The first film was concerned with the doings of Nick Winter, an English detective in France, a burlesque of Sherlock Holmes, and other criminal literatures. The spectators could not make a head nor tail of it, but they enjoyed the scenes hugely and were intensely mystified by many pictures. An automobile, which, by the trickery of the camera, was made to appear to climb the face of a sky-scraper, raised cries of astonishment and assertions of diablerie. The devil was a very real power to South Sea Islanders, whether they were Christians or not, and they had fashioned a composite devil of our horned and cloven-hoofed chap and their own demons, who was made responsible for most trouble and disaster that came to them, and whose machinations explained sleight of hand, and even the vagaries of moving pictures.
What pleased them most were cow-boy pictures, the melodramatic life of the Wild West of America, with bucking bronchos, flying lassos, painted Indians whom they thought tattooed, and dashes of vaqueros, border sheriffs, and maidens who rode cayuses like Comanches. Tahiti was daft over cow-boys, and had adopted that word into the language, and these Anaans were vastly taken by the same life. Lacour explained the pictures as they unrolled, shouting any meanings he thought might pass; and I doubted if he himself knew much about them, for later he asked me if all cow-boys were not Spaniards.
This was the first moving picture machine in these islands. Lacour had only had it a few weeks. He purposed taking it through the Group on a cutter that would transport the cocoanut receipts. Lacour, Nimau, and I sat up late. These Frenchmen save for a few exceptions were as courteous as at home. Peasants or sailors in France, they brought and improved with their position that striking cosmopolitan spirit which distinguishes the Gaul, be he ever so uneducated. The English and American trader was suspicious, sullen or blatant, vulgar and often brutal in manner. The Frenchman had bonhomie, politeness. England and America in the South Seas considered this a weakness, and aimed at the contrary. Manners, of course, originated in France.
“This island is on the French map as La Chaîne,” said Captain Nimau, “but we who traverse these seas always use the native names. Those old admirals who took word to their king that they had discovered new islands always said, too, that they had named them after the king or some saint. A Spaniard selected a nice name like the Blessed Sacrament or the Holy Mother of God, or some Spanish saint, while a Frenchman chose something to show the shape or color of the land. The Englishman usually named his find after some place at home, like New England, New Britain, and so on. But we don’t give a sacré for those names. How could we? All those fellows claimed to have been here first, and so all islands have two or three European names. We who have to pick them up in the night, or escape from them in a storm, want the native name as we need the native knowledge of them. The landmarks, the clouds, the smells, the currents, the passes, the depths—those are the items that save or lose us our lives and vessels. Let those vieux capitaines fight it out below for the honor of their nomenclature and precedence of discovery!”
What recriminations in Hades between Columbus and Vespucci!
“Take this whole archipelago!” continued Nimau. “The Tahitians named it the Poumotu or pillar islands, because to them the atolls seemed to rise like white trees from the sea. But the name sounded to the people here like Paumotu, which means conquered or destroyed islands, and so, after a few petitions or requests by proud chiefs, the French in 1852 officially named them Tuamotu, distant, out of view, or below the horizon. That was more than a half century ago, but we still call them the Paumotu. There’s nothing harder to change than the old names of places. You can change a man’s or a whole island’s religion much easier.”
Near the little hut in which we were, Nimau’s house, a bevy of girls smoked cigarettes and talked about me. They had learned that I was not a sailor, not one of the crew of the Marara, and not a trader. What could I be, then, but a missionary, as I was not an official, because not French? But I was not a Catholic missionary, for they wore black gowns; and I could not be Mormoni nor Konito, because there in public I was with the Frenchmen, drinking beer. Two, who were handsome, brown, with teeth as brilliant as the heart of the nacre, and eyes and hair like the husks of the ripe cocoanut, came into the house and questioned Lacour.
“They want to know what you are doing here,” interpreted Lacour.
“I am not here to make money nor to preach the Gospel,” I replied.
The younger came to me and put her arms about me, and said: “Ei aha e reva a noho io nei!” And that meant, “Stay here always and rest with me!”