South-Sea Idyls

by Charles Warren Stoddard

A CANOE-CRUISE IN THE CORAL SEA.

IF you can buy a canoe for two calico shirts, what will your annual expenses in Tahiti amount to? This was a mental problem I concluded to solve, and, having invested my two shirts, I began the solution in this wise: My slender little treasure lay with half its length on shore, and, being quite big enough for two, I looked about me, seeking some one to sit in the bows, for company and ballast.

Up and down the shady beach of Papeete I wandered, with this advertisement written all over my anxious face:——

"WANTED—A crew about ten years of age; of a mild disposition, and with no special fondness for human flesh; not particular as to sex! Apply immediately, at the new canoe, under the breadfruit-tree, Papeete, South Pacific."

Some young things were pitching French coppers so earnestly they didn't read my face; some were not seafaring, at that moment; while most of them evidently ate more than was good for them, which might result disastrously in a canoe-cruise, and I set my heart against them. The afternoon was waning, and my ill-luck seemed to urge upon me the necessity of my constituting a temporary press-gang for the kidnapping of the required article.

"Who is anxious to go to sea with me?" I bawled, returning through the crowds of young gamblers, all intently disinterested in everything but "pitch and toss." Not far away a group of wandering minstrels—such as make musical the shores of Tahiti—sat in the middle of the street, chanting. One youth played with considerable skill upon a joint of bamboo, of the flute species, but breathed into from the nostrils, instead of the lips. Three or four minor notes were piped at uncertain intervals, playing an impromptu variation upon the air of the singers. Drawing near, the music was suspended, and I proposed shipping one of the melodious vagabonds, whereupon the entire chorus expressed a willingness to accompany me, in any capacity whatever, remarking, at the same time, that "they were a body bound, so to speak, by chords of harmony, and any proposal to disband them would, by it, be regarded as highly absurd." Then I led the solemn procession of volunteers to my canoe, and we regarded it in silence; it was something larger than a pea-pod, to be sure, but about the shape of one. After a moment of deliberation, during which a great throng of curious spectators had assembled, the orchestra declared itself in readiness to ship before the paddle for the trifling consideration of $17. I knew the vague notion that money is money, call it dollar or dime, generally entertained by the innocent children of Nature; and, dazzling the unaccustomed eyes of the flutist with a new two-franc piece, he immediately embarked. The bereaved singers sat on the shore and lifted up their voices in resounding discord, as the canoe slid off into the still waters, and my crew, with commendable fortitude, laid down the nose-flute, took up the paddle, and we began our canoe-cruise.

The frail thing glided over the waves as though invisible currents were sweeping her into the hereafter; the shore seemed to recede, drawing the low, thatched houses into deeper shadow; other canoes skimmed over the sea, like great water-bugs, while the sun set beyond the sharp outlines of beautiful Morea, glorifying it and us.

There was a small islet not far away,—an islet as fair and fragrant as a bouquet,—looking, just then, like a mote in a sheet of flame. Thither I directed the reformed flutist, and then let myself relapse into the all-embracing quietness that succeeds nearly every vexation that flesh is heir to.

There was something soothing in the nature of my crew. He sat with his back to me,—a brown back, that glistened in the sun, and arched itself, from time to time, cat-like, as though it was very good to be brown and bare and shiny. From the waist to the feet fell the resplendent folds of a pareu, worn by all Tahitians, of every possible age and sex, and consisted, in this case, of a thin breadth of cloth, stamped with a deep blue firmament, in which supernaturally yellow suns were perpetually setting in several spots. A round head topped his chubby shoulders, and was shaven from the neck to the crown, with a matted forelock of the blackness of darkness falling to the eyes and keeping the sun out of them. One ear was enlivened with a crescent of beaten gold, which decoration, having been won at "pitch and toss," will probably never again, in the course of human events, meet with its proper mate. On the whole, he looked just a little bit like a fan-tail pigeon with its wings plucked.