We were fools, he said, to be denied food and smoke by the foreigner. What of matches before the French came? Had he known matches in his youth? Aue! The peoples of the islands must return to the ways of their fathers!
He leaped from the top of the Pekia, and seizing his long knife, he cut a five-foot piece of parua-wood and shaped it to four inches in width. With our fascinated gaze upon him, he whittled sharp a foot-long piece of the same wood, and straddled the longer stick. Holding it firmly between his two bare knees he rubbed the shorter, pointed piece swiftly up and down a space of six inches upon his mount. Gradually a groove formed, in which the dust collected at one end.
Soon the wood was smoking hot, and then the old man's hands moved so rapidly that for several moments I could not follow them with the eye. The smoke became thicker, and suddenly a gleam of flame arose, caught the dust, and was fed with twigs and cocoanut-husks by scores of trembling brown hands. In a few minutes a roaring fire was blazing on the sward.
Pipes sprang from loin-cloths or from behind ears, and the incense of tobacco lifted on the still air of the evening. Brands were improvised and hurried home to light the fires for breadfruit-roasting, while Kahuiti laughed scornfully.
“A hundred of this tribe I have eaten, and no wonder!” he said as he strode away toward Taaoa.
The monopoly of O Lalala was no more. Atuona Valley had turned back the clock of time a hundred years, to destroy the perfect world in which he sat alone. He heard the news with amazement and consternation. For a day he sat disconsolate, unable to credit the disaster that had befallen his carefully made plans. Then he offered the matches at usual traders' prices, and the people mocked him. All over the island the fire-ploughs, oldest of fire-making tools in the world, were being driven to heat the stones for the mei. Atuona had no need of matches.
The governor on his return heard the roars of derision, gathered the story from a score of mirthful tongues, seized and sold the matches, and appropriated the funds for a barrel of Bordeaux. And for many weeks the unhappy O Lalala sat mournfully on the beach, gazing at the empty sea and longing for a schooner to carry him away.
CHAPTER XXIII
Mademoiselle N——.
The Jeanne d'Arc, a beautiful, long, curving craft manned by twelve oarsmen, came like a white bird over the blue waters of the Bay of Traitors one Saturday afternoon, bringing Père Victorien to Atuona. He was from Hatiheu, on the island of Nuka-hiva, seventy miles to the north. A day and a night he had spent on the open sea, making a slow voyage by wind and oar, but like all these priests he made nothing of the hardships. They come to the islands to stay until they die, and death means a crown the brighter for martyrdom.