But the coral barriers answer another purpose. They form all the harbours of this group, including the twenty-four round about the shores of Tahiti. Curiously enough, the openings in the reefs, by which alone vessels enter to their anchorage, are invariably opposite the mouths of running streams: an advantage fully appreciated by the mariner who touches for the purpose of watering his ship.
It is said that the fresh water of the land, mixing with the salts held in solution by the sea, so acts upon the latter as to resist the formation of the coral; and hence the breaks. Here and there, these openings are sentinelled, as it were, by little fairy islets, green as emerald, and waving with palms. Strangely and beautifully diversifying the long line of breakers, no objects can strike the fancy more vividly. Pomaree II., with a taste in watering-places truly Tahitian, selected one of them as a royal retreat. We passed it on our journey.
Omitting several further adventures which befell us after leaving the party from Loohooloo, we must now hurry on to relate what happened just before reaching the place of our destination.
CHAPTER LXXII.
A DEALER IN THE CONTRABAND
It must have been at least the tenth day, reckoning from the Hegira, that we found ourselves the guests of Varvy, an old hermit of an islander who kept house by himself perhaps a couple of leagues from Taloo.
A stone’s-cast from the beach there was a fantastic rock, moss-grown and deep in a dell. It was insulated by a shallow brook, which, dividing its waters, flowed on both sides until united below. Twisting its roots round the rock, a gnarled “Aoa” spread itself overhead in a wilderness of foliage; the elastic branch-roots depending from the larger boughs insinuating themselves into every cleft, thus forming supports to the parent stem. In some places these pendulous branches, half-grown, had not yet reached the rock; swinging their loose fibrous ends in the air like whiplashes.
Varvy’s hut, a mere coop of bamboos, was perched upon a level part of the rock, the ridge-pole resting at one end in a crotch of the “Aoa,” and the other propped by a forked bough planted in a fissure.
Notwithstanding our cries as we drew near, the first hint the old hermit received of our approach was the doctor’s stepping up and touching his shoulder, as he was kneeling over on a stone cleaning fish in the brook. He leaped up, and stared at us. But with a variety of uncouth gestures, he soon made us welcome; informing us, by the same means, that he was both deaf and dumb; he then motioned us into his dwelling.
Going in, we threw ourselves upon an old mat, and peered round. The soiled bamboos and calabashes looked so uninviting that the doctor was for pushing on to Taloo that night, notwithstanding it was near sunset. But at length we concluded to stay where we were.
After a good deal of bustling outside under a decrepit shed, the old man made his appearance with our supper. In one hand he held a flickering taper, and in the other, a huge, flat calabash, scantily filled with viands. His eyes were dancing in his head, and he looked from the calabash to us, and from us to the calabash, as much as to say, “Ah, my lads, what do ye think of this, eh? Pretty good cheer, eh?” But the fish and Indian turnip being none of the best, we made but a sorry meal. While discussing it, the old man tried hard to make himself understood by signs; most of which were so excessively ludicrous that we made no doubt he was perpetrating a series of pantomimic jokes.