CHAPTER XX ~ “THE DANDIEST BOY THAT EVER STOOD UP IN A BOAT”
Nine years had come and gone since I had last seen Nukutavake and its amiable brown-skinned people, and now as I again stepped on shore and scanned the faces of those assembled on the beach to meet me, I missed many that I had loved in the old, bright days when I was trading in the Paumotus. For Death, in the hideous shape of small-pox, had been busy, taking the young and strong and passing by the old and feeble.
It was a Sunday, and the little isle was quiet—as quiet as the ocean of shining silver on which our schooner lay becalmed, eight miles beyond the foaming surf of the barrier reef.
Teveiva, the old native pastor, was the first one to greet me, and the tears rolled down his cheeks as he spoke to me in his native Tahitian, bade me welcome, and asked me had I come to sojourn with “we of Nukutavake, for a little while”.
“Would that it were so, old friend. But I have only come on shore for a few hours, whilst the ship is becalmed—to greet old friends dear to my heart, and never forgotten since the days I lived among ye, nigh upon a half-score years ago. But, alas, it grieves me that many are gone.”
A low sob came from the people, as they pressed around their friend of bygone years, some clasping my hands and some pressing their faces to mine And so, hand in hand, and followed by the people, the old teacher and I walked slowly along the shady path of drooping palms, and came to and entered the quiet mission house, through the open windows of which came the sigh of the surf, and the faint call of sea-birds.
Some women, low-voiced and gentle, brought food, and young drinking nuts upon platters of leaf, and silently placed them before the White Man, who touched the food with his hand and drank a little of a coco-nut, and then turned to Teveiva and said:—
“O friend, I cannot eat because of the sorrow that hath come upon thee. Tell me how it befel.”
Speaking slowly, and with many tears, the old teacher told of how a ship from Tahiti had brought the dread disease to the island, and how in a little less than two months one in every three of the three hundred and ten people had died, and of the long drought that followed upon the sickness, when for a whole year the sky was as brass, and the hot sun beat down upon the land, and withered up the coco-palms and pandanus trees; and only for the night dews all that was green would have perished. And now because of the long drought men were weak, and sickening, and women and children were feint from want of food.
“It is as if God hath deserted us,” said the old man.