“’E won’t say too bloody much about them,” said Lying Bill, caustically. “‘Is family killed off most of ’em.”
Again it seemed that we would hear Llewellyn to no conclusion. He got on his feet, and shook out his pipe.
“A gentleman has no place in the Paumotus,” he said, bitterly. “Mr. O’Brien, you must not judge South Sea traders by McHenry or Pincher.”
“Judge and be bloomin’ well damned!” interrupted Lying Bill. “I’ll go an’ see where McHenry is. Maybe the bottle’ll ’ave a drink in it, an’ you can stay an’ spin your yarn your own way. I know the bleedin’ truth.”
Captain Pincher retreated, muttering, in the darkness toward the sound of the surf on the reef. The gentle breeze agitated the cocoanuts above our heads, and Kopcke, a child in mentality though a man, begged Llewellyn to keep on.
“Pay no attention, please, to those bums!” said Kopcke in his politest French. “Now, me, I want to learn everything.”
Nimau and I apologized for humanity, and insisted that the scholar proceed. Mollified, and with his pipe refilled, the quarter-caste graduate of Leipsic resumed his account.
“I was going to tell about the people, and I’ll begin at the beginning,” he said, thoughtfully. “A Dutch ship discovered Easter Island two hundred years ago, and shot some of the natives. Every succeeding discoverer did the same. Peruvian blackbirders killed hundreds and carried off five thousand of them to die in the guano deposits of the Chincha Islands and the mines of Peru. Almost every leading man, the king and every chief, was killed or captured. The prisoners nearly all died in slavery, and only Pakomeo came back. He lived near us, and told me all about it. Timi Martin believed there were twenty thousand people on the island near the time of the Peruvian raid.
“From then on, with all the livest men gone, the people paid no attention to any authority. There had been a hereditary monarchy for ages, and while the clans might go to battle for any reason, no one ever touched the king or his family. But with Maurata, the king, kidnapped, and most of the head men, there was no boss. Then Frère Eugène, a Belgian priest of Chile, brought back three youths who had been taken by the Peruvians. One was Tepito, the heir of King Maurata, and the priest thought maybe he could use him to convert the islanders. He had a hard time, but he did it. You must say for those old missionaries that they stuck to their jobs though hell popped. He had fifty narrow escapes from being assassinated by natives who thought him much like the Peruvians, and just when he was baptizing the last of the Rapa Nuiis, and complete peace had settled down, trouble began again. A Frenchman who was looking about for a fortune arrived there and took up his residence. He saw there was plenty of land not used for growing yams, the only crop, and so he went into partnership with a Scotchman in Tahiti to grow sheep, cattle, and horses. He gave a few yards of calico for a mile of land, and started his ranch with the Scotchman’s animals.
“The Frenchman took up with a common woman who had been the wife of a chief but who was not of the chief caste, and he had her made queen. Queen Korato was her name, and she was a caution—like a society woman and a Jezebel, mixed. She bossed everything but her husband. She started a row between him and Frère Eugène, who claimed authority through the church. There being no regular government, the priest said that, through God and the pope, he was the ruler. He was a strong man, and I must say from all accounts kind to the natives. They started to work and built again, but the feud between the church and the queen became fiercer and fiercer, and finally after personal combats between leaders, and a few deaths, Frère Eugène gathered all his adherents and, securing a vessel through his bishop, transported them to the Gambier Islands.