Faery Lands of the South Seas

by James Norman Hall; Charles Nordhoff

A moment of silence followed. Then came the answer with the odd deliberation of utterance which I knew meant Tahiti rum:

"You can stay there and play marbles till hell freezes over! I'm through with you!"

What had happened, as nearly as I could make out afterward, was this: my box of marbles which I had brought ashore for the amusement of the children, interested the grown-ups as well, particularly the hazard of stakes in the games I had shown them. Paumotuans have a good deal of Scotch acquisitiveness in their make-up. They coveted those marbles—they were really worth coveting—and it was not long until play became general, a family affair, the experts in one being pitted against those in another, regardless of age or sex. Tino's threats and entreaties had been to no purpose. All work came to an end, and the only copra which got aboard the Winship was Moy Ling's five tons, carried out by the sailors themselves. Evidently Puarei, the chief, had been one of the most enthusiastic players. He was not a man to be bulldozed or browbeaten. He had great dignity and force of character, for all his boyish delight in simple amusements. What right had Tino to say that he should not play marbles on his own island? He gave me to understand, by means of gestures, intonation, and a mixture of French and Paumotuan, that this was what the supercargo had done. At last, apparently, Tino had sent Oro on an unsuccessful search for me. He thought, I suppose, that, having been the cause of the marble-playing mania, I might be able and willing to check it. Balked there, he went on board in a fit of violent temper and had not been seen again, although his voice was heard for an hour thereafter. Of a sudden anchor was weighed and I was left, as he assured me, to play marbles with the inhabitants of Rutiaro for an impossibly long time.

Most of these details I gathered afterward. At the moment I guessed just enough of the truth not to be wholly mystified. The watery sputtering of the Winship's twenty-five horse-power engine grew faint. Then, with a ghostly gleam of her mainsail in the starlight, she was gong. I was thinking, "By Jove! I wouldn't have missed this experience for all the copra in the Cloud of Islands!" I was glad that there were still adventures of that sort to be had in a humdrum world. It was so absurd, so fantastically unreal as to fit nothing but reality. And the event of it was exactly what I had wanted all the time without knowing it. There was no reason why I shouldn't stop at Rutiaro. To be sure, I was shortly to have met my friend Nordhoff at Papeete, but our rendezvous was planned to be broken. We were wandering in the South Pacific as opportunity and inclination should direct, which, I take it, is the only way to wander.

For a few moments I was so deeply occupied with my own thoughts that I was not conscious of what was taking place around me. All the village was gathered there, watching the departing schooner. As she vanished a loud murmur ran through the crowd, like a sough of wind through trees—a long-drawn-out Polynesian, "Aué!" indicative of astonishment, indignation, pity. Paumotuan sympathies are large, and I had been the victim of treachery, they thought, and was silently grieving at the prospect of a long exile. They gathered around, patting me on the back in their odd way, expressing their condolences as best they could, but I soon relieved their minds, on that score. Then Huirai, the constable with the cigarette-card insignia, pushed his way through with the first show of authority I had seen him make.

"I been Frisco," he said, with an odd accent on the last syllable. He had made the journey once as a stoker on one of the mail boats. Then he added, "You go to hell, me," his eyes shining with pride that he could be of service as a reminder of home to an exiled American. He was about to take charge of me, in view of his knowledge of English, but the chief waved him away with a gesture of authority. I was to be his guest, he said, at any rate for the present. He began his duties as host by entertaining me at dinner at Moy Ling's store. I was a little surprised that we did not go to his house for the meal until I remembered that the Chinaman had received the only consignment of exotic food left by the Winship. Puarei ordered the feast with the discrimination of a gourmet and the generosity of a sailor on shore leave for the first time in months. We had smoked herring for hors-d'oeuvre, followed by soup, curried chicken and rice, edible birds' nests flavored with crab meat, from China, and white bread. For dessert we had small Chinese pears preserved in vinegar, which we ate out of the tin—"Woman Brand Pears," the label said. There was a colored picture on it of a white woman, in old-fashioned puffed sleeves and a long skirt, seated in a garden, while a Chinaman served her deferentially with pears out of the same kind of a container. Underneath was printed in English: "These pears will be found highly stimulating. We respectfully submit them to our customers." That was the first evidence I had seen of China's bid for export trade in tinned fruit. "Stimulating" may not have been just the word, but I liked the touch of Chinese courtesy which followed it. It didn't seem out of place, even coming from a canning factory.

Puarei gave all his attention to his food, and consumed an enormous quantity. My own appetite was a healthy one, but I had not his capacity of stomach; furthermore, he ate with his fingers, while I was handicapped from the first with a two-prong fork and a small tin spoon. I believe they were the only implements of the sort on the island, for the village had been searched for them before they were found. It was another evidence to me of the unfrequented nature of Rutiaro, and of its slender contact, even with the world of Papeete traders. At most of the islands we had visited, knives and forks were common, although rarely used except in the presence of strangers. The onlookers at the feast—about half the village, I should say—watched with interest my efforts to balance mouthfuls of rice on a two-prong fork. I could see that they regarded it as a ridiculous proceeding. They must have thought Americans a strange folk, checking appetite and worrying digestion with such doubtful aids. Finally I decided to follow the chief's example and set to with my fingers. They laughed at that, and Puarei looked up from his third plate of rice and chicken to nod approval. It was a strange meal, reminding me of stories I had read as a boy, of Louis XV dining in public at Versailles, with a roomful of visitors from foreign courts looking on; whispering behind fans and lace cuffs; exchanging awestruck glances at the splendor of the service, the richness of the food, and the sight of majesty fulfilling a need common to all humankind. There was no whispering among the crowd at the Chinaman's shop, no awestruck glances other than Moy Ling's, at the majesty of Puarei's appetite. I felt sorry for him as he trotted back and forth from his outdoor kitchen, bringing in more food, thinking of his depleted stock, smiling with an expression of wan and worried amiability. Louis XV would have given something, I'll venture, for that old Paumotuan chief's zest for food, for the kingly weight of bone and muscle which demanded such a store of nourishment. He pushed back his chair at length, with a sign of satisfaction, and a half-caste girl of seventeen or eighteen removed the empty dishes.

Paumotuan hospitality is an easy, gracious thing, imposing obligations on neither host nor guest. Dinner over, I told Puarei that I wanted to take a walk, and he believed me. I was free at once, and I knew that he would not be worrying meanwhile about my entertainment. I would not be searched for presently, and pounced upon with the dreaded: "See here! I'm afraid you are not having a good time," of the uneasy host. I was introduced to no one, dragged nowhere to see anything, free from the necessity of being amused. I might do as I liked—rare and glorious privilege—and I went outside, grateful for it, and for the cloak of darkness which enabled me to move about unobserved. It lifted here and there in the glow of supper fires, or a streak of yellow lamplight from an open doorway. I saw family groups gathered around their meals of fish and coconuts, heard the loud intake of breath as they sucked the miti sauce from their fingers. Dogs were splashing about in the shallows of the lagoon, seeking their own supper of fish. They are a strange breed, the dogs of the atolls, like no other that I have ever seen, a mixture of all breeds one would think, a weird blending of good blood and bad. The peculiar environment and the strange diet have altered them so that they hardly seem dogs at all, but, rather, semiamphibious animals, more at home in the sea than on land. They are gentle-mannered with their masters and with strangers, but fierce fighters among themselves. I sat down behind a clump of bushes, concealed from the light of one of the smoldering supper fires, and watched a group of Rutiaroan dogs in their search for food. They had developed a sort of team work in the business, leaped toward the shore all together with a porpoise-like curving of their bodies, and were as quick as a flock of terns to see and to seize their prey.

Returning from my walk, I found the village street deserted and all of the people assembled back of Moy Ling's shop. He was mixing bread at a table while one of the sons of his strange family piled fresh fuel on the fire under a long brick oven. It was a great event, the bread making, after the long months of dearth, and of interest to everyone. Mats were spread within the circle of the firelight. Puarei was there, with his wife—a mountain of a woman—seated at his side. She was dressed in a red-calico wrapper, and her long black hair fell in a pool of shadow on the mat behind her. She was a fit wife for a chief, in size, in energy, in the fire and spirit living in the huge bulk of flesh. Her laughter came in a clear stream which it was a delight to hear. There was no undertone of foreboding or bitter remembrance, and the flow of it, as light-hearted as a child's, heightened the merrymaking mood of the others. There was a babble of talk, bursts of song, impromptu dancing to the accompaniment of an accordion and the clapping of hands. As I looked on I was minded of an account I had read of the Paumotuans in which they were described as "a dour people, silent, brooding, and religious." Religious some of them assuredly are, despite a good deal of evidence to the contrary, and they are often silent in the dreamy way of remote island people whose moods are drawn from the sea, whose minds lie fallow to the peace and the beauty of it. But "dour and brooding" is very far from the truth.

I took a place among them as quietly as possible, for I knew by repeated experience how curious they are about strangers, and first meetings were usually embarrassing. Without long training as a freak with a circus, it would try any man's courage to sit for an hour among a group of Paumotuans while he was being discussed item by item. There is nothing consciously brutal or callous in the manner of it, but, rather an unreflecting frankness like that of children in the presence of something strange to their experience. I knew little of the language, although I caught a word here and there which indicated the trend of the comment. It was not general, fortunately, but confined to those on either side of me. Two old grandmothers started a speculation as to whether or not I had any children, and from this a discussion rose as to which of the girls of Rutiaro would be best suited as a wife for me. I was growing desperate when Chance, the godfather of all wanderers, intervened again in my favor.