Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

“‘Let us go to see Mauraii!’ he said. He was angry, and I was afraid, and I went with him. I knew where Mauraii would be, and I pointed him out. He was sitting in the shade of a purau tree, looking at the lagoon. The Taote went to him and spoke to him. Mauraii fell flat, and then he crawled about the sand, and shouted to me not to let the Taote kill him, too. This made him more angry, and he said that Mauraii was really maamaa, and that nothing could be done for him. Mauraii ran to his house when he had turned his back. After the Moana had gone on her way to Nuku-Hiva, the Taote asked me if I could go with him to another island. I did not want to go. If I had not gone, I would not be as I am, but then I would not have my house, and all the debts paid of my family.

“I said that I had work here. But he said he would be gone but a couple of weeks, and that he would give me ten taras a day, and that I would have no hard work. Mapuhi and Nohea were absent. No white elders were here to advise me. Finally I said I would go, though when I looked at Mauraii and saw what he was, I was afraid. He said we must take Mauraii with us. We had hard work to get Mauraii on the cutter. When we did, which was at night, we put him in the hold and closed the hatch and sailed out of the pass. It was my own cutter, but the Taote had provided food, and his big boxes were in the hold with Mauraii.

“Once outside the reef, the Taote said he would go almost due east, and that Pukapuka was our island. I said that Pukapuka had no people on it, and he said that was true. I said that Pukapuka was closed to the diving, and he said that was true. But we went on toward Pukapuka. When we slid the cover off the hatch to the hold, Mauraii came up, and when he saw we were at sea and that the Taote was so near him, he shivered like a diver who has had a struggle with a shark. I thought he would leap into the water, and often he looked at it with longing. But the Taote talked to him strongly, and put medicine in his arm.

“We steered and trimmed sail by turn. The wind was fair, and we reached Pukapuka in five days. We had a hard time to get the boxes ashore. There is no pass, and you cannot reach the lagoon from the sea. We had brought a small boat lashed on the deck, and this we carried to the lagoon. It took us a day to move it, and we made Mauraii help. The man had changed since we landed on Pukapuka. He was not wild, but taata ravea paari. He was cunning. He smiled to himself sometimes in an evil way. We were no sooner on the lagoon than the Taote ordered me and that madman to build a hut and to rest ourselves for a day.

“Pukapuka had not a man upon it. It is like a cocoanut-shell, round all about, and the lagoon deep, and full of yellow shell with yellow pearls. There are no poison fish in the water, as in some other islands. I thought of that, and of the man who had been here with Mauraii and had never come back. I was afraid. The Taote could make Mauraii sleep and sleep with one touch of a silver pipe on his arm. I was afraid.

“The island is loved by the birds; it was their time for nesting, and the air was filled with them. That was the only sound. The Taote wore no hat, though the sun upon the coral was as stones heated to cook fish. When we had rested a day, the Taote, who had been most of the hours upon the lagoon, spoke to me of our mission, and we three rowed a little distance until I judged we were in water of seventeen fathoms.

“‘It is long,’ said the Taote. ‘It is five years since I was here, but I am sure of the spot. There was a cocoanut-tree that hid the village if I rowed from that rock we put there on shore, due west, five umi. There is the cocoanut, and it hides the huts the divers live in when the lagoon is open.’

“You see how quiet this lagoon is? Well, that lagoon of Pukapuka was ten times more still. It made me shake as had Mauraii. But now he did not shake. He was all brightness, and his eyes were shining, though he said not a word.

“The Taote took the titea mata and looked into the water. He could see little; his eyes were not strong. I went into the water, took the titea mata, stuck my head into it and gazed down into the sea.

“‘Do you see shell, large shell?’ he asked quickly, like a man who knows what is in a place.