The crews of the schooner and of the other Moorea boat besides our own had a swarm of friends awaiting the casting off. Even a journey of a few hours meant a farewell ceremony of many minutes. They embrace one another and are often moved to tears at a separation of a few days. When one of them goes aboard a steamship for America or Australasia, the family and friends enact harrowing scenes at the quay. They are sincerely moved at the thought of their loved ones putting a long distance between them, and I saw a score of young and old sobbing bitterly when the Noa-Noa left for San Francisco though they stormed the stokers lustily when aroused. Their life is so simple in these beloved islands that the dangers of the mainland are exaggerated in their minds, and to the old the civilization of a big city appears as a specter of horrible mien. The electric cars, the crowds, the murders they read of and are told of, the bandits in the picture-shows, the fearful stranglers of Paris, the lynchers, the police, who in the films are always beating the poor, as in real life, the pickpockets, and the hospitals where willy-nilly they render one unconscious and remove one’s vermiform appendix—all these are nightmares to the aborigines whose relations are departing.
When heads were counted, Landers’s was missing, and jumping into Llewellyn’s carriage, an old-fashioned phaëton, I drove to Lovaina’s, where he occupied the room next to mine in the detached house in the animal-yard. He was sound asleep, having played poker and drunk until an hour before; but when I awoke him I could not but admire the serenity of the man. His body was in the posture in which he had lain down, and his breathing was as a child’s.
“Landers, get up!” I shouted from the doorway. He opened his eyes, regarded me intently, and without a word went to the shower-bath by the camphor-wood chest, returned quickly, and dressed himself. I fancied him a man who would have answered his summons before a firing-squad as calmly. He had a perfection of ease in his movements; not fast, for he was very big, but with never an unnecessary gesture nor word. He was one of the finest animals I had ever seen, and fascinating to men and women of all kinds.
The Potii Morea had taken on her passengers when we returned, and we put off from the sea-wall at once, with two barrels of bottled beer, and half a dozen demi-johns of wine prominent on the small deck. Often the sea between Tahiti and Moorea is rough in the daytime, and passage is made at night to avoid accident, but we were given a smooth way, and could enjoy the music. We sat or lay on the after-deck while the bandsmen on the low rail or hatch maintained a continuous concert.
During the several days between our first planning the trip and the going, a song had been written in honor of the junketing, and this they played scores of times before we set foot again in Papeete. It was entitled: “Himene Tatou Arcarea,” which meant, “Our Festal Song.”
One easily guessed the meaning of the word himene. The Polynesians’ first singing was the hymns of the missionaries, and these they termed himenes; so that any song is a himene, and there is no other word for vocal music in common use. The words of the first stanza of the “Himene Tatou Arearea” and the refrain were:
I teie nei mahana
Te tere no oe e Hati
Na te moana
Ohipa paahiahia
No te au
Tei tupi i Moorea
tamau a
Tera te au
Ei no te au
Tamua a—aue
Ei reo no oe tau here
I te pii raa mai
Aue oe Tamarii Tahiti te aroha e
A inu i te pia arote faarari
Faararirari ta oe Tamarii Tahiti
La, Li.
Llewellyn put the words into approximate meaning in English, saying it was as difficult to translate these intimate and slang phrases as it would be to put “Yankee Doodle” into French or German. His translation, as he wrote it on a scrap of paper, was: