Elsewhere I have met Roman Catholic, Mormon, Latter-Day Saint, Presbyterian, and Anglican Church missionaries, all at work in the same field, all earnest, well-meaning men, and each convinced that he is right.
Is it any wonder, then, that after listening to them all the dazed South Sea Island native asks himself what all the pother is about, and, finding no satisfactory answer to the conundrum, turns to his tangible rum bottle?
To revert to safer topics, there is pearl shell in the Marquesas. The representative of incomparable infantry told us so while we sat on his incomparable veranda one morning, consuming large quantities of papia, rolls, honey, and coffee, each in his particular brand of pyjamas.
The information brought upon our serene lives at Tai o Hae the white man's blight of avariciousness. Was this thing possible, with shell at one thousand dollars a ton delivered at Philadelphia? Yes; he, the incomparable, had seen it through a water-glass, in anything from five to fifteen fathoms, between the islands of Hivaoa and Tahuata.
Why had it not been prospected? It was doubtful if any but he and the natives knew of its existence. Undoubtedly it was worth looking into. He made us a present of the information to do with as we willed. His cook was an old Paumotan diver, who would no doubt accompany us—Pascal!—accompany us to the island, a bare ninety miles distant. We could take samples of shell to the company in Papeete, and no doubt make arrangements—Pascal!—arrangements with them to advance working capital in return for a lien on the shell—Pascal!!!
"Monsieur." An enormous Paumotan native stood in the doorway smiling benignly.
He would accompany us. He would cook, and he would dive.
We sailed that evening, the deck being littered with green bananas, live chickens tied by the leg to bulwark stanchions, a rabbit, firewood, a stove composed of a kerosene tin half filled with earth, and—Pascal.
There was apparently nothing this extraordinary man could not do. He knew every island of the Marquesas like the palm of his hand. He could produce savoury messes from a kerosene tin, remain under water three minutes, discourse entertainingly in pidgin-English, French, German, Marquesan, and Paumotan, and secure a ship's provisions without the annoying triviality of paying for them.
"But whom do we owe for all this?" I asked him, eyeing the menagerie that surrounded us.