Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

All the village went to the scene of the diving in a fleet of cutters and canoes, sailing or paddling according to the goal and craft. Nohea and I had a largish canoe, which, though with a small sail woven of pandanus straw, could easily be paddled by us. He had staked out a spot upon the lagoon that had no recognizable bearings for me, but which he had long ago selected as his arena of action. He identified it by its distance from certain points, and its association with the sun’s position at a fixed hour.

We had risen before dawn to attend the Mormon church service initiating the rahui. The rude coral temple was crowded when the young elders from Utah began the service. Mapuhi, Nohea, and leaders of the village sat on the forward benches. The prayer of elder Overton was for the physical safety of the elected in the pursuit they were about to engage in.

“Thou knowest, O God,” he supplicated, “that in the midst of life we are in death.”

“E! E! Parau mau!” echoed the old divers, which is, “Yea, Verily!”

“These, thy children, O God, are about to go under the sea, but not like the Chosen People in Israel, for whom the waters divided and let them go dry-shod. But grant, O God, who didst send an angel to Joseph Smith to show him the path to Thee through the Book of Mormon, who didst lead thy new Chosen People through the deserts and over the mountains, among wild beasts and the savages who knew Thee not, to Thy capital on earth, Salt Lake City, that thy loving worshipers here assembled shall come safely through this day, and that Thy sustaining hand shall support them in those dark places where other wild beasts lie in wait for them!”

“Parau mau!” said all, and the eyes of some of the women were wet, for they thought of sons and lovers, fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters, who had gone out upon the lagoon, and who had died there among the coral rocks, or of whom only pieces had been brought back. They sang a song of parting, and of commending their bodies to the Master of the universe, and then with many greetings and hearty laughter and a hundred jests about expected good fortune, we parted to put the final touches on the equipment for la pêche des huitres nacrières. Forgetting the quarter of an hour of serious prayer and song in the temple, the natives were now bubbling with eagerness for the hunt. Mapuhi himself was like a child on the first day of vacation. These Paumotuans had an almost perfect community spirit, for, while a man like Mapuhi became rich, actually he made and conserved what the duller natives would have failed to create from the resources about them, or to save from the clutches of the acquisitive white, and he was ready to share with his fellows at any time. He, as all other chiefs, was the choice of the men of the atoll at a quadrennial election, and held office and power by their sufferance and his own merits. None might go hungry or unhoused when others had plenty. Civilization had not yet inflicted on them its worst concomitants. They were too near to nature.

After a light breakfast of bread and savory fried fish, to which I added jam and coffee for myself, Nohea and I pushed off for our wonder-fishing. In the canoe we had, besides paddles, two titea mata, the glass-bottomed boxes for seeing under the surface of the water, a long rope, an iron-hooped net, a smaller net or bag of coir, twenty inches deep and a foot across, with three-inch meshes, a bucket, a pair of plain-glass spectacles for under-water use, a jar of drinking-water, and food for later in the day.

The sun was already high in the unclouded sky when we lifted the mat sail, and glided through the pale-blue pond, the shores of which were a melting contrast of alabaster and viridescence. All about us were our friends in their own craft, and the single motor-boat of the island, Mapuhi’s, towed a score of cutters and canoes to their appointed places. A slender breeze sufficed to set us, with a few tacks, at our exact spot. We furled our sail, stowed it along the outrigger, and were ready for the plunge. We did not anchor the canoe because of the profundity of the water and because it is not the custom to do so. I sat with a paddle in my hand for a few minutes but laid it down when Nohea picked up the looking-glass. He put the unlidded box into the water and his head into it and gazed intently for a few moments, moving the frame about to sweep the bottom of the lagoon with his wise eyes.

The water was as smooth as a mirror. I saw the bed of the inland sea as plainly as one does the floor of an aquarium a few feet deep. No streams poured débris into it, nor did any alluvium cloud its crystal purity. Coral and gravel alone were the base of its floor and sides, and the result was a surpassing transparency of the water not believable by comparison with any other lake.

“How far is that toa aau?” I asked, and pointed to a bank of coral.