James Norman Hall

“ Once, rounding a point of land, we came upon two schooners lying inside the reef of a small atoll. One of them had left Papeete only a short while before. Her skipper gave us a bundle of old newspapers. Glancing through them that evening, I heard as in a dream the far-off clamor of the outside world—the shrieking of whistles, the roar of trains, the strident warnings of motors; but there was no reality, no allurement in the sound. I saw men carrying trivial burdens with an air of immense effort, of grotesque self-importance; scurrying in breathless haste on useless errands ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Past the veranda, on which the family sleeps through the warm hours of the day, the river flows out gently to the sea; a broad, still water, deep and glassy clear, peopled with darting shoals of fish—mullet, young pampano, and nato, the trout of the South Seas. Opposite the river mouth the reef is broken by a pass, through which the steady lines of combers sweep in to crash and tumble on the 279 bar. Morning and afternoon the breakers are alive with naked children, shouting and glistening brown in the sunlight as they ride the waves. ”

“ On the first evening, when we had greeted the people of the village, Terii was led away by his old aunt, Tupuna's sister. Just before bedtime I saw them at his mother's grave—a lonely shrine, roofed over in island fashion, where the light of a lamp shone on stunted bushes of frangipani. My eccentricities were not forgotten; they had spread my mat under the palms before Varana's house, and toward midnight Terii came quietly and lay down close by. ”

“ As I climbed down to the deck I was conscious of the fact that a healthy appetite and a good digestion were a piece of luck, too, and that as long as one could hold it the lure of islands would remain, and one's love of living burn with a clear flame. Jack, the monkey, seemed to divine my thought, to agree with it. As Oro, the food bearer, passed him, he reached down from his perch in the rigging, seized the largest sweet potato on the platter, and clambered out of reach. Assured of his safety, he fell to greedily, looking out wistfully toward the land. ”

“ All of this work was being carried out under Puarei's direction and to the accompaniment of Kaupia's accordion. I wish that I might in some way make real to others the unreal loveliness of the scene. It must be remembered that it took place on one of the loneliest of a lonely cloud of islands which lay in the midmost solitude of an empty ocean. The moonlight must be remembered, too, and how it lay in splinters of silver on the motionless fronds of the palms as though it were of the very texture of their polished surfaces. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The soft voice of the girl died away—I heard only the murmur of the reef. Masses of cloud were gathering about the peaks; above our heads, the moon was sailing a clear sky, radiant and serene. The world was all silver and gray and black—the quiet lagoon, the shadowy land, the palms like inky lace against the moonlight. Tehinatu stifled a little yawn and stretched out on the mat with the abrupt and careless manner of a child. Her grandmother tossed away a burnt-down cigarette.
"It is late," said the woman of Maupiti, "and we we must rise at daybreak. Now let us sleep." ”

“ I see him sitting on the cabin deck with his freckled brown hands clasped about his knees, looking across a solitude of waters; and in my mental concept of the Low Archipelago he is always somewhere in the background, standing on the sun-stricken reef of a tiny atoll, his back to the sea, almost as much a part of the lonely picture as the sea itself.
But one can't be wholly matter of fact in writing of these islands. They are not real in the ordinary sense, but belong, rather, to the realm of the imagination. ”

“ She made an effective barricade of copra sacks and bedding, dodging the plunging monster with an agility surprising in a woman of sixty. But what I remember best was Tané, a monkey belonging to one of the sailors, skidding along the cabin deck until he was blown against the engine-room whistle, which rose just clear of the forward end of it. He wrapped arms and legs around it in his terror, opening the valve in some way, and the shrill blast rose high above the mighty roar of wind, like the voice of man lifted with awe-inspiring impudence in defiance of the mindless anger of nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A dozen big outrigger canoes, of the type peculiar to this island, were coming out through the passage, each paddled by four men, who shouted as their heavy craft dashed through the breakers.
Little by little, not at all after the manner of traditional dawn in the tropics, the light increased, until Ahu Ahu lay fully revealed before us—the smoking reef, the shallow lagoon, and the cliffs, their summits plumed with coconut palms. A crowd of islanders was already gathering on the reef, and I could see others making their way down the steep path from the settlement. ”

“ No wonder Riley gets on with the people; there is not an ounce of self-consciousness in him—he enters into a bit of fun with the good-natured abandon of a child. As for dancing, he is wonderful; every posture was there, every twist and wriggle and flutter of the hands—what old Bligh called, with delightful, righteous gusto, the "wanton gestures" of the heiva.
Riley had told his friends on the beach that he was on the lookout for labor; by this time, probably, the whole island knew he was on his way to the atoll and that he needed men. ”