“Let us go to the house of Mapuhi,” I said to Lutz.
“Ja wohl,” he replied; “I have not met him in many years.”
We left the mate and walked along the path past the traders’ stores. The thousand feet that trod the coral road and had gone in and out the dozen shops of the dealers and pearl-buyers during my stay on Takaroa were missing, but more than the stir and hum of the rahui was absent. A depressing torpor possessed the little village. Mapuhi’s store was closed tightly, and from no house or hut did a head show or a greeting come.
We saw that the door of one shop was ajar, and, going in, happened on a pleasant and illuminating scene. Angry words in Tahitian we heard as we mounted the steps, and smothered exclamations of a profane sort in English which had a familiar note. Back of the counter was a very large Tahitian woman who, with a heavy fishing-rod of bamboo, was thrashing a white man. She was, between blows, telling him that if he got drunk or spoke rudely to her again, she would “treat him as a Chinaman did his horse in Tahiti,” which is a synonym for roughness. He was evading the strokes of the bamboo by wriggling, and guarding with his arms, and was cursing in return, but was plainly afraid of her. He was McHenry, my ofttime companion of revels at the Cercle Bougainville in Papeete, who had come on the Flying Fish with me from Tahiti, and had remained in Takaroa.
Many times he had boasted of his contempt for native women.
“I’ve had my old lady nineteen years,” he said once, “and she wouldn’t speak to me if she met me on the streets of this town. She wouldn’t dare to in public until I recognized her.”
Lutz and I did not utter a sound, but quickly descended the steps.
“I never before saw a native wife beating her husband,” he commented caustically. “That McHenry deserves it. Lying Bill often said McHenry’s vahine took a stick to him. Tahitian women will not be whipped themselves.”
Lutz should know. He had had fourteen years with a Tahitian mistress, a wife in her own eyes as much as if wedded in a cathedral. Would he not have to face her in Papeete when he should be married to Mademoiselle Narbonne? Perhaps she had a stronger weapon than a rod! The taua’s sorcery might stretch over the ocean, and be potent in Tahiti.
Lutz and I were almost at Mapuhi’s residence when we met Nohea, my host of the fishing and diving. Nohea was in a black cloth coat and a blue pareu, and his countenance was distressed.