I have seen a child of six years reach the top of a sixty-foot tree in a minute or so, and I have seen a man or woman stop on the way, fifty feet from the earth, and light a cigarette. Slim, fat, chiefs or commoners, all learn this knack in infancy. Men who puff along the road because of their bulk will attain the branches of a palm with the agility of monkeys.
Orivie had no notches to assist him, but tied his ankles together with a piece of tough vine, leaving about ten inches of play, and with this band, pressed tightly against the tree, giving firm support while his arms, clasping the trunk above, drew him upward a yard at a time, he was at the crest of a fifty-foot tree in a minute, and threw down two drinking nuts. They were as big as foot-balls and weighed about five pounds each. We had no knife, but broke in the tops with stones, and holding up the shining green nuts, let the wine flow down our throats. Never was a better thirst-quencher or heartener! The hottest noon on the hottest beach, when the coral burns the feet, this nectar is cool. After the most arduous climb, when lungs and muscles ache with weariness, it freshens strength and lifts the spirit.
By the cocoanut-grove ran a level stream shaded with pandanus, and following it, we commenced again to mount on a pathway arched by small trees, down which the stream coursed. The cocoanuts fell away as we went up the ridge and emerged upon a tableland covered with ferns, some green and some dead and dry, carpeting the flat expanse as far as eye could see with a mat of lavender, the green and the brown melting into that soft color.
We were further on the broad roof on the mountains, in the middle now and not on the edge, so we ran and galloped and shouted. Wild horses fled from us, and we heard the grunt of boar in the fern thickets. The fan-palms, dwarfs, but graceful, intermingled with magnificent tree-ferns, while above them curved the huetu, the immense mountain plantain, called fei in Tahiti, where they are the bread of the people; they have ribbed, emerald leaves, as big as a man. Feeders of dark people in many lands for thousands of years, theirs is the same golden fruit I had eaten at breakfast with Père Olivier, three thousand feet below. They grow only in the mountains, and the men who bring them into the villages have feet shaped like a hand spread out to its widest, with toes twisted curiously by climbing rocks and grasping roots for support.
The rain began to fall again, and the wind came stronger, but now we were going down in earnest. The sea shone again, but it was on the Oomoa side. We passed under trees hung with marvelous orchids, the puaauetaha, Orivie said, parasitic vines related to the vanilla as the lion is related to the kitten, cousins, but with little family likeness.
The trail became very dangerous at this point, a rocky slide, with steps a foot or two apart like uneven stairs, and all a foot, or sometimes two, under running water. I jumped and slid and slipped, following the unhappy plunging horse. Darkness came on quickly with the blinding rain, and the descent was often at an angle of forty-five degrees, over rocks, eroded hills, along the edge of a precipice. I fell here, and saved myself by catching a root in the trail and pulling myself up again. I would have dropped upon the roof of the gendarme's house a thousand feet below.
We heard the sound of the surf, and letting the horse go, Orivie led me, by that sense we surrender for the comforts of civilization, down the bed of a cascade to the River of Oomoa, which we waded, and then arrived at Grelet's house. We had come thirteen miles. I was tired, but Orivie made nothing of the journey.
Covered with mud as I was, I went to the river and bathed in the rain and, returning to the house, looked after my health. A half ounce of rum, a pint of cocoanut-milk from a very young nut, the juice of half a lime just from the tree, two lumps of sugar, and I had an invigorating draught, long enough for a golf player after thirty-six holes, and delicate enough for a debutante after her first cotillion. The Paumotan boys and Pae looked on in horror, saying that I was spoiling good rum.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Return in a canoe to Atuona; Tetuahunahuna relates the story of the girl who rode the white horse in the celebration of the féte of Joan of Arc in Tai-o-hae; Proof that sharks hate women; steering by the stars to Atuona beach.