We battled with the current and a fresh wind during the long, dark hours, Jean Moet never leaving the deck, and I keeping him company. Below on a settee Virginie said her beads or slept. I could see her by the smudgy cabin lamp, and hear her call to her husband two or three times, hours apart, “Ça va bien?” Jean would answer in Tahitian, as to a sailor, “Maitai,” and invariably would follow his mechanical reply, with “Et toi, dors-tu?”
Ever light-hearted, currents nor squalls could burden his Gascon spirit. He looked at the stars, and he looked at the water, he consulted with the mate, and gave orders to the steersman.
“Eh b’en,” he said to me, “moi, I am comme monsieur ze gouverneur ov ze Paumotu who live een Favarava, over zere.” He pointed into the darkness. “’E ’as a leetle schoonaire an’ ’e keep ze court and ze calaboose, bot mos’ly ’e lis’en to ze musique an’ make ze dance. La vie est triste; viva la bagatelle! Maybee we pick op Anaa in ze morning. Eef not, amigo mio, Virginie she weel pray for nous both.”
Anaa, or Chain Island, as Captain Cook named it because of its eleven motus or islets, strung like emeralds and pearls in a rosary, was not visible at daybreak, but as I studied the horizon the sky turned to a brilliant green. I thought some dream of that Tir-na’n-Og spoken of by Tomé in Niau obsessed me. I turned my back and waited for my eyes to right themselves. One sees green in the rainbow and green in the sunset, but never had I known a morning sky to be of such a hue. McHenry came on deck in his pajamas, and looked about.
“Erin go bragh!” he remarked. “Ireland is castin’ a shadow on the bloody heaven. There,” he pointed, “is the sight o’ the bleedin’ world. You’ve never seen it before an’ you won’t see it again, unless you come to Anaa in the mornin’ or evenin’ of a purty clear day. It’s the shinin’ of the lagoon of Anaa in the sky, an’ it’s nowhere else on the ball. There’s many a Kanaka in ’is canoe outa sight o’ land has said a prayer to his god when he seen that green. He knew he was near Anaa. You can see that shine thirty or thirty-five miles away, hours before you raise the atoll.”
Some curious relation of the lagoon to the sky had painted this hazy lawn on high. It was like a great field of luscious grass, at times filmy, paling to the color of absinthe touched with water, and again a true aquamarine, as I have seen the bay of Todos Santos, at Enseñada of Lower California. Probably it is the shallowness of the waters, which in this lagoon are strangely different from most of the inland basins of the South Sea Isles. To these mariners, who moved their little boats between them, the mirage was famed; and the natives had many a legend of its origin and cause, and of their kind being saved from starvation or thirst by its kindly glint.
McHenry called down the companionway, “Hey, monster, you can see the grass on Anaa. Vite-vite!”
Moet, who was below, drinking a cup of coffee, leaped up the companionway. He called out swift orders to go over on the other tack, and headed straight for the mirage. The schooner heeled to the breeze, now freshening as the sun became hotter, and we reeled off six or seven knots with all canvas drawing. In an hour the celestial plot of green had vanished, fading out slowly as we advanced, and we began to glimpse the cocoanuts on the beach, though few trees showed on the sky-line, and they were twisted as in travail.
Anaa, as others of these islands and Tahiti, too, had suffered terribly by a cyclone a few years ago. More than any other island of this group Anaa had felt the devastating force of the matai rorofai, the “wind that kills”—the wind that slew Lovaina’s son and made her cut her hair in mourning. Hikueru lost more people, because there were many there; but Anaa was mangled and torn as a picador’s horse by the horns of the angry bull. A half-mile away we could plainly see the havoc of wind and wave. The reef itself had been broken away in places, and coral rocks as big as houses hurled upon the beach.
“I was there just after the cyclone,” said McHenry. “It was a bloomin’ garden before then, Anaa. It was the only island in the Paumotus in which they grew most of the fruits as in Tahiti, the breadfruit, the banana, the orange, lime, mango, and others. It may be an older island than the others or more protected usually from the wind; but, anyhow, it had the richest soil. The Anaa people were just like children, happy and singin’ all the time. That damned storm knocked them galley-west. It tore a hole in the island, as you can see, killed a hundred people, and ended their prosperity. There was a Catholic church of coral, old and bloody fine, and when I got here a week after the cyclone I couldn’t find the spot where the foundations had been. I came with the vessels the Government sent to help the people. You never seen such a sight. The most of the dead were blown into the lagoon or lay under big hunks of coral. People with crushed heads and broken legs and arms and ribs were strewn all around. The bare reef is where the village was, and the people who went into the church to be safe were swept out to sea with it.”