At four in the afternoon we doubled the gaunt black point toward which we had been steering for some hours, suddenly to find the panorama of the beautiful bay of Taio-haie unfolding before us. Pursuant to the instructions in the Sailing Directory, we ran up the Jack to the fore and stood off across the entrance waiting for the pilot, without whom, so we read, there was a heavy penalty for endeavouring to enter. Then we went about and ran back past the little island at the end of the point, all without awakening a sign of life along the drowsy shore where nestled the village. After repeating this manœuvre twice more, the Commodore ordered the sheets slacked off and gave the man at the wheel his bearing for the first leg of the run in.
"Perhaps the pilot has overslept on his siesta today," he remarked dryly; "and if that's the case our anchor gun may wake him up."
We went in neatly and expeditiously. "Keep the eastern outer bluff on the starboard," read the Directions, "rounding the island off it within a cable's length. All the eastern shores of the bay are steep-to and free from danger, and the wind will always lead off." And that was about all there was to it. We let go the anchor a few minutes after five, a quarter mile off the rickety wharf, in seven fathoms. Our time from Honolulu was just over seventeen days, the quickest passage of which there was any record. Had we sailed a course to avoid the windless area in the lee of Hawaii, and then headed directly for Nukahiva it is probable that the run would have been made in the vicinity of twelve or thirteen days.
The firing of our little signal cannon might have been the setting off of a mine under the village, so electric was the effect. Dark forms sprang up from nowhere and began darting hither and thither and yon, and following the appearance of a corpulent figure in pajamas at the door of what seemed to be the official residence, the tri-colour of France went jerking up to its flag-pole. Down the front street shortly came lumbering a ponderous figure in a brass-bound helmet and white uniform, followed by a trailing sword and a half dozen natives carrying oars on their shoulders. Two other white men, also white-clad and sun-helmeted, joined the procession as it passed what appeared to be a trading store, and the three proceeded together down to the wharf and put off in a big whaleboat.
Driven by the erratic but powerful strokes of the big natives, the boat was quickly alongside the yacht, and the official-looking gentleman came puffing up the ladder which had been hastily lowered for him. He was Brigadier Bouillard, the Harbour Master, Warden of the Prison and Chief of Police, he announced between gasps in broken English, and the other gentlemen following him over the rail were, respectively, Mr. Cramer, a German trader, and Mr. McGrath, a Canadian trader. Of the latter, one of the most interesting characters we met in the course of our whole cruise, we were destined to see much during our stay in Nukahiva.
"By the way," Monsieur le Capitaine, "where's your pilot?" asked the Commodore after the large official had examined our papers and admitted the yacht to practique. "Hasn't he overslept this afternoon?"
"Zee pilate! Mon Dieu, he ees no"—And at this point, with wild rollings of the eyes and swift gestures of uncertain import, the Brigadier relapsed into French so voluble and excited as to prove quite unintelligible to our untrained ears.
"The Brigadier," explained the blond Cramer in his exact Teutonic English, as the excited Frenchman paused for breath, "is trying to tell you, in effect, that the last pilot but one was killed and eaten by relatives of a trading schooner's crew who were drowned when that boat was piled up on the beach because the pilot had taken too much absinthe and mistook a firefly on the bowsprit for the light on the wharf. A similar fate also overtook his successor, apparently for no other reason than that the office had become an unpopular one with the natives. Since then," he added, "the government has been unable to find any one willing to accept the position under any inducements."
"Hardly to be wondered at," mused the Commodore. "But, I say, can any of you gentlemen tell me if this—er—antipathy of the Marquesan natives toward pilots extends to skippers who bring in their own ships? It's a little late for working out of the harbour before dark but the wind's fair most of the way and, anyhow, I'd rather be drowned than eaten."
The natives had always respected visiting yachts, they asseverated earnestly, and—as we learned later—truthfully. The Commodore took courage on hearing this and decided to chance it for a day or two. It was not until our arrival in Tahiti, a fortnight later, that we learned that perhaps the forbearance of the natives in the matter of visiting yachts may have been partly due to the fact that, previously to Lurline's coming, only three craft of that class had ever been to the Marquesas.