Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (819 page)

Under the guidance of Taniera we were soon installed in what I believe to have been the best-appointed private house in Fakarava.  It stood just beyond the church in an oblong patch of cultivation.  More than three hundred sacks of soil were imported from Tahiti for the Residency garden; and this must shortly be renewed, for the earth blows away, sinks in crevices of the coral, and is sought for at last in vain.  I know not how much earth had gone to the garden of my villa; some at least, for an alley of prosperous bananas ran to the gate, and over the rest of the enclosure, which was covered with the usual clinker-like fragments of smashed coral, not only coco-palms and mikis but also fig-trees flourished, all of a delicious greenness.  Of course there was no blade of grass.  In front a picket fence divided us from the white road, the palm-fringed margin of the lagoon, and the lagoon itself, reflecting clouds by day and stars by night.  At the back, a bulwark of uncemented coral enclosed us from the narrow belt of bush and the nigh ocean beach where the seas thundered, the roar and wash of them still humming in the chambers of the house.

This itself was of one story, verandahed front and back.  It contained three rooms, three sewing-machines, three sea-chests, chairs, tables, a pair of beds, a cradle, a double-barrelled gun, a pair of enlarged coloured photographs, a pair of coloured prints after Wilkie and Mulready, and a French lithograph with the legend: ‘
Le brigade du Général Lepasset brûlant son drapeau
devant Metz
.’  Under the stilts of the house a stove was rusting, till we drew it forth and put it in commission.  Not far off was the burrow in the coral whence we supplied ourselves with brackish water.  There was live stock, besides, on the estate - cocks and hens and a brace of ill-regulated cats, whom Taniera came every morning with the sun to feed on grated cocoa-nut.  His voice was our regular réveille, ringing pleasantly about the garden: ‘Pooty - pooty - poo - poo - poo!’

Far as we were from the public offices, the nearness of the chapel made our situation what is called eligible in advertisements, and gave us a side look on some native life.  Every morning, as soon as he had fed the fowls, Taniera set the bell agoing in the small belfry; and the faithful, who were not very numerous, gathered to prayers.  I was once present: it was the Lord’s day, and seven females and eight males composed the congregation.  A woman played precentor, starting with a longish note; the catechist joined in upon the second bar; and then the faithful in a body.  Some had printed hymn-books which they followed; some of the rest filled up with ‘eh - eh - eh,’ the Paumotuan tol-de-rol.  After the hymn, we had an antiphonal prayer or two; and then Taniera rose from the front bench, where he had been sitting in his catechist’s robes, passed within the altar-rails, opened his Tahitian Bible, and began to preach from notes.  I understood one word - the name of God; but the preacher managed his voice with taste, used rare and expressive gestures, and made a strong impression of sincerity.  The plain service, the vernacular Bible, the hymn-tunes mostly on an English pattern - ‘God save the Queen,’ I was informed, a special favourite, - all, save some paper flowers upon the altar, seemed not merely but austerely Protestant.  It is thus the Catholics have met their low island proselytes half-way.

Taniera had the keys of our house; it was with him I made my bargain, if that could be called a bargain in which all was remitted to my generosity; it was he who fed the cats and poultry, he who came to call and pick a meal with us like an acknowledged friend; and we long fondly supposed he was our landlord.  This belief was not to bear the test of experience; and, as my chapter has to relate, no certainty succeeded it.

We passed some days of airless quiet and great heat; shell-gatherers were warned from the ocean beach, where sunstroke waited them from ten till four; the highest palm hung motionless, there was no voice audible but that of the sea on the far side.  At last, about four of a certain afternoon, long cat’s-paws flawed the face of the lagoon; and presently in the tree-tops there awoke the grateful bustle of the trades, and all the houses and alleys of the island were fanned out.  To more than one enchanted ship, that had lain long becalmed in view of the green shore, the wind brought deliverance; and by daylight on the morrow a schooner and two cutters lay moored in the port of Rotoava.  Not only in the outer sea, but in the lagoon itself, a certain traffic woke with the reviving breeze; and among the rest one François, a half-blood, set sail with the first light in his own half-decked cutter.  He had held before a court appointment; being, I believe, the Residency sweeper-out.  Trouble arising with the unpopular Vice-Resident, he had thrown his honours down, and fled to the far parts of the atoll to plant cabbages - or at least coco-palms.  Thence he was now driven by such need as even a Cincinnatus must acknowledge, and fared for the capital city, the seat of his late functions, to exchange half a ton of copra for necessary flour.  And here, for a while, the story leaves to tell of his voyaging.

It must tell, instead, of our house, where, toward seven at night, the catechist came suddenly in with his pleased air of being welcome; armed besides with a considerable bunch of keys.  These he proceeded to try on the sea-chests, drawing each in turn from its place against the wall.  Heads of strangers appeared in the doorway and volunteered suggestions.  All in vain.  Either they were the wrong keys or the wrong boxes, or the wrong man was trying them.  For a little Taniera fumed and fretted; then had recourse to the more summary method of the hatchet; one of the chests was broken open, and an armful of clothing, male and female, baled out and handed to the strangers on the verandah.

These were François, his wife, and their child.  About eight a.m., in the midst of the lagoon, their cutter had capsized in jibbing.  They got her righted, and though she was still full of water put the child on board.  The mainsail had been carried away, but the jib still drew her sluggishly along, and François and the woman swam astern and worked the rudder with their hands.  The cold was cruel; the fatigue, as time went on, became excessive; and in that preserve of sharks, fear hunted them.  Again and again, François, the half-breed, would have desisted and gone down; but the woman, whole blood of an amphibious race, still supported him with cheerful words.  I am reminded of a woman of Hawaii who swam with her husband, I dare not say how many miles, in a high sea, and came ashore at last with his dead body in her arms.  It was about five in the evening, after nine hours’ swimming, that François and his wife reached land at Rotoava.  The gallant fight was won, and instantly the more childish side of native character appears.  They had supped, and told and retold their story, dripping as they came; the flesh of the woman, whom Mrs. Stevenson helped to shift, was cold as stone; and François, having changed to a dry cotton shirt and trousers, passed the remainder of the evening on my floor and between open doorways, in a thorough draught.  Yet François, the son of a French father, speaks excellent French himself and seems intelligent.

It was our first idea that the catechist, true to his evangelical vocation, was clothing the naked from his superfluity.  Then it came out that François was but dealing with his own.  The clothes were his, so was the chest, so was the house.  François was in fact the landlord.  Yet you observe he had hung back on the verandah while Taniera tried his ‘prentice hand upon the locks: and even now, when his true character appeared, the only use he made of the estate was to leave the clothes of his family drying on the fence.  Taniera was still the friend of the house, still fed the poultry, still came about us on his daily visits, François, during the remainder of his stay, holding bashfully aloof.  And there was stranger matter.  Since François had lost the whole load of his cutter, the half ton of copra, an axe, bowls, knives, and clothes - since he had in a manner to begin the world again, and his necessary flour was not yet bought or paid for - I proposed to advance him what he needed on the rent.  To my enduring amazement he refused, and the reason he gave - if that can be called a reason which but darkens counsel - was that Taniera was his friend.  His friend, you observe; not his creditor.  I inquired into that, and was assured that Taniera, an exile in a strange isle, might possibly be in debt himself, but certainly was no man’s creditor.

Very early one morning we were awakened by a bustling presence in the yard, and found our camp had been surprised by a tall, lean old native lady, dressed in what were obviously widow’s weeds.  You could see at a glance she was a notable woman, a housewife, sternly practical, alive with energy, and with fine possibilities of temper.  Indeed, there was nothing native about her but the skin; and the type abounds, and is everywhere respected, nearer home.  It did us good to see her scour the grounds, examining the plants and chickens; watering, feeding, trimming them; taking angry, purpose-like possession.  When she neared the house our sympathy abated; when she came to the broken chest I wished I were elsewhere.  We had scarce a word in common; but her whole lean body spoke for her with indignant eloquence.  ‘My chest!’ it cried, with a stress on the possessive.  ‘My chest - broken open!  This is a fine state of things!’  I hastened to lay the blame where it belonged - on François and his wife - and found I had made things worse instead of better.  She repeated the names at first with incredulity, then with despair.  A while she seemed stunned, next fell to disembowelling the box, piling the goods on the floor, and visibly computing the extent of François’s ravages; and presently after she was observed in high speech with Taniera, who seemed to hang an ear like one reproved.

Here, then, by all known marks, should be my land-lady at last; here was every character of the proprietor fully developed.  Should I not approach her on the still depending question of my rent?  I carried the point to an adviser.  ‘Nonsense!’ he cried.  ‘That’s the old woman, the mother.  It doesn’t belong to her.  I believe that’s the man the house belongs to,’ and he pointed to one of the coloured photographs on the wall.  On this I gave up all desire of understanding; and when the time came for me to leave, in the judgment-hall of the archipelago, and with the awful countenance of the acting Governor, I duly paid my rent to Taniera.  He was satisfied, and so was I.  But what had he to do with it?  Mr. Donat, acting magistrate and a man of kindred blood, could throw no light upon the mystery; a plain private person, with a taste for letters, cannot be expected to do more.

CHAPTER IV - TRAITS AND SECTS IN THE PAUMOTUS

The most careless reader must have remarked a change of air since the Marquesas.  The house, crowded with effects, the bustling housewife counting her possessions, the serious, indoctrinated island pastor, the long fight for life in the lagoon: here are traits of a new world.  I read in a pamphlet (I will not give the author’s name) that the Marquesan especially resembles the Paumotuan.  I should take the two races, though so near in neighbourhood, to be extremes of Polynesian diversity.  The Marquesan is certainly the most beautiful of human races, and one of the tallest - the Paumotuan averaging a good inch shorter, and not even handsome; the Marquesan open-handed, inert, insensible to religion, childishly self-indulgent - the Paumotuan greedy, hardy, enterprising, a religious disputant, and with a trace of the ascetic character.

Yet a few years ago, and the people of the archipelago were crafty savages.  Their isles might be called sirens’ isles, not merely from the attraction they exerted on the passing mariner, but from the perils that awaited him on shore.  Even to this day, in certain outlying islands, danger lingers; and the civilized Paumotuan dreads to land and hesitates to accost his backward brother.  But, except in these, to-day the peril is a memory.  When our generation were yet in the cradle and playroom it was still a living fact.  Between 1830 and 1840, Hao, for instance, was a place of the most dangerous approach, where ships were seized and crews kidnapped.  As late as 1856, the schooner
Sarah Ann
sailed from Papeete and was seen no more.  She had women on board, and children, the captain’s wife, a nursemaid, a baby, and the two young sons of a Captain Steven on their way to the mainland for schooling.  All were supposed to have perished in a squall.  A year later, the captain of the
Julia
, coasting along the island variously called Bligh, Lagoon, and Tematangi saw armed natives follow the course of his schooner, clad in many-coloured stuffs.  Suspicion was at once aroused; the mother of the lost children was profuse of money; and one expedition having found the place deserted, and returned content with firing a few shots, she raised and herself accompanied another.  None appeared to greet or to oppose them; they roamed a while among abandoned huts and empty thickets; then formed two parties and set forth to beat, from end to end, the pandanus jungle of the island.  One man remained alone by the landing-place - Teina, a chief of Anaa, leader of the armed natives who made the strength of the expedition.  Now that his comrades were departed this way and that, on their laborious exploration, the silence fell profound; and this silence was the ruin of the islanders.  A sound of stones rattling caught the ear of Teina.  He looked, thinking to perceive a crab, and saw instead the brown hand of a human being issue from a fissure in the ground.  A shout recalled the search parties and announced their doom to the buried caitiffs.  In the cave below, sixteen were found crouching among human bones and singular and horrid curiosities.  One was a head of golden hair, supposed to be a relic of the captain’s wife; another was half of the body of a European child, sun-dried and stuck upon a stick, doubtless with some design of wizardry.

The Paumotuan is eager to be rich.  He saves, grudges, buries money, fears not work.  For a dollar each, two natives passed the hours of daylight cleaning our ship’s copper.  It was strange to see them so indefatigable and so much at ease in the water - working at times with their pipes lighted, the smoker at times submerged and only the glowing bowl above the surface; it was stranger still to think they were next congeners to the incapable Marquesan.  But the Paumotuan not only saves, grudges, and works, he steals besides; or, to be more precise, he swindles.  He will never deny a debt, he only flees his creditor.  He is always keen for an advance; so soon as he has fingered it he disappears.  He knows your ship; so soon as it nears one island, he is off to another.  You may think you know his name; he has already changed it.  Pursuit in that infinity of isles were fruitless.  The result can be given in a nutshell.  It has been actually proposed in a Government report to secure debts by taking a photograph of the debtor; and the other day in Papeete credits on the Paumotus to the amount of sixteen thousand pounds were sold for less than forty -
quatre cent mille francs pour moins de mille
francs
.  Even so, the purchase was thought hazardous; and only the man who made it and who had special opportunities could have dared to give so much.