The repast ended, we set out to view the depleted village with its few inhabitants, the remainder after Europe had subtracted native habits and native health.
The gorge that parted the valley was wide and deep for the silver stream that sang its way to the bay. When the rain fell in cascades the channel hardly contained the mad torrent that raced from the heights, a torrent that had destroyed the road built years before when whaler's ships by the dozens came each year. Now the natives made their way as of old, up and down rocky trails and over the stepping-stones.
Near the beach we came upon a group of tumbledown shanties, remnants of the seat of government. Only a thatched schoolhouse and a tiny cabin for the teacher were habitable. Here the single artist of the islands, Monsieur Charles Le Moine, had taught the three “R's” to Vait-hua's adolescents for years. He was away now, Neo said, but we found his cabin open and littered with canvases, sketches, paint-tubes, and worn household articles.
“He got litt'ee broomee, an' sweep paint out litt'ee pipe on thing make ship's sails,” Neo explained. Surely a description of a broad modern style.
On the wall or leaning against it on the floor were a dozen drawings and oils of a young girl of startling beauty. Laughing, clear-eyed, she seemed almost to speak from the canvas, filling the room with charm. Here she leaned against a palm-trunk, her bare brown body warm against its gray; there she stood on a white beach, a crimson pareu about her loins and hibiscus flowers in her hair.
“That Hinatini,” said Seventh Man Who Wallows, speaking always in what he supposed to be English. “She some pumkin, eh? Le Moine like more better make tiki like this than say book. She my niece.”
The rich colors of the pictures sang like bugle-notes among the shabby odds and ends of the studio. A cot, a broken chair or two, a table smeared with paints, an old shoe, a pipe, and a sketch of the Seine, gave me La Moine in his European birthright, but the absence of any European comforts, the lack even of dishes and a lamp, told me that Montmartre would not know him again. The eyes of the girl who lived on the canvases said that Le Moine was claimed by the Land of the War Fleet.
Turning from the dingy interior of his cabin, I saw in the sunlight beyond the door his model in the life. Le Moine had not the brush to do her justice. Vanquished Often, as Hinatini means, was perhaps thirteen years old, with a grace of carriage, a beauty and perfection of features, a rich coloring no canvas could depict. Her skin was of warm olive hue, with tinges of red in the cheeks and the lips cherry-ripe. Her eyes were dark brown, large, melting, childishly introspective. Her hands were shapely, and her little bare feet, arched, rosy-nailed, were like flowers on the sand. She wore the thinnest of sheer white cotton tunics, and there were flamboyant flowers in the shining dark hair that tumbled to her waist.
She greeted me with the eager artlessness of the child that she was. She was on her way to the vai puna, the spring by the beach, she said. Would I accompany her thither? And would I tell her of the women of my people in the strange islands of the Memke? They were very far away, were they not, those islands? Farther even than Tahiti? How deep beneath the sea could their women dive?
I answered these, and other questions, while we walked down the beach, and I marveled at the unconscious grace of her movements. The chief wonder of all these Marquesans is the beauty and erectness of their standing and walking postures. Their chests are broad and deep, their bosoms, even in girls of Vanquished Often's age, rounded, superb, and their limbs have an ease of motion, an animal-like litheness unknown to our clothed and dress-bound women.