On a platform fifteen hundred feet above the sea Darling had built a frame of beams, boards, and branches, with bunks and seats, much like a woodcutter’s temporary shelter in the mountains, a mere lean-to. The view was stupendous, with the sea, the harbor, Moorea, and Papeete hardly seen in the foliage. He had thought his work in life to be peopling these hills with big families of nature children and the spread of socialism and reformed spelling.
His dream was transient. He had been treated with contempt, and had been driven from his garden, as had his first father, and without an Eve or a serpent. The whiskered Frenchman had bought Eden for a song, and had made it taboo to all.
We shouted in vain for the Frenchman, so we searched the premises. The boxer was afraid that after we left he might roll a rock down our trail because of our breaking his taboo. We found the spring from which he drank, and a pool dug by Darling for bathing, now only a mass of vegetation. Evidently the present tenant was not an ablutionist.
“There’s a beastly German down on that next level,” remarked the Christchurch Kid. “’E ’ates this Frenchman. Now they don’t speak, but they sent warnin’ to each other o’ trouble. The frog carries the revolver for the sauer-kraut. Some day they’ll kill each other right ’ere. They’re both ’ermits, and ’ermits are terrible when they get excited.”
It was almost a straight drop to the German’s, a small promontory, with an acre of land, a platform raised eight feet on poles for a roof, and under it a berth. A chest held his belongings. He lived on the fruit he raised and the fish he caught in the sea, to which he went every day. He tried to keep chickens, but the mountain rats, of which Darling had trapped more than five thousand, ate most of them. The German, too, was away from his simple home. Both these men sought in life only peace and plain living, yet were consumed with hate. One day the upper dweller had accidentally caused a small stone to roll down upon the other’s roof. The German had shouted something to the Frenchman, hot words had passed, and now they carried revolvers to intimidate or shoot each other. Their days and nights were spent on plans to insult or injure. And because of their feud they hated the whole world.
Once again in Papeete, we met the Swiss of the Noa-Noa who had intended to eat raw foods in the Marquesas. He was to return to America on the next steamer.
“De wegetables in Tahiti have no wim in dem,” he said. “In California I ead nudds und raisins mit shtrent’ in dem. I go back.”
The fighter pointed out the “cryzy” Frenchman of Eden. He was the customs employee who had provoked the American consul by refusing to understand English.
I asked M. Lontane, the second in command of the police, why Darling had gone.
The hero of the battle of the limes, coal, and potatoes, looked at me fiercely.