A look of blank amazement appeared upon the round face of M. L'Hermier des Plantes when it was conveyed to him that this solitary whaleboat had brought a solitary white to welcome him to his seat of government. He had been assiduously preparing for his reception for many hours and was immaculately dressed in white duck, his legs in high, brightly-polished boots, his two stripes in velvet on his sleeve, and his military cap shining. He knew no more about the Marquesas than I, having come directly via Tahiti from France, and he was plainly dumfounded and dismayed. Was all that tender care of his whiskers to be wasted on scenery?
However, after a drink or two he resignedly took his belongings, and dropping into the wet and dirty boat with Bauda, he lifted an umbrella over his gaudy cap and disappeared in the rain.
“'E's got a bloomin' nice place to live in,” remarked Lying Bill. “Now, if 'e 'd a-been 'ere when I come 'e 'd a-seen something! I come 'ere thirty-five years ago when I was a young kid. I come with a skipper and I was the only crew. Me and him, and I was eighteen, and the boat was the Victor. I lived 'ere and about for ten years. Them was the days for a little excitement. There was a chief, Mohuho, who'd a-killed me if I 'adn't been tapu'd by Vaekehu, the queen, wot took a liking to me, me being a kid, and white. I've seen Mohuho shoot three natives from cocoanut-trees just to try a new gun. 'E was a bad 'un, 'e was. There was something doing every day, them days. God, wot it is to be young!”
A little later Lying Bill, Ducat, and I, with my new valet's canoe in the wake of our boat, rounded the cliffs that had shut off our view of Atuona Valley. It lay before us, a long and narrow stretch of sand behind a foaming and heavy surf; beyond, a few scattered wooden buildings among palm and banian-trees, and above, the ribbed gaunt mountains shutting in a deep and gloomy ravine. It was a lonely, beautiful place, ominous, melancholy, yet majestic.
“Bloody Hiva-oa,” this island was called. Long after the French had subdued by terror the other isles of the group, Hiva-oa remained obdurate, separate, and untamed. It was the last stronghold of brutishness, of cruel chiefs and fierce feuds, of primitive and terrible customs. And of “the man-eating isle of Hiva-oa” Atuona Valley was the capital.
We landed on the beach dry-shod, through the skill of the boat-steerer and the strength of the Tahitian sailors, who carried us through the surf and set my luggage among the thick green vines that met the tide. We were dressed to call upon the governor, whose inauguration was to take place that afternoon, and leaving my belongings in care of the faithful Exploding Eggs, we set off up the valley.
The rough road, seven or eight feet wide, was raised on rocks above the jungle and was bordered by giant banana plants and cocoanuts. At this season all was a swamp below us, the orchard palms standing many feet deep in water and mud, but their long green fronds and the darker tangle of wild growth on the steep mountain-sides were beautiful.
The government house was set half a mile farther on in the narrowing ravine, and on the way we passed a desolate dwelling, squalid, set in the marsh, its battered verandas and open doors disclosing a wretched mingling of native bareness with poverty-stricken European fittings. On the tottering veranda sat a ragged Frenchman, bearded and shaggy-haired, and beside him three girls as blonde as German Mädchens. Their white delicate faces and blue eyes, in such surroundings, struck one like a blow. The eldest was a girl of eighteen years, melancholy, though pretty, wearing like the others a dirty gown and no shoes or stockings. The man was in soiled overalls, and reeling drunk.
“That is Baufré,” said Ducat. “He is always drunk. He married the daughter of an Irish trader, a former officer in the British Indian Light Cavalry. Baufré was a sous-officier in the French forces here. There is no native blood in those girls. What will become of them, I wonder?”
A few hundred yards further on was the palace. It was a wooden house of four or five rooms, with an ample veranda, surrounded by an acre of ground fenced in. The sward was the brilliantly green, luxuriant wild growth that in these islands covers every foot of earth surface. Cocoanuts and mango-trees rose from this volunteer lawn, and under them a dozen rosebushes, thick with excessively fragrant bloom. Pineapples grew against the palings, and a bed of lettuce flourished in the rear beside a tiny pharmacy, a kitchen, and a shelter for servants.