(Here I paused and looked at the empty coffeepot. “Guess I’d better make some more,” I said to Templeton Crocker. When I got back with the coffee I asked, “Are you tired of listening?” “Lord, no!” said Crocker. “And I hope you’re not tired of talking.” “I’m never tired of talking,” I said, and went on.)
******
I was rather glad to be away from the France for a while. The sociability on board was getting on my nerves. I had already learned that their dialect was akin to Polynesian and that the word tabu was feared and respected. But it wasn’t at all like the German verboten. We didn’t use tabu properly or understand it properly. A thing could be tabu one minute, I discovered, and not tabu the next. When I found standing room only in my cabin, everything in it being pulled up or pulled down by curious island fingers, I would smile mildly and say, “Tabu, tabu!” It wouldn’t do to lose patience and push them out. They would be tabu-ed out of the main cabin, but we only had to wait a little before a head, then an arm, then a leg would appear slyly in the companionway. Then they would all ooze in again. We had talked it over among ourselves and had decided that they were Polynesians, kind and courteous to friends; but an uncouth word might rouse their tempers to a fury.
We started on our little stroll to the Lake. At Hamlin’s suggestion I put on a pair of heavy army shoes with stout brass screws in soles and heels—seemed rather a silly precaution. Buia was guiding us and we had a few carriers for our light packs. A tin of sardines and two ship’s biscuits would be enough for each of us, in case of famine. My pack included a light change of clothes and toilet necessities. Also we had a bundle of tribute-gifts for Tahua and Taupangi. Hamlin had been foresighted enough to include tea, butter, sugar, salt, pepper and a benzine tin to make tea in. Otherwise we expected to live off the country.
Our march began with a climb up 400 feet of cliff, up a sort of ladder trail which generations had scooped out with shells. The coral stone seemed to be so many little daggers, slicing at me until my hands and knees began to bleed. Once on the summit, there were slopes of coral; everything on the island was coral, except thin patches of earth that had caught on the surface. I think that the people got what they ate by moving from patch to patch and picking whatever grew there. We found a grove of pawpaws. The carriers were eating the fruit green, so I tried a paw. They were not bad. Green pawpaws are full of papain, with an action similar to that of pepsin.... Walking along, nibbling, I began to feel that the difficulties of the trip had been overrated. Then beyond the grove I looked across the bleakness of the land from which a healthy people had hacked their bare living through ages of struggle. Over the trail in front of us was a mass of briary vines. Must we go through that? Buia led the way.
I wore a helmet and was sorry, for the rest of the way we had to walk at a crouch through a tunnel of close-woven twigs. Vines pulled off my helmet, tripped me up, flung me about. Two good men with machetes could have cleared this trail; but there were no machetes in this land of little iron. There was always coral underfoot, cutting with thousands of minute edges. Beyond the vines trees were growing out of solid coral; the forest was so dense that we were in twilight, all the way to the Lake. Perspiration oozed out of us, rain oozed in, wetting us through. Yet we were so thirsty that we must stop every half-mile or so to swig from our water-bottles. A cigarette would have helped, but they were saturated by misty rain the instant they came out of the box.
The barefoot carriers didn’t seem to mind the jagged stuff; they would step daintily around a bristling lump which could have opened an artery. Now I knew why Rennellese legs were always scarred up to the knee. The gods of Rennell Island had thrown up another barrier against strangers. When we approached an especially bad lump Buia would point it out in time for me to balance myself on my cane to avoid a fall that might have scraped me to death.
Maybe you have scared your children to sleep by telling of obstacles, natural and supernatural, which the hero must overcome in his climb to the ogre’s castle. On that walk to the Lake fissures would appear in the rock, spanned by rain-slippery, mossy logs. Buia would stand on the slimy thing, agile as a monkey, and pleasantly help us across the void. I wore two pairs of woolen stockings when I started out; now they hung in shreds against my bleeding calves. At the first step on a log I saw that the thick leather of my shoes was torn as if it had been scraped across yards of barbed wire. Now I knew why Hamlin had thought that I couldn’t finish this little tour. By the time we reached the muddy shores of the Lake my dreadnaught shoes had about gone back on me, and the brass-studded soles were flopping about like broken wings.
On a knoll some fifty yards from the Lake we came upon another of those queer Rennell houses, practically all roof with eaves a couple of feet from the ground. There were no doors or windows, so you got in by crawling under the eaves. There was nothing inside but a great pile of coconuts. We were told not to touch them because they were extra tabu. Coconuts were very scarce. Hog-dirty, dog-tired, White and Hamlin and I tumbled down and panted, quite willing to die among the coconuts, if only they let us alone.
Somebody was crawling in after us. It was Buia with a couple of handsome natives. Buia said that we had better hurry up, as the Big Masters, Tahua and Taupangi, were waiting to receive us. So we were up again, mucking our way through a mile of lakeside and up to a so-called village. There were shackly palm-leaf canopies on crooked poles—where people slept, perhaps. There were caverns in the coral over yonder, which might serve as apartments. We came to another Rennell house, slightly larger than the one we had been in. In a palace like this there is no question of Majesty having obeisance paid it or of a court officer instructing one how to bow and kneel. You crawl in on all fours, and on all fours you greet the reigning sovereign. Taupangi, Lord of the Lake, sat in state on a pile of native mats, and was properly dressed for the religious ceremonies. Around his waist he wore a wide tapa and a fancifully woven mat. His hair was in a knot at the back of his head and he was smeared all over with sacred yellow turmeric. He was still young, and about the biggest man I saw on Rennell Island, with shoulders like an ox’s yoke and a wonderfully proportioned body. All of the Big Masters that I saw were handsome men, none of them running to fat as Polynesians do in middle age.