Teamo gathered up her burdens and, with a reminiscent smile, walked on.
“Monsieur l’Americain,” said Hiram, “you may be sure that when she returned to Hikueru from Tekokota—that atoll was fifteen miles away—they were afraid of her, as the friends of Lataro when Ietu Kirito raised him from the dead.”
The chief’s restlessness increased, as if he must deliver me somewhere quickly; but I thought of the man they called the king of the Paumotus.
“The house of Mapuhi, is it—”
“The chief is taking you there now,” said Hiram. “The elders are there. My father was long-time the partner of Mapuhi. They sailed their schooners together and had their divers.”
“You and your father are Mormons?”
“Nous sommes bons Mormons,” replied the half-caste, seriously. “Am I not named for the king who built the temple of Solomon. It is a shame, Monsieur, that those Konito are permitted in these islands. They corrupt the true religion.”
The chief touched my arm, and we proceeded, after an exchange of bows with the son of the American. We walked to the very end of the small motu or islet. The motus are often long but always very narrow, between three hundred and fifteen hundred feet.
The people of Takaroa had chosen to pitch their huts on this spot of the whole atoll because of the pass into the lagoon being there. That was the determining factor just as the banks of rivers and bays were selected by American pioneers. Where the salt water was on three sides—the moat, the lagoon, and the channel between the next motu—was the residence of our seeking.
It was a neat domicile of dressed lumber, raised ten feet from the ground on stilts. It was fenced about, and here and there a banana-plant or fig-tree grew in a hole dug in the coral, surrounded by a little wall of coral and with rotting tin cans heaped about. Driven in the trunks were nails. I asked the chief the reason, and he replied vaguely that the trees needed the iron of the cans and the nails.