On the eve of my going all the youth and beauty of Atuona crowded my paepae. Water brought his ukulele, a Hawaiian taro-patch guitar, and sang his repertoire of ballads of Hawaii—“Aloha Oe,” “Hawaii Ponoi,” and “One, Two, Three, Four.” Urged by all, I gave them for the last time my vocal masterpiece, “All Night Long He Calls Her Snooky-Ukums!” and was rewarded by a clamor of applauding cries. Marquesans think our singing strange—and no wonder! Theirs is a prolonged chant, a monotone without tune, with no high notes and little variance. But loving distraction, they listened with deep amusement to my rendering of American airs, as we might listen to Chinese falsettos.
They repaid me by reciting legends of their clans, and Titihuti chanted her genealogy, a record kept by memory in all families. Water, her son, who had learned to write, set it down on paper for me. It named the ancestors in pairs, father and mother, and Titihuti remembered thirty-eight generations, which covered perhaps a thousand years.
We sat in a respectful circle about her while she chanted it. An Amazon in height and weight, nearly six feet tall, body and head cast in heroic mold, she stood erect, her scarlet tunic gathered to display her symmetrical legs, tattooed in thought-kindling patterns, the feet and ankles as if encased in elegant Oriental sandals. Her red-gold hair, a flame in the flickering light of the torches, was wreathed with bright-green, glossy leaves, necklaces of peppers and small colored nuts rose and fell with her deep breathing.
Her voice was melodious, pitched low, and vibrating with the peculiar tone of the chant, a tone impossible of imitation to one who has not learned it as a child. Her eyes were kindled with pride of ancestry as she called the roll of experiences and achievements of the line that had bred her, and her clear-cut Greek features mirrored every emotion she felt, emotions of glory and pride, of sorrow and abasement at the fall of her race, of stoic fortitude in the dull present and hopeless future of her people. With one shapely arm upraised, she uttered the names, trumpet-calls to memory and imagination:
| Enata (Men) | Vehine (Women) |
| Na tupa efitu | Metui te vehine |
| Tupa oa ia fai | Puha Momoo |
| O tupa haaituani | O haiko |
| O nuku | Oui aei |
| O hutu | Moeakau |
| O oko | Oinu vaa |
| O moota | O niniauo |
| O tiu | Moafitu otemau |
| Fekei | O mauniua |
| O tuoa | Hotaei |
| O meae | Oa tua hae |
| O tehu eo | Kei pana |
| O ahunia | Tui haa |
| O taa tini | Kei pana |
| Nohea | Tou mata |
| Tua kina | Papa ohe |
| Tepiu | Punoa |
| Tui feaa | Tuhina |
| Naani Eiva | Eio Hoki |
| Teani nui nei | O tapu ohi |
| Ani hetiti | Opu tini |
| O kou aehitini | O take oho |
| O taupo | O te heva |
| Tui pahu | Otiu hoku |
| O hupe | Oahu tupua |
| O papuaei | O honu feti |
| Pepene tona | Honu tona |
| Haheinutu | O taoho |
| Kotio nui | Taihaupu |
| Motu haa | Mu eiamau |
| Hope taupo | Tuhi pahu |
| Taupo tini | Anitia fitu |
| Ana tete | Pa efitu |
| Kihiputona | Tahio paha oho |
| Taua kahiepo | Honu tona |
| Mahea tete | Titihuti |
| Aino tete tika | Tua vahiane |
| Kui motua | Titihuti |
Loud sang the names themselves, proclaiming the merits of their bearers or their fathers in heraldic words, in titles like banners on castle walls, flying the standard of ideals and attainments of men and women long since dust.
Masters of Sea and Land, Commander of the Stars, Orderers of the Waxing and Waning of the Moon, Ten Thousand Ocean Tides, Man of Fair Countenance, Caller to Myriads, Climber to the Ninth Heaven, Man of Understanding, Player of the Game of Life, Doer of Deeds of Daring, Ten Thousand Cocoanut Leaves, The Enclosure of the Whale's Tooth, Man of the Forbidden Place, The Whole Blue Sky, Player of the War Drum, The Long Stayer; these were the names that called down the centuries, bringing back to Titihuti and to us who sat at her feet in the glow of the torches the fame and glory of her people through ages past.
How compare such names with John Smith or Henry Wilson? Yet we ourselves, did we remember it, have come from ancestors bearing names as resonant. Nero was Ahenobarbus, the Red-Bearded, to his contemporaries of Rome, at the time when Titihuti's forefathers were brave and great beneath the cocoanut-palms of Atuona. Our lists of early European kings carry names as full of meaning as theirs; Charles the Hammer, Edward the Confessor, Charles the Bold, Richard the Lion-Hearted, Hereward the Wake.
Titihuti, having gravely finished her chant, stood for a moment in silence. Then, “Aue!” she said with a sigh. “No one will remember when I am gone. Water, my son, nor Keke, my daughter, have learned these names of their forefathers and mothers who were noble and renowned. What does it matter? We will all be gone soon, and the cocoanut-groves of our islands will know us no more. We come, we do not know whence, and we go, we do not know where. Only the sea endures, and it does not remember.”
She sat on the mat beside me, and pressed my hand. I had been adopted as her son, and she was sorry to see me departing to the unknown island from which I had come, and from which, she knew, I would never return. She was mournful; she said that her heart was heavy. But I praised lavishly her beautifully tattooed legs, and complimented the decoration of her hair until she smiled again, and when from the shadowy edges of the ring of torch-light voices began an old chant of feasting, she took it up with the others.