Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

We talked about the decimation of the Marquesans—Le Brunnec in ten years had seen them depopulated almost 50 per cent.

“They are unhappy and soul-sick,” he said. “They are animals, and, when they had freedom under their own rule, prospered enormously. Now there are a couple of thousand instead of the hundred thousand the whites found. They are in the cage of civilization and cannot stand the bars. We are adaptable because we are an admixture of many races, and have had to exist in changing environments or die. Millions must have died from the same thing that destroys the Marquesans, but there were enough to keep on and build up again. The quality of adaptability, of making the best of it, is wonderful. One time in Tahiti I was at the Annexe lodging-house of Lovaina when a Frenchman arrived by steamer from Martinique. He had with him his four children. The mother, a native of that island, was dead, and the oldest child was a girl of thirteen, a child-woman, naive but clever, and very charming. For four years she had been mother to the other three, since she was nine, and they were as neat as a gunboat. She was tiny and undeveloped physically, but necessity had adapted her perfectly to her task. The father was looking for work, and, not finding it in Tahiti, was off to Dacca, in Africa, leaving the babies in her care. Mon Dieu! It was brave to see her bathing them, brushing their hair, reproving them, and feeding them. If she had been five years older I would have tried to marry her, and the whole flock. Now, you see, she could keep on because she was continuing the white race customs and ideals, and understood them, hard as it was; but these poor people have been told to do something they don’t understand, and that is not their ideal. Now take that girl of old Peyral! Her mother spoke English, and her father is French, and she went to the nuns’ school here for four or five years. Yet she can hardly speak anything but Marquesan, and in that tongue she replies to her father, and talks to her sisters. She is almost a Marquesan, and as they are unhappy in their prison so is she. She is the only white woman here, and she has no companions, and her father won’t let her be a native. Pauvre enfant! Now, her I wouldn’t marry for all the cocoanuts on this island. There is one other, Mademoiselle Narbonne, who is the richest person in the Marquesas, for she, too, is fit neither for native life nor for white. The nuns have spoiled her, as her mother spoiled the Peyral girl.”

And so to bed on the grass with a blanket about us.

In the morning we were up at daybreak, and, after coffee and hardtack, we rode toward the sea. There was a faint trail, but Le Brunnec was a skilled tracker and picked up the spoor in a few minutes. After half an hour we saw fresher traces of our prey, and began to make plans for the attack. We felt sure we were the only ones on the plateau, and so were safe, for Marquesans are reckless with guns, and when we heard a horse coming toward us we halted and waited. It was Peyral. We could see his frowsy head a quarter of a mile away as it bobbed in the trot.

“Eh bien!” said Le Brunnec, philosophically. “He is not so bad here. It is curious that when Peyral has been drunk for a month, and reforms so as not to die, he goes to the mountains for a week and shoots an animal.”

We said bon jour, and he joined us. Le Brunnec proposed that we try to kill two bulls, share the labor of carrying the meat to Atuona, and divide it there. Peyral gruffly assented, and, as he was the more skillful chasseur, gave us our stations. We were to start up one or more taureaux sauvages and to endeavor to refrain from firing at them until they were as near as possible to the cliff. We were successful and had felled one, when another appeared.

“Prennez garde!” shouted Le Brunnec. “That hakiuka has blood in his eye.”

“Go around to the left and drive him toward me,” commanded Peyral.

I was riding fast about his flank when my horse put his foot in a rat’s hole. I had my rifle on my right arm and I must have used it as a vaulting-pole unwittingly, for I struck the earth about ten feet from my mount. I was struggling to my feet when I became aware that the hakiuka was approaching with malice in his snortings. My horse had got up but too late to bear me to security, and my rifle was choked with mud. I rushed for a tree but could see none with low branches. I had a big knife in my belt, a kind of Bowie, and, as I felt the hot breath of the animal on me and saw his horns magnified to elephant’s tusks, I drew the weapon. The beast was within five feet of me when he dropped. Peyral had put a Winchester bullet in his heart. His head was at my feet as he gave it a mighty toss, and laid it on the sward of maidenhair ferns in submission to man’s invention.

When I had made sure of the poor hakiuka’s being absolutely dead, and had shaken myself together, finding no injuries, I thanked Peyral, whom Le Brunnec was already extolling for marksmanship and quickness of thought.