At the first moment we evidenced an inclination for bed the visiting natives, with soft Iaoranas, faded away, and Tehei and Bihaura likewise faded away.The house consisted of one large room, and it was given over to us, our hosts going elsewhere to sleep.In truth, their castle was ours.And right here, I want to say that of all the entertainment I have received in this world at the hands of all sorts of races in all sorts of places, I have never received entertainment that equalled this at the hands of this brown-skinned couple of Tahaa.I do not refer to the presents, the free-handed generousness, the high abundance, but to the fineness of courtesy and consideration and tact, and to the sympathy that was real sympathy in that it was understanding.They did nothing they thought ought to be done for us, according to their standards, but they did what they divined we waited to be done for us, while their divination was most successful.It would be impossible to enumerate the hundreds of little acts of consideration they performed during the few days of our intercourse.Let it suffice for me to say that of all hospitality and entertainment I have known, in no case was theirs not only not excelled, but in no case was it quite equalled.
Perhaps the most delightful feature of it was that it was due to no training, to no complex social ideals, but that it was the untutored and spontaneous outpouring from their hearts.
The next morning we went fishing, that is, Tehei, Charmian, and Idid, in the coffin-shaped canoe; but this time the enormous sail was left behind.There was no room for sailing and fishing at the same time in that tiny craft.Several miles away, inside the reef, in a channel twenty fathoms deep, Tehei dropped his baited hooks and rock-sinkers.The bait was chunks of octopus flesh, which he bit out of a live octopus that writhed in the bottom of the canoe.Nine of these lines he set, each line attached to one end of a short length of bamboo floating on the surface.When a fish was hooked, the end of the bamboo was drawn under the water.Naturally, the other end rose up in the air, bobbing and waving frantically for us to make haste.And make haste we did, with whoops and yells and driving paddles, from one signalling bamboo to another, hauling up from the depths great glistening beauties from two to three feet in length.
Steadily, to the eastward, an ominous squall had been rising and blotting out the bright trade-wind sky.And we were three miles to leeward of home.We started as the first wind-gusts whitened the water.Then came the rain, such rain as only the tropics afford, where every tap and main in the sky is open wide, and when, to top it all, the very reservoir itself spills over in blinding deluge.
Well, Charmian was in a swimming suit, I was in pyjamas, and Tehei wore only a loin-cloth.Bihaura was on the beach waiting for us, and she led Charmian into the house in much the same fashion that the mother leads in the naughty little girl who has been playing in mud-puddles.
It was a change of clothes and a dry and quiet smoke while kai-kai was preparing.Kai-kai, by the way, is the Polynesian for "food" or "to eat," or, rather, it is one form of the original root, whatever it may have been, that has been distributed far and wide over the vast area of the Pacific.It is kai in the Marquesas, Raratonga, Manahiki, Niue, Fakaafo, Tonga, New Zealand, and Vate.In Tahiti "to eat" changes to amu, in Hawaii and Samoa to ai, in Ban to kana, in Nina to kana, in Nongone to kaka, and in New Caledonia to ki.
But by whatsoever sound or symbol, it was welcome to our ears after that long paddle in the rain.Once more we sat in the high seat of abundance until we regretted that we had been made unlike the image of the giraffe and the camel.
Again, when we were preparing to return to the Snark, the sky to windward turned black and another squall swooped down.But this time it was little rain and all wind.It blew hour after hour, moaning and screeching through the palms, tearing and wrenching and shaking the frail bamboo dwelling, while the outer reef set no a mighty thundering as it broke the force of the swinging seas.
Inside the reef, the lagoon, sheltered though it was, was white with fury, and not even Tehei's seamanship could have enabled his slender canoe to live in such a welter.
By sunset, the back of the squall had broken though it was still too rough for the canoe.So I had Tehei find a native who was willing to venture his cutter across to Raiatea for the outrageous sum of two dollars, Chili, which is equivalent in our money to ninety cents.Half the village was told off to carry presents, with which Tehei and Bihaura speeded their parting guests--captive chickens, fishes dressed and swathed in wrappings of green leaves, great golden bunches of bananas, leafy baskets spilling over with oranges and limes, alligator pears (the butter-fruit, also called the avoca), huge baskets of yams, bunches of taro and cocoanuts, and last of all, large branches and trunks of trees--firewood for the Snark.
While on the way to the cutter we met the only white man on Tahaa, and of all men, George Lufkin, a native of New England! Eighty-six years of age he was, sixty-odd of which, he said, he had spent in the Society Islands, with occasional absences, such as the gold rush to Eldorado in 'forty-nine and a short period of ranching in California near Tulare.Given no more than three months by the doctors to live, he had returned to his South Seas and lived to eighty-six and to chuckle over the doctors aforesaid, who were all in their graves.Fee-fee he had, which is the native for elephantiasis and which is pronounced fay-fay.A quarter of a century before, the disease had fastened upon him, and it would remain with him until he died.We asked him about kith and kin.
