James Norman Hall

“ To be flying in the full splendor of bright April sunshine, knowing that all the earth was in shadow, gave me a feeling of exhilaration. For there is no sensation like that of flight, no isolation so complete as that of the airman who has above him only the blue sky, and below, a level floor of pure white cloud, stretching in an unbroken expanse toward every horizon. And so I kept my machine headed northeast, that I might regain the ground lost before I discovered the drift northwest. ”

“ Under a bright sun at midday, when the palm tops toss to the trade which paints the lagoon—in the deep passes and over the patches of sandy bottom—with ruffled sapphire and emerald, and sets the whitecaps to dancing beyond the reef, or in the calm of night, with the moon hanging low over pinnacles of basalt—when the polished surface of the lagoon is broken by the plunge and swirl of heavy fish, and native songs, rising and falling in savage cadences, float out across the water—it is a place not easily forgotten. ”

“ It is useless to attempt to depict what lay before us as we looked over the parapet. The trenches were hidden from view in a cloud of smoke and flame and dirt. The earth was like a muddy sea dashed high in spray against hidden rocks.
The men who were to lead the attack were standing rifle in hand, waiting for the sudden cessation of fire which would be the signal for them to mount the parapet. Bombers and bayonet-men alternated in series of two. The bombers wore their mediæval-looking shrapnel-proof helmets and heavy canvas grenade coats with twelve pockets sagging with bombs. ”

“ As I watched the big biplane pass, I was conscious of a feeling of loneliness. I remembered what J. B. had said that morning. There was something unpleasant in the isolation; it made us look longingly down to earth, wondering whether we shall ever feel really at home in the air. I, too, longed for the sound of human voices, and all that I heard was the roar of the motor and the swish of the wind through wires [90] and struts, sounds which have no human quality in them, and are no more companionable than the lapping of the waves to a man adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. ”

“ Next moment the bright shoals began to appear beneath us, the sunlight glinting on burnished sides as they darted this way and that by hundreds, seeking a way of escape. A run of mullet flashed downstream, saw the net, turned, and were headed back toward the sea. A series of cries went up—"Aué! Aué!"—as fifty or sixty of the beautiful silvery fish leaped the line of floats and dashed away to safety. The old headwoman, dressed in a Mother Hubbard of respectable black and a rather handsome hat, was swimming easily in three fathoms of water; nothing escaped her watchful eye. ”

“ The barricades were blown up and the fight was on. A two-hundred-piece orchestra of blacksmiths, with sledgehammers, beating kettle-drums the size of brewery vats, might have approximated, in quality and volume, the sound of the battle. The spectacular effect was quite different from that of a counter-attack across the open. Lurid flashes of light issued from the ground as though a door to the infernal regions had been thrown jarringly open. The cloud of thick smoke was shot through with red gleams. Men ran along the parapet hurling bombs down into the trench. ”

“ As the shadows gathered in the evening of his life there would be long days of reading and reflection—stretched in a steamer chair on this same veranda, while the trade hummed through the palm tops and the sea rumbled softly on the reef. At night, lying wakeful as old men do, in a hush broken only by the murmur of a lonely sea, his thoughts would wander back—a little sadly, as the thoughts of an old man must—along a hundred winding paths of memory, through scenes wild and lovely, savage, stern, and gay. ”

“ A few days before I had been watching without emotion the bombardment of a German plane. I had seen it twisting and turning through the éclatements, and had heard the shells popping faintly, with a sound like the bursting of seed-pods in the sun.
My feeling was not that of fear, exactly. It was more like despair. Every airman must [136] have known it at one time or another, a sudden overwhelming realization of the pitilessness of the forces which men let loose in war. In that moment one doesn't remember that men have loosed them. He is alone, and he sees the face of an utterly evil thing. ”

“ In fact, my only hold upon reality during that voyage was the Caleb S. Winship, and sometimes even that substantial old vessel suffered sea changes; was metamorphosed in a moment; and it was hard to believe that she was a boat built by men's hands. Often as she lay at anchor in a lagoon of dreamlike beauty I paddled out from shore in a small canoe, and, making fast under her stern, spent an afternoon watching the upward play of the reflections from the water and the blue shadows underneath, rippling out and vanishing in the light like flames of fire. ”

“ In most of the atolls the distance from beach to beach is only a few hundred yards, but the ocean side is unfrequented and solitary. On calm days when the tide begins to ebb the silence there is unearthly. The wide shore, hot and glaring in the sun, stretches away as far as the eye can reach, empty of life except for thousands of small hermit crabs moving into the shade of the palms. They snap into their shells at your approach and make fast the door as their houses fall, with a sound like the tinkling of hailstones, among heaps of broken coral. We waded along the shallows at low tide. ”

“ Distant islands, ledges of barren reef, leaped forward with an effect of magic, as though our atom of a vessel, the only sail which relieved the emptiness of the sea, had been swept in an instant to within a few yards of the surf. Great combers, green and ominous looking in the sunlight, broke at one rapidly advancing point, toppled and fell in segments, filling the inner shallows with a smother of foam. Beyond it lay the broad fringe of white, deserted beach, the narrow forest of shrub and palm, the empty lagoon, a border of misty islands on the farther side. ”

“ Through the clear water I could see every crevice and cranny in the shelving slope of coral; the mouths of gloomy caverns which undermined the reef, and swarms of fish, as strangely colored as the coral itself, passing through them, flashing across sunlit spaces, or hovering in the shadows of overhanging ledges. It was a strange world to look down upon and stranger still to see men moving about in it as though it were their natural home. Sometimes they grasped their spears as a poniard would be held for a downward blow; sometimes with the thumb forward, thrusting with an underhand movement. ”

“ It was the year of the hurricane at Motutangi. Varana's boat, commanded by a native skipper, had drifted through the group in a desultory way, touching at an island here and there to pick up a few tons of copra or a bit of shell. One can imagine the effect on a newcomer of those early days among the atolls—long sunlit days when gentle breezes filled the sails of the vessel skirting the shores of the lagoons—waters of unearthly peace and loveliness, bordered by leagues of green. ”

“ It is not easy to analyze the magic which cozens every traveler into believing that he is the first to see Tahiti with clear eyes—one feels that it is made up of nature in a mood of unearthly loveliness; of a sense of ancient and unalterable life; of a realization that strange beliefs persist under a semblance of Christianity; of the lure of a race whose confidence the white man can never fully gain. The mail steamers, the wireless, the traders, the scattering of French officials—these things are a mere play of shadows on the surface. ”

“ Off the main harbor-front thoroughfare streets lie empty to the eye for half hours at a time. Chinese merchants sit at the doorways of their shops, waiting for trade. Now and then broad pools of sunlight flow over the gayly flowered dresses of a group of native women, scarcely to be seen otherwise as they move slowly through tunnels of moist green gloom; or a small schooner, like a detail gifted with sudden mobility in a picture, will back away from shore, cross the harbor, bright with the reflections of clouds, and stand out to sea. ”

“ There is no color in the world—that I have seen—like the blue of the water off the Ahu Ahu reef; so vivid, so intense, one felt that a tumbler of it, held up to the sun, would be a mass of sapphire, or that a handkerchief dipped in it would emerge strongly dyed.
Apakura was going ashore with her mother. Standing in the narrow canoe, she directed the stowing of her luggage—a mat, a bright patchwork quilt, a box of cedar wood. Tari was awaiting the coming of the traders, for the schooner was stocked with good Tahiti rum, and the rites of welcome would take place on board. ”

“ Seen against the bright floor of the lagoon, with swarms of brilliantly colored fish scattering before them, they seemed doubtfully human, the children of some forsaken merman rather than creatures who have need of air to breathe and solid earth to stand on. If education is the suitable preparation for life, the children of the atolls have it at its best and happiest without knowing that it is education. They are skillful in the pursuits and learned in the interests which touch their lives, and one can wish them no better fortune than that they may remain in ignorance of those which do not. ”

“ Sometimes, when the new moon has set behind the Avarua peaks and thick darkness settles over the bush—when the surf murmurs almost inaudibly in a stillness broken by the plunge of a fish in the lagoon, or the grating screech of a flying-fox, quarreling with his mates in the palm tops—one is not sorry when the lights of the plantation begin to glimmer through the trees. ”

“ Each time we swung up to the crest of a swell I got a look at the surf, and the prospect was not reassuring. Once or twice, as the backwash poured off in a frothy cascade, I caught a glimpse of the coral—reddish-black, jagged and forbidding. Little by little we drew near the land until the boat lay just where the waves began to tower for the final rush; the oarsmen backed water gently—the boat steerer turned his head nervously this way and that, glancing at the reef ahead and at the rearing water behind. ”

“ They would be a strangely assorted company, Tari's ghosts: men of all the races, scholars, soldiers, sportsmen, skippers of trading vessels, pearl divers of the atolls, nurses of the Red Cross, Englishwomen of his own station in life, dark-eyed daughters of the islands, with shining hair and the beauty of sleek, wild creatures—bewitching and soulless, half bold and half afraid. Whether for good or ill, wisely or unwisely, as the case might be, no man could say that Tari had not lived ”

“ Though there is no pass, the surf at high tide breaches over the gaps between the islands. The largest island is only a mile and a half long, and none of them are more than half a mile across. Dotted about the surface of the lagoon are a number of motu—tiny islets—each with its flock of sea fowl, its clump of palms, and shining beach of coral sand. Set in a lonely stretch of the Pacific, the place is almost cut off from communication with the outside world; twice or three times in the course of a year a trading schooner calls to leave supplies and take off copra. ”

“ Week after week, month after month, the watcher on its cliffs may gaze out toward the horizon and see never a sail nor a distant trail of smoke to liven the dark-blue desert of the Pacific. The cliffs themselves are strange—the reef of an ancient atoll, upraised in some convulsion of the earth to form a ring of coral limestone—sheer precipices facing the sea, half a mile of level barren summit, and an inner wall of cliffs, overlooking the rich lowlands of the interior. ”

“ The chase of the hermit crab is tame sport, no doubt, but not entirely without interest. One evening we set out just after dark, bucket and torch in hand—not the old South Sea torch of coconut leaf, but the modern tube of galvanized iron, filled with kerosene and plugged with burlap, which acts as a wick. The high beach is best at this hour, for one's quarry is beginning to emerge from the bush for the evening dip, and those that have passed will leave spoor in the soft coral sand. ”