"The question of half-castes is an interesting one, particularly to men like me—but it is a waste of time to struggle against nature; in the end the solution is nearly always the same. Varana's children furnish the best example I have run across—you've never been to Rimarutu, I fancy; it is not often visited nowadays; probably you've never heard of Varana. And yet he was an extraordinary man, his life an almost unique study in extremes. Like everything real, the story has no beginning, unless one were able to trace back the strain that gifted the man with his exceptional temperament; as for an end, that is still working itself out on Rimarutu. It is, in fact, no story at all, but a bit of life itself—unmarked by any dominating situation, haphazard, inconclusive, grimly logical. No one can know the whole of it—-the play of motives, the decisions, the pure chance—but I worked with Varana for years and have patched his story together after a fashion. Now and then, when the mood struck him, he used to speak of himself; sometimes at night when we were working his schooner from island to island; sometimes by day, as we lay smoking under the palms of a remote atoll, while the canoes of the divers dotted the lagoon. On those occasions I had glimpses of a man not to be judged by the standards of everyday life—a man actuated by motives as simple as they were incomprehensible to those about him. His death, if he is dead— But I will speak of that in its place.
"His real name was Warner—a big, blue-eyed man, slow-spoken and a little dreamy in manner, with an immense blond mustache and a serenity nothing could disturb. I never knew him to hesitate in making a decision or to speak unless he had something to say. All decent men liked him, and the natives, who were better able than a white man to fathom his simplicity, took to him from the first. He had been miserably out of place in England—squeezed through Cambridge, which he detested, unhappily married, done out of a fortune by the defaulting brother-in-law whose last debt he paid, and divorced just before he came out here.
"It is often observed that when an Englishman's feelings are hurt he travels, and in this respect Varana was not exceptional. One day, a little more than a generation ago, he stepped off the mail boat at Papeete—a rather typical English tourist, I fancy—dressed in tropical costumes from Bond Street and accompanied by an extraordinary quantity of luggage. At the club he ran across Jackson of the Atoll Trading Company—the old man liked him from the first and they used to spend the evenings together, lingering over their glasses, talking a little in low tones. A fortnight later Varana left as quietly as he had come—outbound in one of Jackson's schooners for a cruise through the Paumotus.
"It was the year of the hurricane at Motutangi. Varana's boat, commanded by a native skipper, had drifted through the group in a desultory way, touching at an island here and there to pick up a few tons of copra or a bit of shell. One can imagine the effect on a newcomer of those early days among the atolls—long sunlit days when gentle breezes filled the sails of the vessel skirting the shores of the lagoons—waters of unearthly peace and loveliness, bordered by leagues of green. And the nights ashore, when the moon rose at the end of a path of rippling silver, and the people gathered before their thatched houses to sing.... It was not long before Varana realized that he had found his anodyne.
"At home he had been a yachtsman of sorts; by the time they reached Motutangi the brown skipper was leaving a good part of the working of the schooner to his guest. They were diving in the lagoon that year at the end of a long rahui on the shell—a sort of closed season, scrupulously respected by the natives; half a dozen schooners were anchored off the village, where every house overflowed with people from the surrounding islands, and by day their canoes blackened the water above the patches of shell.
"The hurricane gave ample warning of its approach—Varana told me as much as that. He had spent the night ashore with a trader, whose old glass rose and fell spasmodically, sinking always a little lower, until it stood at a figure which sent the trader off, white and cursing, to break open a fresh case of gin. None of the divers went out at daybreak; with the other people, they stood in little frightened groups before the houses. The older men were already beginning to hack off the tops of the stout palms in which they planned to roost. By the time Varana came off in a canoe the schooners were double anchored, the wind was shifting uneasily in sharp gusts, and a tremendous surf was thundering on the outer beach. The native skipper, like the people ashore, knew perfectly well what was coming and, like most of his kind, his spirit broke in the face of a large emergency—before the feeling that the forces of nature were about to overwhelm him. Well, I've been through one hurricane—I can't say that I blame him much! Varana found him not exactly in a funk, but in a state of passive resignation, hoping vaguely that his two anchors would let him ride it out inside. The crew was clustered on the after deck, exchanging scared whispers. Varana, who had the instinct of a deep-water sailor, took in the situation at a glance, and next moment he had taken command of the schooner.
"Without a word of protest the men reefed, got sail on her, heaved up one anchor, and cut the other cable. Varana had very little to say about the rest—how he edged out through the pass and managed to claw off just as the cyclone struck Motutangi—but afterward the story went the rounds of every group. All the other schooners in the lagoon, as well as most of the people ashore, were lost. How Varana weathered it, without piling up his vessel on any one of half a dozen atolls, is a sort of miracle.
"A week later, when he had sailed his battered schooner—the only survivor of the disaster at Motutangi—into Papeete harbor, he found himself famous by nightfall, for the native captain gave him entire credit for the achievement. Old Jackson's imagination was touched, or perhaps it was the destruction of so many rival schooners in the shell and copra trade—at any rate, he acted on impulse for once in his life, sent for Varana, and offered him a remarkably good berth with a fat screw attached. But the wanderer only smiled and shook his head—he had had a taste of the outer islands. It shakes one's faith in Providence to realize that most men die without finding the place in life for which they were designed.
"It was old Jackson who told him of Rimarutu—probably during one of their almost silent evenings at the club. It was a mistake—Jackson thought—to believe that a man could shut himself off from the world; the mood would pass in time, but if Varana wished seriously to try it, he would find no better place than Rimarutu. There was some copra to be had and a little shell in the lagoon; the people numbered about two hundred, a quiet, pleasant lot, not given to wandering from their island. Varana had salvaged a few thousand pounds from the wreck of his affairs at home; Jackson helped him pick up a schooner at a bargain and load her with what was needed; there was some difficulty about a crew, but his uncanny gift with the natives got him three men content to follow his fortunes. On the morning when he shook hands with the old man, stepped aboard his boat, and sailed out of the harbor, Varana severed the last tie with the world he had known.
"I could tell you a good deal about his life on the island—I worked with him for nearly ten years. He began by renting a bit of land—for his store and copra shed—from the chief and setting himself to learn the language. The Polynesian is a shrewd judge of character; they saw that this man was just, kindly, fearless, and to be trusted. Those who had traveled a little declared Varana a phenomenon—a white trader who respected women and never lay on his veranda in a stupor, surrounded by empty bottles. He seemed to know instinctively the best way to take these people, with whom, from the very first, he found himself on terms of a mutual understanding. They regarded him with a mixture of liking and respect, not accorded us, perhaps, as often as we are apt to think; he worked with them, he played with them, and finally took a daughter of the island as his wife—yet it was characteristic that he never permitted himself to run barefoot and that even after twenty years of friendship the native entering Varana's house took off his hat. I remember Tupuna as a woman of thirty—tall, robust, and grave, with delicate hands and masses of bright, rippling hair; the years were kind to her—even in middle life she did not lose a certain quiet charm. Make no mistake—they were happily mated, this man, turned out by what Englishmen believe the highest civilization in the world, and the daughter of an island chief whose father had been a savage and an eater of men. She was not spoiled like so many traders' wives; when they had been on the reef she walked home behind, carrying the torches and the fish—but he felt for her an affection deep as it was undemonstrative, a strong attachment, proven at the end in his own extreme and romantic way.