Lewis R. Freeman

“ A sea would come rolling up out of the south in a great sky-scraping ridge of pea green and heel the yacht to starboard until the mainboom dipped into the water and buckled under the strain like a rod before the first rush of a ten-pound salmon. Then it would pass on, leaving the yacht to tumble off its back and roll her port rail under just in time to dip a deckful out of the next wave. Much of the time the foresail was lowered with the boom hauled amidships, and the mainsail, double-reefed, carried to starboard. ”

“ Deftly and easily he dropped his first pig—a rangy boar—slapped a flying half-grown shote contemptuously with the flat of his cutlass as beneath his notice, and had just got well "set" on his toes again, when that bane of the Marquesan pigsticker, a "double"—two boars running close together—came charging down.
By all the rules of the game this twin terror should have been allowed to go by unmolested, for successfully to stick a "double" is a feat as rare as a triple play in baseball or the "hat trick" in cricket—a thing to be talked about for years after it has happened. ”

“ Toward noon a few faint leakings of wind came edging in around the north shoulder of Mauna Kea, and for some time we had steerage way enough to allow the yacht to drift along at a mile or so an hour, the booms out now on one side and now on the other in an effort to intercept the elusive airs. At six o'clock even these vagrant puffs had ceased, and as twilight followed the sinking of the sun behind a ruled-line horizon calm succeeded to calmer, until the sails were finally taken in and we floated, lazily waiting, on the heavily breathing bosom of the deep ”

“ At five o'clock in the afternoon of the 2nd of July we weighed anchor and slipped from the quietness of Suva harbour out into a roystering east wind that was playing all manner of strange pranks with the placid sea we had come in through a week previously. For steep, short seas and uncomfortable small-schooner weather, nothing quite equals one of these reef-locked stretches of the south-west Pacific with a stiff blow on. The ever-imminent bottom, constantly dragging on the waves, retards them below and lets them keep going above, producing seas something between ocean swells and lines of surf. ”

“ A Marquesan fisherman of Hatiheu
We watched from the thatched roofed veranda of McGrath's quarters one dewy-fresh morning when the whistling Trade had whipped up a more than usually stiff sea outside, the course of Mareu's canoe where, with Claribel as a passenger, she was shooting the breakers as they came booming in across the reef. Suddenly the even line of the horizon was blotted out by the loom of a roller of huge bulk and weight—"the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son," as the sailors call it when they don't use a stronger term. ”

“ Time and again the helmsman, grinding the wheel hard up to keep her before the wind, would glance with the tail of his eye at a foam-splotched wall of green that blotted out the sky astern, to hunch his shoulders and grip his spokes the tighter, waiting with tensed muscles and set face the blow that menaced from above; time [292] and again, yawing desperately as the tail of a galloping sea gave her nose a tweak, the yacht would seem on the point of broaching right under the hollow wall of the comber next in line ”

“ The Samoan is no less ready than the Tahitian to take advantage of the theatric effects at his disposal, and in the "standing" dances no taupo ever fails to make the most of the allurement of flitting in and out of patches of moonlight or [276] torchlight and piquing the interest of the audience by pretending to reveal more of her charms when sheltered by the translucent curtain of the shadows.
My one most haunting memory of South Sea dancing is of the "swimming" siva as performed by a tantalizing minx of a taupo in the ghostly half-light of a grotto on the leeward shore of Tutuila. ”

“ Hiteaea, a village situated half way down the windward side of the island from Papeete, is as lovely as a steamship company's folder description; the kind of a place you have always suspected never existed outside the imagination of a drop-curtain painter. Half of the settlement is smothered in giant bamboos, curving and feather-tipped, and the remainder in flamboyant, frangipani and burao trees, which carpet the ground inches deep with blossoms of scarlet, waxy cream and pale gold. Nothing less strong than the persistent southeast Trade-wind could furnish the place with air ”

“ Claribel, game but chastened, still lay low in an instinctive endeavour to keep the centre of gravity down near the keel where it belonged; but Mareu, mad with the ecstasy of swift motion, leapt up to a hair-poised balance and, swathed in sheets of flying spray, finished the run after the fashion of that other Venus who was born of the sea-foam where the breakers travailed on the Cyprean coast. ”

“ The wind and surf and thunder blend in a raucous roar as the storm grows more furious, and now the trees are snapping and falling before the terrific onslaught. Down they go, now falling alone, now striking others and going to the earth together. In a few moments all but two firmly rooted giants in the heart of the grove are tossing on the ground, and these—represented by two magnificently muscled men—lean together for support and defy the hurricane for a brief space longer. Then they, too, give way, falling to the ground interlocked, and the "Dance of the Coconuts" is over. ”

“ Luckily, the Tahitian pig, cooked in island fashion, is as much above the average porker of temperate latitudes as the Tahitian broiler falls below the standard in his class. Any kind of a cut from a six-months-old coconut-fed pig, cooked on hot stones and served with the inimitable miti-hari sauce, will awaken an ecstasy in the palate the memory of which cannot be eradicated by a lifetime of gastronomic experience with the most vaunted viands of other climes. ”

“ An instant later the Commodore, dashing wildly aft, cleared the cockpit rail at a bound, and, knocking the surprised Perkins backward with his shoulder, began climbing up the spokes of the wheel like a monkey as he threw it hard down. The yacht wavered for an instant, as though confused by the unwonted treatment, and then, [211] with a slatting of canvas and banging of blocks, came up into the wind and paid off on the other tack just in time to avoid the thrust of a jutting point of coral. We felt fully justified in setting aside our volunteer pilot and finding our own anchorage after that. ”

“ Towering, weighty seas, unbroken now by the islands, came charging up out of the southwest in billowing ranks, but so buoyant was the schooner under her shortened sail that the grey light of the morning showed the brine of the last wave that had swept her decks before she was put to head-reaching spangled in frost-like repouseé along the lee scuppers. Toward midday the wind shifted suddenly to northwest, and though still blowing a gale it was deemed best to risk a little more sail in an endeavour to get away from the islands before night closed down again. ”

“ I had just time to note that the lovely little taupo, unadorned by official head-dress or garlands, was dancing only in a scant lava-lava of tappa which encircled her waist in a precarious fringe, when the light died down and the swimming siva became for the moment a dusky silhouette against the jagged patch of star-studded purple which marked the seaward opening of the grotto. ”

“ So completely landlocked is the harbour, and so smooth are its waters in all weathers, that from anywhere in the inner bay—except for the tropical vegetation which clothes the mountain sides—it might pass for a Swiss lake. The high walls of the ancient crater cut off the rays of the morning and evening sun, and the velvety green of the wonderful tropic tapestry which covers them, reflecting scarcely any light and heat, makes the harbour several degrees cooler than any other Pacific island of similar latitude, either north or south of the equator. ”

“ The island of Oahu was sighted at nine, and shortly afterward we headed into Molokai Channel, said to be one of the deepest places in the Pacific Ocean, and, in the matter of baffling winds and waves and currents, undoubtedly one of the most treacherous and uncertain, as we were to learn on the return voyage. A strong breeze increased to a half gale by noon, and under double-reefed main and foresails the yacht made not any too good weather of it in the vicious cross tumble of waters that assailed her. ”

“ The "Iron Bound Coast" opens up beyond the first point west of the entrance to Pago Pago Bay and runs up the island for a half-dozen miles or more, squarely across the path of advancing lines of seas that have been charging to the attack and gathering weight, impetus and arrogance in a thousand miles of unbroken rush before the scourges of the Southeast Trade. Their repulse is sudden, sharp and decisive, and the beetle-browed, black-ribbed cliffs accomplish it without a change of expression. ”

“ Coco wine—not the coco toddy that figured in my Marquesan pig hunt, which is a baser concoction—fermented from a juice drawn from the heart of the trunk of that palm, is expensive and hard to obtain at any cost. It is a gentleman's drink, however, and scorns to practise any of the "behind-the-back" tactics of the soft-footed orange thunderbolt. It romps down the throat like a torch-light procession and promptly starts a conflagration that spreads like wild-fire from the head to the heels. ”

“ Up fluttered the big main topmast staysail, up the jib topsail and the flying jib, and up the main and fore gaff-topsails, every one of them drawing beautifully in the steady breeze that came gushing over the starboard quarter, and each after the other, as it was hoisted and filled, doing its full measure of work in forcing the yacht's lee rail deeper into the yeasty run of foam churned up by her lunging bows and driving her faster toward her goal. ”

“ And only in the Yacht Club, of all Hawaiian organizations, have royalist and reactionary met on terms of frank and open friendship. The memories of the stirring days of the revolution are dimmed by the mists of more than a score of years, but still clear and distinct in island society is drawn the line of demarcation between the ever-loyal one-time adherents of Kaleakaua and those who were active in, or in sympathy with, his overthrow. ”

“ Up that precarious flood-torn and creeper-hung foot-way was borne with tender care the man who understood and loved Samoa and the Samoans as no other has understood and loved them. You have discovered the path to Stevenson's tomb, for up there where the shifting draperies of the clouds have blown back to show a dull blur of grey through the wall of green that fronts the skyline, is where the "sailor home from the sea" is lying on the spot that he chose for his final resting place. ”

“ Beyond Hiteaea the road dips into the vanilla bean zone, and from there to the Taiarapu Isthmus the gushing Trade-wind smites the nostrils like a blast from a pastry cook's oven. Vanilla is one of Tahiti's budding industries, and like everything else industrial in the Societies, seems likely not to get far beyond the budding stage. The vanilla vine requires little but heat, moisture, a tree to climb upon and a little care. The natural conditions are near ideal in the jungle sections of Tahiti, but the hitch has come on the score of care. ”

“ Here a mountain has been rent by some Titan to let a river through; there a mountain has refused to rend and a river closes its eyes and launches itself over a thousand-foot cliff, paling with terror as it realizes the magnitude of its leap and changing from a bar of green jade to a fluttering scarf of grey satin, finally to collapse into a rumple of white gossamer where the jungle riots in shimmering verdancy against the foot of the cliff. ”

“ The swift transition from life to death reminded me of the wilting of a steer under the touch of the "killer" in an Uruguayan matadero, where they slay by severing the spinal cord at the base of the horns with a knife thrust. But there the twinkle of the wrist snuffed the life spark in the body of a passive animal, while here the same easy, effortless movement had smothered it while it flared at full power in a quarter of a ton of flying flesh and bone that was itself a Bolt of Death. ”

“ For us on the Lurline there was nothing more to be done. Jewelry and other portable valuables had been tossed into a canvas sack, and the Mater and Claribel, swathed in life-preservers, hurriedly coached as to the proper manner of jumping ashore from the taffrail of a grounded yacht. White figures had appeared, clinging to the pillars of the Consulate veranda, ready—as we afterwards learned—to rush to our aid when the schooner struck. ”

“ Toward the sea the jungle thins and in a palm-dotted clearing, walled in with flowering stephanosis and tiare, are the brown thatched houses of the Chief. A rolling natural lawn leads down to the beach of shining coral clinkers, which curves about a lagoon reflecting the blended shades of lapis lazuli, chrysoprase and pale jade. A froth-white lace collar of surf reveals the outer reef, and across the [140] cloud-mottled indigo sea loom the fantastic heights of the mountains and cliffs behind Tautira. ”

“ Meanwhile the sail covers had been removed and the stops cast off, and as the last of the visitors stepped back aboard their waiting launches, all hands tailed on to the main throat and peak halyards and the big sail was smartly hoisted and swayed to place. Foresail, forestay-sail and jib followed. Finally the anchor, clinging tenaciously to the last California mud it was destined to hook its flukes into for many months, was broken out, and, close-hauled on the starboard tack to a light breeze, Lurline swung off past the breakwater and out of the harbour. ”