Are cold as the fog this morning,
Then will the heart of Tamea grow heavy.
Then will she weep for a sight of Riva.
Then will she yearn for love and pleasure,
For dancing and feasting; for the water
White on the reef where the fishermen stand . . .”
“I must shake her out of that mood,” Larrieau muttered, and strode aft to the wheel. The Tahitian helmsman gave way to him and as the master put the helm down and the schooner came sharply up into the wind and hung there shivering her canvas until it cracked like pistol shots, Tamea rose briskly from her hammock in the belly of the jib and stood poised on the bowsprit, with one hand clasping the jib to steady her. The suddenness with which she had been disturbed and the air of regal hauteur she assumed as she faced aft for an explanation from the Tahitian helmsman, who had now resumed the wheel and was easing the Moorea away on her course once more, brought a bellow of Brobdingnagian laughter from Larrieau.
Tamea came aft with stately tread, pausing at the forward end of the deck-house. “So it was you, great, wicked Frenchman,” she cried in a Polynesian dialect. “Truly, my father forgets that he is but a wandering trader, while I am Tamea, Queen of Riva!” Simulating a royal fury she was far from feeling, Tamea grasped a bucket attached to a rope, dropped it overboard, drew it back filled with water and, poising it in position to hurl its contents, advanced to the assault.
“Tiens!” Gaston Larrieau chuckled. “I shall never succeed in making a Christian of you. It is written that even a queen shall honor her father and mother? nevertheless you, my own child, would dishonor me with sea water!” As she threatened him laughingly, he leaped for the opposite corner of the deck-house, and she saw that it was his humor to invite the deluge. Wherefore, with the perversity of her sex and royal blood, she deluged the helmsman, who stood grinning at her.
“Your eye belongs on the lubber’s mark, on the sails, on the horizon—anywhere but on me, Kahanaha,” she admonished the amazed fellow. And then, while Gaston Larrieau, momentarily off guard, stood roaring great gales of laughter at the discomfited Kahanaha, Queen Tamea of Riva dashed into his face fully a quart of water remaining in the bucket. She smiled upon Larrieau adorably.