Within, there were seats with kneeling-planks, hewed out of hard wood and still bearing the marks of the adze. Upon them the congregation soon assembled, the women on one side, the men on the other. The women wore hats, native weaves in semi-sailor style, decorated with Chinese silk shawls or bright-colored handkerchiefs. All were barefooted except the pale and sickly daughters of Baufré, who wore clumsy and painful shoes. Many Daughters, the little, lovely leper, came with Flower, of the red-gold hair, the Weaver of Mats, who had her names tattooed on her arm. They dipped in the font and genuflected, then bowed in prayer.
Many familiar faces I recognized. Ah Yu, the Chinaman who owned the little store beyond the banian-tree and had murder upon his soul; Lam Kai Oo, my erstwhile landlord; Flag, the gendarme; Water, in all the glory of European trousers; Kake, with my small namesake on her arm. The old women were tattooed on the ears and neck in scrolls, and their lips were marked in faint stripes. The old men, their eyes ringed with tattooing, wore earrings and necklaces of whale's teeth.
The church was painted white inside, with frescoes and dados of gaudy hues, and windows of brilliantly colored glass. The altar, as also the statues of Joseph and Mary, had a reredos handsomely carved. Outside the railing was a charming Child in the Manger, lying on real straw, surrounded by the Virgin, Joseph, the Magi, the shepherds, and the kings, all in bright-hued robes, and pleasant-looking cows and asses with red eyes and green tails.
The singing began before the priest came from the sacristy. The men sang alone and the women followed, in an alternating chant that at times rose into a wail and again had the nasal sound of a bag-pipe. The Catholic chants sung thus in Marquesan took on a wild, barbaric rhythm that thrilled the blood and made the hair tingle on the scalp.
Bishop David le Cadre appeared in elegant vestments, his eyes grave above a foot-long beard, and the mass began. The acolyte was very agile in a short red cassock, below which his naked legs, and bare feet showed. The people responded often through the mass, rising, sitting down, and kneeling obediently. Baufré sat on a chair in the vestibule and added accounts.
Ah Kee Au was the sole communicant at the rail. No cloth was spread, but the bell announced the mystery of transubstantiation, and all bowed their heads while Ah Kee Au reverently offered his communion to the welfare of Napoleon, his grandson who had accidentally shot himself.
The service over, the people poured from the church into the brilliant sunshine of the road, and Ah Kee Au said to me, “You savee thlat communio' blead b'long my place. My son makee for pliest.” Lam Kai Oo, pressing forward, offered the communicant a draught of fiery rum he had obtained by the governor's permission. He had been told that to give a glass of water to a communicant, who must of course have fasted and abstained from any liquid since midnight according to the law of the Church, was a holy act which brought the giver a blessing, and so the subtle Chinese thought to make his blessing greater by offering a drink better than water.
Ah Kee Au drank with fervor. “My makee holee thliss morn',” he said gladly. “Makee Napoleon more happy.” Sincerity is not a matter of broken English or a drink of rum; the poor old grandfather of the Little Corporal's namesake believed earnestly that Napoleon would improve by his sacramental offering. He, like most Marquesans, took the white man's religion with little understanding. It is new magic to them, a comfort, an occupation, and an entertainment. But who knows the human heart, or understands the soul?
That afternoon while Neo and I lay on my paepae awaiting the favoring wind which should carry him back to his own isle, my neighbors gathered from far and near to lounge the sunny hours away in conversation. Squatted on the mats, they engaged in serious discussion of the puzzles of religion, appealing to me often to settle vexing questions which they had long wearied of asking their better-informed instructors in religious mysteries.
Their native tongue has no word for religion. Bishop Dordillon had been obliged to translate it, “Te mea e hakatika me te mea e hana mea koaha toitoi i te Etua” which might be rendered, “Belief in the works and love of a just God.” Etua, often spelled Atua, was the name of divinity among all Maori peoples, but religion was so associated with natural things, the phenomena of nature, of living things, and of the heavens and sea, that it was part of daily life and needed no word to distinguish it.