Charles Nordhoff

“ Outside the pass, when the Tara dipped her nose into the long Pacific swell, I lay alone on the after deck, gazing back at the line of palm-tops that was Iriatai, fast disappearing beyond the slope of the world. I thought of Schmidt, sleeping forever under a wooden cross on the deserted islet; of the woman in the shallow coral grave beside him, the half-savage girl he had stolen from her home in the far-off Carolines—Raita, who had been my friend, and whose hand, at the last, had ended his strange life. ”

“ The Raiatea barrier-reef, about a mile offshore, is no more than a low dyke of coral, half awash and breaking the landward run of the swell. By night, when the torches flicker and flare, and mighty combers, bursting on the outer edge, come foaming waist-deep across the jagged rock, the reef is an eerie place, not without dangers of its own. Under cover of darkness, strange monsters have been known to crawl up from the depths on the seaward side—the huge decapods on which the sperm whale feeds, and nameless creatures of which the natives speak with whispered dread. ”

“ It was then that I began to realize the wonderful seaworthiness of the Polynesian canoe—light, sharp, and high-sided, balanced by its outrigger of hibiscus wood, buoyant as cork. In riding such a sea there were sudden fierce strains on outrigger and outrigger-poles—strains which would have snapped the tough wood in an instant, save for its strong and flexible cinnet-lashings. Each time a sea came rearing high above us the bow tossed up to meet the slope of broken water—rose up and up, surmounted the wave, and plunged into the seething trough beyond. ”

“ Knowing that the least splash would bring Kwala instantly to the side, my uncle lowered me little by little into the lagoon, until I lay motionless in the black water and the end of the cord fell into my outstretched hand. I undid the knot, heard Uncle Harry's faintly breathed "Good luck!" and dove without a sound. It was not yet fully dark and I feared that the black man's eyes might discern my head in the reflections of the sunset. Thirty yards nearer the shore I rose to the surface and expelled the breath gently from my lungs. All was quiet aboard the Tara. ”

“ I am not accustomed to being so long in the water—my bones are chilled! I will open the shell and you can try your hand as I have done. It is strange down there, and very beautiful, with the coral colored like flowers and the great fish passing close at hand. At first I was a little afraid. Do not let yourself grow discouraged; the shell is hard to see and harder still to wrench off until you learn the trick. Remember that the old divers never look upward—to gaze into the blue water overhead gives one a horror of the depth! ”

“ Then we walked slowly, bending to scan each weedy crevice and hole. Sometimes a lobster darted like a flash from his refuge and was gone; sometimes the torchlight reflected from a pair of stalk-eyes betrayed our quarry in time for us to press a foot down on the lobster's back, seize him warily from behind, and toss him into the gaping sack. In an hour we had more than we could use.
The stars were shining and there was only the faintest glimmer of dawn, when we dragged our canoe over the reef and shot out seaward through the breakers. ”

“ Each frothing comber seemed to rush over the land more fiercely than the last; the wind came in gusts that bent the palms like reeds. With a sound audible above the uproar of the hurricane, a palm-bole snapped, and its top, with two human beings clinging among the fronds, sped off to vanish in the wrack. Turia's was the last to withstand the wind; she watched the others go,—men, women, and babies at their mothers' breasts,—and finally a faint, splitting report close by told her that von Tesmar's palm had given way. ”

“ We walked abreast in a line that reached from lagoon to sea, each man bearing in his left hand a torch of dry bamboo. At times, a cry from the seaward man caused us to brace ourselves for the big sea he had seen rearing in the torchlight. Then with a roar and a crash the wave would break, sending a wall of white water across the barrier. Sometimes a shark came thrashing across with the wave, to be speared before he could reach the deep water of the lagoon. Sometimes a series of shouts went up as a great silver cavally swept by us so fast that man after man missed his thrust. ”

“ I myself will show them where there is shell in seven fathoms of water—not so much as where we dive, but a good place to begin. Let them beware of the clefts and crevices where an eel might lurk, and avoid the dark caverns in the coral, for it is in such places that the tonu lies in wait. There seems little to fear in Iriatai, but one is never sure. As for pearls, watch always for the great lone oysters crusted with coral and misshapen with old age—parau tahito, we call them, and every diver knows that they contain the finest pearls. ”

“ Taura was too old to run as we did, and by this time the chief was a good half-mile behind. We had no weapons, and when I saw the angry brute, foam dripping from his jaws as he faced the dogs with his back to a great tree-trunk, I wondered what we were to do, now that we had come up with him. But Marama did not share my hesitation.
"Take care!" he warned me—unnecessarily, I thought. "He is a bad pig! If he runs at you, jump into a tree!"
He took a clasp knife from the tuck of his pareu, cut a limb of hibiscus, and peeled off a length of the tough bark—the strongest of natural cord. ”

“ Marama worked his way along the gunwale of the swamped canoe and took hold beside me, on the forward outrigger pole. The buoyant wood supported our bodies in the water, and our weight at the forward end held the long hull bow-on. The clouds were breaking to the west; the squall was passing suddenly as it had come. The ocean was calming rapidly, steep breaking seas giving place to a long swell, though for the time being there could be no thought of baling the canoe. ”

“ THE CAVE OF THE SHARK GOD
I went on deck that night and lay alone in the warm darkness, building castles in Spain. Every lad has dreamed of all that he would do for his parents when he had gone out into the world and made his fortune, and now my dreams seemed to have come true at last. I thought of my mother, and the things I might do to brighten the dullness of her life; of Marion, and how my good fortune would send her to the Eastern school she longed for; of my father, who had dreamed for years of improving and restocking the ranch. ”

“ The handling of these powerful fish required all our skill, and Marama, being more experienced than I, usually took the stern on trolling-expeditions. Making the line fast to the outrigger-pole which crossed the canoe behind his seat, he gave the word, and we began to paddle our hardest, following the edge of the shoal. As the sun rose, one could look down and see the changing colors of the coral—every fold and crevice clearly visible ten fathoms beneath us. ”

“ I climbed to a perch in the shrouds and lingered there as we coasted the western end of Rangiroa; the night-breeze blowing off the land brought to my nostrils a faint sweet perfume, the odor of pandanus blossoms. The line of palms, growing on the low ring of land, stood out sharply in the moonlight, and at times, when we passed a region of sparser vegetation, I had glimpses of the great lagoon beyond, silvered by the moon and stretching away to the horizon without land in sight. ”

“ Hour after hour the searchers struggled through the dense green bush, scratched by thorns, streaming with perspiration, stumbling over the sharp coral underfoot. It was a hot still day, and the jungle was lifeless and strangely quiet. No leaf stirred, no bird sang, and the drooping fronds of palms hung motionless overhead. Nothing moved anywhere saving the small white sea-birds which circled eerily, high above the tree-tops. The oppression of the bush cooled the skipper's anger and lowered the spirits of the searching-party ”

“ Taura had sent word to the small Paumotan settlements scattered around the island, and for a week past the divers had been drifting in to Faatemu, traveling by cutter or sailing-canoe with their women, their children, and their household goods. My uncle went to their camp to select his men, and soon the bay was a lively place, echoing with laughter and shouts as the laden canoes plied between the schooner and the beach. The Tara, once smart as a yacht, took on the aspect of a floating menagerie: pigs grunted disconsolately on deck; dogs barked ”

“ Once our logs were at Faatemu, Taura was for giving a feast and resting for a day or two. But I urged haste, recalling my uncle's words to the chief. Then the logs were laid out in the shade, close to the village, and one man set to work on each, fashioning a canoe with axe and adze. Day after day the builder chopped, while the chips flew and the form of the canoe emerged—the curve of sheer, the rounded bilge, the sharp lines of bow and stern. Sometimes a man stood off, squinting at his handiwork with one eye closed—judging the symmetry of the slender hull. ”

“ In the far end of the lagoon, where no one goes to-day, I have found where the strange shells with edges like gold lie on the coral in thousands, not more than fifteen fathoms deep. Many times I have gone alone in my canoe to dive for them, and I have found fine pearls, great and small. These are true words. The white man called Seroni, who brings people to plant coconuts on Iriatai, is a good man and my friend, but I have said nothing of the pearls to him. ”

“ Three dives filled the basket, and when Marama pulled it from the water with its coral-encrusted load, I gave an imitation of the exultant native shout—a cry which brought a grin to my companion's face.
"We are learning," he said mockingly, "but it will be time to shout when we can fill the basket at one dive!"
That afternoon, when we joined the little fleet of canoes to paddle home, Maruia stood up, craning her neck for a look at our catch. "You have done well," she remarked, a smile wrinkling her brown face, "not badly for the first day's diving! I have seen grown men do worse. ”

“ I shall never forget those equatorial nights, when all the others, saving the steersman and myself, were asleep on deck—the steady pulsing of the Tara's motor; the calm sea, heaving gently as a sleeper's breast; the Southern Cross, low down among the blazing constellations. Each day at dawn the air cooled and freshened; presently the sky to the east began to pale, the little clouds on the horizon grew luminous with rosy light, and the sun appeared above the rim of the sea, a disk of dazzling brightness, glaring like burnished brass. ”

“ The light grew stronger as we advanced; twenty yards from the entrance my head came out of water and I breathed the welcome air again. We were swimming in a black pool which half filled a long shadowy cavern, illuminated by a beam of sunlight filtering in through a cranny in the rocks. Stalactites of fantastic shape hung from the low roof, and I saw the broad ledge of which the native boy had spoken. We were in the hidden refuge of the savages, the lurking-place of the terrible carcharodon, the shark which had come so near to making an end of my uncle during our early days on Iriatai! ”

“ At four bells land was in sight—the peaks of Huahine, bearing a little west of south, minute irregularities on the line where sea met sky. It was an afternoon such as one sees rarely in the tropics: a cloudless horizon and an atmosphere clear as the air above our deserts at home. An hour before sundown the Leeward Islands were all in view, strung out in the shape of a great half-moon on the sea ahead of us. The tall mountain rising abruptly in the north was Bora Bora; Tahaa and Raiatea, sheltered within the same circling barrier-reef, lay straight before the Tara's bows ”

“ The engineer, Pahuri, was an elderly Rarotongan with a passion for fishing: a small man, gray, wrinkled, and talkative. He had followed the sea since boyhood and had visited many parts of the world on whaling vessels and on merchant ships. His heart was kind, but he possessed a biting tongue and his travels had made him cynical. Then came Rairi, the half-caste cook my uncle had found stranded in San Francisco after a voyage before the mast. He was a shade lighter than the others, with a handsome, sullen face: a tall man and powerfully built, though dwarfed in the presence of the mate. ”