Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

Stanislao seized the instrument and I danced. We four were the spirits of a rare and vital esthetic, a harmony with being that denied all knowledge but that of our acute and delicately-poised senses of warmth, delicious odors, fresh colors of the plants, and mutual attraction. The ship, Lutz, the nuns, heaven and hell, the Taua and the Tapus were forgotten by me and by Barbe in the glowing hour of dance and play.

Tired we threw ourselves on the grass and drank from the cocoanuts which Stanislao climbed a tree to bring us. The prince told us, with solemnity in which Marquesans speak of olden things, an incident related to him by his uncle:

“A French governor here forbade the girls to go to the war-ships in the bay. They ruined discipline, he said. Nevertheless, three daughters of a powerful chief swam out to a war vessel. The commander, discovering them in the morning, sent them ashore to the governor, who put them in prison for three days.

“Their father’s rage was terrible. It had ever been the custom for the young women to visit the ships, he said, and that his daughters should be the victims of a governor’s whim, abetted by French sailors themselves, was a deadly insult.

“He sent a message to the governor: ‘I am a chief who has eaten my enemies all my life. I will wash the hands of my daughters in French blood.’

“The sailors were forbidden by their officers to leave the beach. They had been going up the river to bathe in shady spots, but they were warned of danger and a line was drawn beyond which they were not to go. A guard was stationed a little higher up the stream, and for weeks the barrier was not crossed. But sailors know no authority when woman beckons,”—it has been so since Jason sought the Golden Fleece,—“and, when, through the glade, they saw the alluring forms of the three sisters, the governor’s orders were damned as tyranny. They outwitted the guard and climbed the trail to the paepae of their inamoratas. The chief and his warriors trapped six of them after a struggle. One sailor, a man famed for strength, killed several with his hands. They were outnumbered and were brought, some wounded and some dead, to an altar up the valley, and there the daughters, at the command of their father, bathed their hands in the men’s blood, as he had sworn. Parts of the bodies were eaten and the remains fed to the pigs.

“The governor had troops brought ashore to pursue the chief. For a year he evaded them, but then Vaekehu, the widow of Temoana, sent him word to come to Taiohae and be shot. He obeyed, of course, and met death near the hill of the fort.

“That was the palace of Queen Vaekehu,” said the prince, pointing up the hill. It was by a pool, under a gigantic banyan, a lonely site, a palisade of cocoanuts and tamarinds not availing to soften the gloomy impression. Long before she died the queen forsook her royal residence for the shelter of the convent, where all day she told her beads, or sat in silent contemplation.

Bishop Dordillon who had written my dictionary, had given the queen a Trinity, a Mother of God, and a band of saints to dwell upon, and more, a bottomless pit of fire, with writhing sufferers and devils from it ever at her ear to whisper distraction and temptation.

Mademoiselle Narbonne, hearing a warning whistle of the Saint François, bethought her of her strange position, of the sisters and of Lutz. She trembled, turned pale, and begged to be excused as she started running to the beach to catch a boat about to shove off. I also bade good-by to the two, with a sigh for their fleeting felicity, and strolled to the Catholic mission.