We have just met the Potii Ravarava here at Hao. She is going to Rutiaro within a few weeks, so I am sending your sea chest by her. Sorry I left you in that God-forsaken hole; but I was tight that evening, and pretty mad at the way you upset my plans with your marble-playing foolishness. Next morning, when I sobered up, I felt like going back for you. But we had a fair wind, and I had my cargo to think of. The price of copra is on the down grade, and I've got to get back to Papeete with mine before the bottom falls out of the market. You said once you wanted to see all you could of life in the Paumotus. Well, I guess you'll have your chance at Rutiaro. If I was you I would come back on the Potii Ravarava. She only carries twenty-seven tons cargo, so she'll probably go direct to Papeete from there. I am also sending you an empty three-gallon demijohn. Fill this with water before you leave, if you come back on the P.R. Miti, her skipper, is a good sailor, but all he knows about navigation you could write on a postage stamp. I met him once about twenty miles south of Fakahina. He was cruising around looking for Angatau, which was seventy miles to the northeast. Well, he can't miss Tahiti if he gets within a hundred miles of it, so you better take a chance and come back with him. But don't forget to carry your own supply of fresh water. Sometimes these little native boats get becalmed, and it's no joke being thirsty at sea.
Yours,
TINO.
P.S.—Miti has a big bunch of letters for you, from your friend Nordhoff. I saw the packet. It looks as though it had been traveling some. Nordhoff, he says, is in Tahiti again. I'll probably see him there and will tell him to wait for you.
Give my regards to all the marble players.
Good old Tino! He did me nothing but good turns. Late that night when the rest of the villagers had crossed the pass I pried open the lid of the chest—having lost the key—and found my belongings just as I had left them—my camera; my binoculars and charts; and, most important of all, in the bottom of the chest, wrapped in a pair of trousers, my pocketbook. I didn't pay Moy until just before the departure of the schooner, and staged the final episode at an hour when his shop was filled with loungers. I came away with his receipted bill, one hundred and twenty francs, and the consciousness of having adequately safeguarded tradition.
We left Rutiaro the following day. I did not realize until the moment of leave-taking how painful the farewells would be. As soon as they were over I went on board, crawled into the little cabin and, despite the cockroaches and copra bugs, remained there until the schooner had left the pass and was well out to sea. After our separation at Papeete, Nordhoff went on to the southwest. He wrote me from an island he called Ahu Ahu, and from there, apparently, he took passage to Rarotonga, the principal island of the Cook group. Long before the discovery of New Zealand Rarotonga was the goal of Polynesian mariners from the north and west—fearless explorers traveling in their double canoes across hundreds of leagues of ocean, guided by sun and stars, some of them arriving at their destination, many others, doubtless, perishing in search of it.
From Samoa—in the early centuries of our era—came the Karika family to reign in Rarotonga down to the present day; and Samoa is believed to have been the principal starting point of the voyagers which peopled the eastern Pacific. In the language of those old-time voyagers, tonga meant south, and they gave that name to the Friendly Islands. Farther to the west and south they came upon the Cook group—in those days, no doubt, the southernmost ends of the earth—and the high island of this group, the faint blot on the horizon which led the canoes to land, they called Rarotonga (Under the South).
Under the South
