“Ah, the blackboard is in bad condition! Bien, we must remedy that. I am well satisfied. I will return to your house. These stones are very hot.”
The bon homme marched back, puffing, combing his fan-like whiskers with his fingers, with that quietly exultant air of one who has done his duty despite all risks.
The Zélée returning, and this being the total of his inspection, he ordered it to speed forthwith to Tahiti, where, doubtless, as in Paris, he recited the dangers and difficulties of life in the cannibal islands. He forgot to have the blackboard repaired. I learned by letter from Malicious Gossip, two years after his notation, of its deplorable state. The ingratitude of colonies toward their foster-mothers is proverbial. Our own fat men, secretaries of war, senators, and congressmen, make as cursory examinations of our American vassals in the Pacific and Atlantic, and with as little help to them.
Brunneck, the boxer and diver
Photo from L. Gauthier
A village maid in Tahiti
A Samoan maiden of high caste
The inspector’s congé was almost synchronous with mine. The Saint François of Bordeaux, the first merchant steamship in the Marquesas, arrived from Tahiti, to swing about the ports of my archipelago and return to Papeete. My heart ached at leaving; the tendrils of the purple-blossomed pahue-vine were about it. How could I forsake forever my loved friends of Atuona and Vaitahu, Malicious Gossip, Mouth of God, Vanquished Often, Seventh Man Who Is So Angry, Great Fern, Ghost Girl, and the little leper lass, Many Daughters? I must make my choice, and swiftly. If I stayed much longer, I would never live again in America; the jungle would creep over me and I should lie, some day, on Calvary’s hill near the lost remains of Paul Gauguin. There was Le Brunnec, the best of the whites, but he was a Breton peasant, born to the sun and simplicity and nature’s riches; I was of the shade and artificiality, of pavements and libraries. Nor could I show an unabraded surface to these savage tropics as did Lutz. His Prussianism, his Lutheranism, preserved him cold, and ready to escape at fortune’s opening. My Irish forebears and American generations gave me no such buckler, nor ambition.