occasion to enforce strict discipline. Pahuri, the little Rarotongan engineer, was the oldest man and the recognized story-teller of the crew. He had seen many strange parts of the world, and no doubt, like other story-tellers I have known, he was quite ready to describe other places he had never seen. No matter how often the story had been told, nor how obviously embellished by a resourceful imagination, the men always listened eagerly when Pahuri began his tale. Rairi, the half-caste cook, was the only skeptic of the lot, and his comment on the engineer's accounts of Sydney and Wellington and Singapore, coupled with his own white blood and pretense of superiority, caused daily friction between the two. There was soup on the day of the trouble, scalding-hot soup, carried to the forecastle by Rairi's own hands, and a plate of it, poured down the engineer's neck when the Tara gave a sudden violent lurch, brought Pahuri raging to his feet. Rairi was Paumotan on the native side; to a man of his kind no epithet could have been more offensive than the engineer's angry: "Uri Paumotu!—Paumotan dog!" But the mate's presence tied his hands and he retired sullenly to the galley, trembling with rage. The sequel came late that night.
Pahuri had been working on his engine and he came on deck, a little after midnight, for a breath of air. He was leaning on the rail by the shrouds when strong hands seized his throat and he heard a fierce whisper in his ear:—