Eustace had no cargo for us, and McHenry and I caught the last boat for the Marara, Moet having stayed for one trip only.
“Come an’ shtay wid us a month or two,” said Tomé in farewell. “We’ll make ye happy and find ye a sweetheart! ’Tis here ye can shpend yer valibil time doin’ nawthin’ at all, at all.”
He laughed heartily at his joke on virtue, and as we dashed through the surf to climb into the boat I turned to see him telling the assembling villagers some story that might provoke a laugh and keep their copra a monopoly for him.
CHAPTER III
Perilous navigation—Curious green sky—Arrival at Anaa—Religion and the movies—Character of Paumotuans.
A CURRENT set against us all night. Now I understood fully the alarms and misgivings that had caused the first and following discoverers of the “Pernicious Islands” to curse them by the titles they gave them. Our current was of the mischievous sort that upset logarithms and dead reckoning, and put ships ashore.
“This group is a graveyard of vessels,” said McHenry, “and there’d be ten times as many wrecked, if they come here. Wait till you see the County of Roxburgh at Takaroa! I’ve been cruisin’ round here more’n twenty years, and I never saw the current the same. The Frog Government at Papeete is always talkin’ about puttin’ lighthouses on a half dozen of these atolls, but does nothin’. Maybe the chief or a trader hangs a lantern on top of his house when he expects a cargo for him, but you can’t trust those lights, and you can’t see them in time to keep from hittin’ the reef. There’s no leeway to run from a wind past beating. It’s lee shore in some bloody direction all the time.
“There’s a foot or two between high and low, and it’s low in the lagoon when the moon is full. It’s high when the moon rises and when it sets. In atolls where there’s a pass into the lagoon, there’s a hell of a current in the lagoon at the lowerin’ tide, and in the sea near the lagoon when the tide is risin’. We’re goin’ to beat those tides with engines. In five years every schooner in the group will have an auxiliary. There’s only one now, the Fetia Taiao, and she’s brand new. It used to be canoes, and then whale-boats, and then cutters here, and purty soon it’ll be gasolene schooners.”
Then will the cry arise that romance has perished of artificiality. But the heart of man is always the same, and nothing kills romance but sloth.