A PRODIGAL IN TAHITI.
LET this confession be topped with a vignette done in broad, shadowless lines and few of them,—something like this:—
A little, flyblown room, smelling of garlic; I cooling my elbows on the oily slab of a table (breakfast for one), and looking through a window at a glaring, whitewashed fence high enough to shut out the universe from my point of sight. Yet it hid not all, since it brought into relief a panting cock (with one leg in a string), which had so strained to compress itself into a doubtful inch of shade that its suspended claw clutched the air in real agony.
Having dazzled my eyes with this prospect, I turned gratefully to the vanities of life that may be had for two francs in Tahiti. Vide bill of fare: One fried egg, like the eye of some gigantic Albino; potatoes hollowed out bombshell fashion, primed with liver-sausage, very ingenious and palatable; the naked corpse of a fowl that cared not to live longer, from appearances, yet looked not happy in death.
Item: Wonder if there is a more ghastly spectacle than a chicken cooked in the French style; its knees drawn up on its breast like an Indian mummy, while its blue-back, parboiled, and melancholy visage tearfully surveys its own unshrouded remains. After a brief season of meditation I said, and I trust I meant it, "I thank the Lord for all these blessings." Then I gave the corpse of the chicken Christian burial under a fold of the window curtain, disposed of the fried eye of the Albino, and transformed myself into a mortar for the time being, taking potato-bombshells according to my calibre.
There was claret all the while and plenty of butterless roll, a shaving of cheese, a banana, black coffee and cognac, when I turned again to dazzle myself with the white fence, and saw with infinite pity,—a sentiment perhaps not unmixed with a suspicion of cognac or some other temporary humanizing element,—I saw for a fact that the poor cock had wilted, and lay flat in the sun like a last year's duster. That was too much for me. I wheeled towards the door where gleamed the bay with its lovely ridges of light; canoes drifting over it drew the eye after them irresistibly; I heard the ship-calkers on the beach making their monotonous clatter, and the drone of the bareheaded fruitsellers squatted in rows chatting indolently, with their eyes half shut. I could think of nothing but bees humming over their own sweet wares.
About this time a young fellow at the next table, who had scarcely a mouthful of English at his command, implored me to take beer with him; implying that we might, if desirable, become as tight as two bricks. I declined, much to his admiration, he regarding my refusal as a clear case of moral courage, whereas it arose simply and solely from my utter inability to see his treat and go him one better.
A grown person in Tahiti has an eating hour allotted to him twice a day, at 10 A. M. and 5 P. M. My time being up, I returned to the store in an indifferent frame of mind, and upon entering the presence of my employer, who had arrived a moment before me, I was immediately covered with the deep humiliation of servitude and withdrew to an obscure corner, while Monsieur and some naval guests took absinthe unblushingly, which was, of course, proper enough in them. Call it by what name you will, you cannot sweeten servility to my taste. Then why was I there and in bondage? The spirit of adventure that keeps life in us, yet comes near to worrying it out of us now and then, lured me with my handful of dollars to the Garden of the Pacific. "You can easily get work," said some one who had been there and didn't want it. If work I must, why not better there than here? thought I; and the less money I take with me the surer am I to seek that which might not attract me under other circumstances. A few letters which proved almost valueless; an abiding trust in Providence, afterward somewhat shaken I am sorry to state, which convinces me that I can no longer hope to travel as a shorn lamb; considerable confidence in the good feeling of my fellow-men, together with the few dollars above referred to,—comprised my all when I set foot on the leaf-strewn and shady beach of Papeete.
Before the day was over I saw my case was almost hopeless; I was one too many in a very meagre congregation of foreigners. In a week I was desperate, with poverty and disgrace brooding like evil spirits on either hand. Every ten minutes some one suggested something which was almost immediately suppressed by the next man I met, to whom I applied for further information. Teach, said one: there wasn't a pupil to be had in the dominion. Clerkships were out of the question likewise. I might keep store, if I could get anything to put in it; or go farther, as some one suggested, if I had money enough to get there. I thought it wiser to endure the ills I had than fly to others that I knew not of. In this state I perambulated the green lanes of Papeete, conscious that I was drawing down tons of immaterial sympathy from hearts of various nationalities, beating to the music of regular salaries in hard cash, and the inevitable ringing of their daily dinner-bell; and I continued to perambulate under the same depressing avalanches for a fortnight or more,—a warning to the generation of the inexperienced that persists in sowing itself broadcast upon the edges of the earth, and learns too late how hard a thing it is to take root under the circumstances.