Mystic Isles of the South Seas.

by Frederick O'Brien

Simple they were, with no windows or doors, mere shelters, but cool and cheap, with no division of rooms, and no furniture but the sleeping mats and a utensil or two. Natives were seen cooking their simple meal of fish and breadfruit, or only the latter. The fire was in the ground or under a grill of iron on stones. They would not go hungry, for mango-trees lined the road, and bananas, feis, and pineapples were to be had for the taking.

We drove through Aapahi and Faaripoo and saw a funeral. In the grounds of the dead man sat two large groups of people, the men and the women separate. They talked of his dying and his property, and his children, while those who liked to do so made him ready for the grave. A hundred yards away, in a school-yard, twoscore men, women, boys, and girls played football. The males were in pareus, naked except about the waist, and they kicked the heavy leather sphere with their bare feet.

Pare, Arue, and Mahina districts behind us, we were in Papenoo, a straggling village of a few hundred people along the road, the houses, all but the half-dozen stores of the Chinese, set back a hundred yards, and the domestic animals and carts in the front.

With a flourish we drove into the inclosure of the largest, newest, and most pretentious house, and were greeted by Teriieroo, the Tahitian chief, all native, but speaking French easily and musically. Count Polonsky shook hands with him, as did we all, but when a daughter appeared, neither Polonsky nor we paid her any attention. Yet she was Polonsky’s “girl,” as they say here, and he kept her in good style in a house near her father’s, sending his yellow automobile for her when he wanted her at his villa near Papeete.

The chief’s house had four bedrooms, each with an European bed, three-quarter size, and with a mattress two feet high, stuffed with kapok, the silky cotton which grows on trees all over Tahiti, These mattresses were beveled, and one must lie in their middle not to slip off. The coverlets were red and blue in stamped patterns.

It was dark when we touched the earth after two hours’ driving, and leaving the coachman to care for the horses, we went with the chief, each of us carrying a siphon of seltzer or a bottle of champagne or claret. Our way was through an old and dark cocoanut grove, a bare trail, winding among the trees, and ending at the beach.

Polonsky had had built a pavilion for the revel. Fifty feet away was a kitchen in which the dinner was cooking, its odors adding appetite to that whetted by the several cocktails which Polonsky had mixed when the ice was brought in a wheelbarrow from the wagon.

We sat down in chairs on the turf a foot from the jetty boulders, and watched the inrush of the breakers. A light breeze outside had stirred the water, and the combers were white and high.

“Every sea is really three seas,” said McHenry, pipe in hand, as he sipped his Martini. “We fellows who have to risk our cargoes and lives in landing in the Paumotus and Marquesas, study the accursed surf to find out its rules. There are rules, too, and the ninth wave is the one we come in on. That is the last of the third group, the biggest, and the one that will bring your boat near enough to shore to let all hands leap out and run her up away from the undertow.”

Lights were placed in the new house. It was elegantly made, of small bamboos up and down, with a floor of matched boards, the roof of cocoanut-leaves, and hung with blossoms of many kinds. The table had been spread, and there was a glitter of silver and glass, with all the accoutrements of fashion. We sat down, eight, the chief making nine, and ate and drank until ten o’clock. The pièce de résistance was the sucking pig, with taro and feis, but roasted in an oven, and not in native style; and there was a delicious young turkey from New Zealand, a ham from Virginia, truffles, a salad of lettuce and tomatoes, and a plum pudding from London. The claret was 1900 and 1904, a vintage obtained by Polonsky in Paris. The champagne, also, was of a year, and frappéd. Tahitian coffee, with brown sugar from the chief’s plantation, ended the banquet.