IV
AT FAATEMU
I wish that I had space to tell more of the month I spent at Faatemu—the story of all that happened in those days would fill a thicker volume than this one. I was young, keenly alive, and set down among strange and kindly people in a brand-new world. When the Tara set sail at nightfall I felt a little lonely and forlorn, but before another day had passed I was beginning to enjoy one of the happiest periods of my life. No matter how far I wander, or how remote those dreamy island days, I shall never forget the kindness of my friends, the brown Faatemu villagers.
We had been sighted offshore and canoes were thick about the Tara when her anchor dropped. Taura was the first man aboard—a stately, gray-haired native, of a type not common nowadays. He was barefoot, but his suit of drill was spotless and he wore a beautifully plaited hat. His fat old wife Hina came behind him, her kindly face working and her eyes full of tears; and Tetua, Marama's little sister, stood shyly at her mother's side. Hina made straight for her son and clung to him for a time, sobbing gently; Tetua kissed her brother bashfully; and finally the chief, after he had shaken hands with the rest of us, sat down beside Marama for the silent greeting of their race.
"Come ashore with me," called my uncle, as the ship's boat went over the side; "there's some copra here and I still have room for a bit of deck cargo. We must hurry if I'm going to get away to-night!"
The boat plied back and forth all morning, laden with bags of copra, while Uncle Harry unlocked his store, showed me how to keep account of the goods, and explained to Taura that I was to stop over and that the canoe-building must be hurried as much as possible. The chief promised to have the canoes ready in a month's time. As for divers, he believed we could pick up all we needed on Raiatea—Paumotu men who had settled in the Leeward group. My bag and light blanket were brought ashore and installed in Taura's house, and toward evening my uncle bade us good-bye and was pulled out to the schooner. It was dusk when she stole out through the pass, before the gentle night-breeze which comes down from the hills.
I lay awake long that night, in my bed in a corner of Taura's great single room. The others had spread a mat on the floor and set a turned-down lamp near by. Father, mother, and sister lay in a circle about Marama while he recounted, in a low voice and with many gestures, the story of his adventures in the north. I lay staring up at the rafters under the lofty thatch, thinking of all that had happened since Uncle Harry had steered his boat in through the California surf; of the von Tesmars, father and son; of Iriatai, and what the future held in store. The lamp flickered when the land breeze found its way through the thin bamboo walls, causing the shadows above me to deepen and retreat; Marama's rapid flow of words droned on monotonously; and at last sleep closed my eyes.
Early next day, when Taura came to demand half a dozen axes for his men, I did my first bit of trading. Then I closed the store, and Marama and I went with the canoe-builders to select their trees in the valley far up among the mountains. We followed the river up from the bay toward Faaroa, the great central valley of the island. A dim path, along which we walked in single file, led through the jungle, winding about the trunks of fallen trees, across the rushing, waist-deep stream, high along the mountain-side, at a place where the valley became a gorge. I saw thickets of fei, the wild plantain, bearing great bunches of its reddish fruit; jungle cock crowed shrilly among the hills; and once a troop of wild pig, led by a gray old boar, crashed off, grunting, through the undergrowth. It was strange to think that only three generations had passed since Marama's ancestors, fierce brown warriors armed with rude ironwood clubs and spears, had stolen along this same path on forays against neighboring clans.
The wild hibiscus seldom grows large enough to furnish a log for a twenty-foot canoe, and it took us the best part of the day to choose our trees. All were close enough to be dragged to the river and floated down to Faatemu, and while the work was going on Marama and I went out every day with the men. First of all, the tree was felled and the branches chopped off smoothly, flush with the trunk. Then a twenty-foot length was measured along the straightest part of the tree and the ends cut off, before the log was rolled and dragged to the riverside. Finally, when our fifteen logs were ready, it took a strenuous day's work, pushing over shallow reaches and swimming through deep pools, to float them to the beach.
Once our logs were at Faatemu, Taura was for giving a feast and resting for a day or two. But I urged haste, recalling my uncle's words to the chief. Then the logs were laid out in the shade, close to the village, and one man set to work on each, fashioning a canoe with axe and adze. Day after day the builder chopped, while the chips flew and the form of the canoe emerged—the curve of sheer, the rounded bilge, the sharp lines of bow and stern. Sometimes a man stood off, squinting at his handiwork with one eye closed—judging the symmetry of the slender hull. When the outside was roughly chopped to shape, the log was turned over and the builder began to hollow out the inside with his adze. At last, when the walls of wood were of the required thickness, the process of finishing began: a slow and laborious rubbing with hard bits of coral, and a final smoothing with the rough skin of a stingray's tail, tacked to a wooden block. Then a pair of narrow planks of hibiscus were sawn out to make the raised gunwales, six inches high and of the same thickness as the sides of the canoe. After long scraping and repeated trials, these gunwales were made to fit so perfectly that no crack of light appeared when they were set in place. At intervals of about a foot, holes were drilled in the gunwales and corresponding holes in the dugout-sides beneath. The planks were joined at stem and stern and lashed to the canoe with cinnet—strong cording made of the braided fibre of the coconut. Now, save for its outrigger, the canoe was finished.
Round-bottomed and very narrow for their length, the native canoes would capsize at once were it not for their outriggers—light slender logs which float in the water alongside at a distance of four or five feet, attached to the hull by a pair of transverse poles. When Captain Cook first sailed among the islands, the natives marveled at the great canoe which remained upright without an outrigger—more wonderful by far, in their eyes, than the white man's cannon, or muskets, or axes of steel. "Aué!" they exclaimed, in astonishment. "E vaa ama oré!"—a canoe without an outrigger!