We watched from the thatched roofed veranda of McGrath's quarters one dewy-fresh morning when the whistling Trade had whipped up a more than usually stiff sea outside, the course of Mareu's canoe where, with Claribel as a passenger, she was shooting the breakers as they came booming in across the reef. Suddenly the even line of the horizon was blotted out by the loom of a roller of huge bulk and weight—"the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son," as the sailors call it when they don't use a stronger term.
"She'll hardly try that one," muttered McGrath decisively; "it's big enough to founder a war canoe." And then, as the helio flashes from the blade of a swiftly plied paddle told him his surmise was wrong, "Good God, there she goes!"
The canoe gathered momentum, hung for a few moments on the back of the mounting comber, and then "caught on" and commenced to race. Slowly the wave gathered itself together and, as the water shallowed above the edge of the reef, curled over and broke with a roar that rattled the glasses on the arms of our chairs. For an instant nothing was visible but foam and spray and tossing waters; then, clinging tenaciously to the comber's flying mane—as a panther, teeth in neck and safe from the animal's horns, rides the stag he has tackled—appeared the little canoe. On it darted like the flash of a sunbeam, a smoke of spray rising from its bows and the floundering out-rigger trailing like a broken wing. Twice or thrice, as the tossing waters gave way beneath the prow and the slender craft seemed on the point of "somersaulting" over the breaker's brink, there came the flash of a steadying paddle and the equilibrium was restored. Now the roughest of the ride was over and a swift dash of a hundred yards remained before still water was reached. Claribel, game but chastened, still lay low in an instinctive endeavour to keep the centre of gravity down near the keel where it belonged; but Mareu, mad with the ecstasy of swift motion, leapt up to a hair-poised balance and, swathed in sheets of flying spray, finished the run after the fashion of that other Venus who was born of the sea-foam where the breakers travailed on the Cyprean coast.
I saw the Commodore lower his glass with a gesture of relief where he had watched with the Mater from the veranda of the Queen's "palace," but McGrath was only smiling.
"If there was a reef and a surf hedging in the jaws of hell, that girl would try and shoot the passage with never a thought for what she was going into beyond," he said evenly as he watched her beach the canoe and help Claribel to alight.
Absorbed in his thoughts, but still with his eye on the girl, McGrath poured himself another glass of absinthe. Disdaining the aid of a couple of her boat-pullers, she dumped the water from the canoe and hauled it up to its shelter of thatch above high-tide mark; then, like a spaniel that has finished its swim, she gave herself a vigorous shake, so that her wealth of glistening blue-black hair came tumbling down and swathed her spray-wet body to the knees.
"And by God!—" McGrath gave vocal expression to the thoughts that were in his eyes—"with Mareu at the paddle I'd run the jaws of hell myself!"
I had no inkling at the time of the struggle that was going on in the man's heart, but later events, coupled with a recollection of those sudden passionate words, brought me to something of an understanding.
On the last day of our visit to Hatiheu the Queen gave a great feast to all of her subjects, the members of our party being the guests of honour. The food consisted of the usual run of Marquesan delicacies, but the piece de resistance was the great bull secured on the wild cattle hunt which McGrath finally succeeded in arranging at the last moment. It was cooked whole in a huge underground oven lined with stones, from which it was drawn in a condition to suit the taste of an epicure. Like the Mexican barbecue, this method of cooking results in meat that is delicious enough to counteract the dis-appetizing effects of the disgusting methods of handling it. McGrath kept a careful eye on the toddy calabashes, so that the feast, as Marquesan feasts go, was a very prim and proper affair. Claribel, who was in splendid voice, sang several English and Hawaiian songs, and finally, the Marseillaise, from the "palace" veranda. The latter, with which many of the natives appeared to be familiar, was received with tumultuous applause.
At the Queen's command a bevy of very comely misses from the mission school started a himine or hymn, to the tune of a couple of tom-toms and a concertina. Others joined in, and by imperceptible degrees the air was changed until, almost before we knew what had happened, it had become a rollicking hula. The frantic protests of the Mother Superior passed unnoticed in the excitement, and not until that outraged individual had seized one of the recalcitrants (who, yielding to the delirious abandon of the seductive air, had begun to dance), and led her off by the ear was she able to re-establish her authority. The indignant Mareu, who had no love for the missionaries and who said she was just getting in a mood to dance herself, promptly declared in favour of bringing the spirited little singers back by force and letting the festivities go on; but the diplomatic McGrath, scenting "civil war" in the kingdom of Hatiheu, suggested that, as we all were to start at daybreak for the long ride back to Taio-haie, it might be well to turn in and get a few hours' sleep. The Queen continued obdurate and would probably have carried her point had not a heavy squall come roaring in from the ocean and driven the whole company to shelter.