Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

The captain whistled, caught my eye, touched his forehead to signify Piha a Teina was wandering mentally, and summoned the sailor to take the wheel.

“He ees maamaa evvair since zat leetle voyage,” he said, sagely.

On the morning of the fourth day from Papeete the first of the eighty Paumotu atolls raised a delicate green fringe of trees four or five miles away. It lay so low that from the deck of the schooner it could not be seen even on the clearest days at a greater distance. One heard the surf before the island appeared. It was only a few feet above the plane of the sea, flat, with no hill or eminence upon it, a leaf upon the surface of a pond. I could hardly believe it part of the familiar globe. It was more like the fairy-island of childhood, the coral strand of youth, the lotus land of poesy. It was, in reality, the most beautiful, fascinating, inconceivable sight upon the ocean.

McHenry and I stood with Chocolat and watched the slow rise of the atoll of Niau, as the Marara, under lessened sail and with Captain Moet at the helm, cautiously approached the land. We crept up to it, as one might to a trap in which one hoped to snare a hare but feared to find a wolf. All hands stood by for orders. Though the sky was azure and the sun broiling, one never knew in the Pernicious Islands when the unforeseen might happen.

Seven miles long and five wide, Niau was a matchless bracelet of ivory and jade. Grieg Island, some Anglo-Saxon discoverer once named it, but Grieg had fame abroad only. None spoke his name as we advanced warily over the road, familiar to them all as the Sulu Sea to me. The cargo for Niau came through the hatches, thrown up from the hold, sailor to sailor, and was piled on deck until all was checked. Madame Moet was on the poop by the after door of the cabin, hanging over each item and marking it off upon her inventory, while Jean hummed the “Carmagnole,” and swung the Flying Fish about on short tacks for her goal. Between the shifting of the canvas the long-boat was lowered, and the goods heaped in it: boxes and barrels, bales and buckets, edibles and clothing, matches and tobacco, gimcracks and patent medicines.

As closer we went, I saw that Niau was a perfect oval, composed of a number of separate islets or motus. These formed the land on which were the trees and shrubs and the people, but this oval itself was inclosed by a hidden reef, several hundred feet wide, on which the breakers crashed and spilled in a flood of foaming billows.

There was no enthusiasm over the beauty of Niau except in my heaving breast, and I concealed it as I would free thinking in a monastery. To McHenry and Jean and Virginia, a lovely atoll was but a speck upon the ocean on which to cozen inferior creatures.

“Madre de Dios!” vociferated the skipper, when, a mile from the gleaming teeth of the reef, he brought the Marara up into the wind and halted her like a panting mare thrown upon her haunches. “Mc’onree et M’sieu’ O’Breeon, eef you go ’shore, tomble een, pronto!”

He released the wheel to the mate, and we three scrambled over the rail and jumped upon the cargo as the boat rose on a wave, joining the four Tahitians who were at the heavy oars, with Piri a Tuahine at the stern, holding a long sweep for a rudder. It was attached by a bight of rope, and by a longer rope kept from floating away in case of mishap.

Now came as delicate a bit of action with sails as a yachtsman, with his mother-in-law as a guest, might recklessly essay. Captain Moet sang out from his perch on a barrel to the half-caste at the wheel to go ahead, and the Flying Fish, which for a few minutes had been trembling in leash, turned on her heel and headed directly for the streak of foam, the roar of which drowned our voices at that distance.