Chapter XI · His Mother's People

THE hurricane season ended in a fortnight of calm before the trade came up from the southeast, announcing its arrival with a three days' gale that caught our schooner among the outer islands of the group. It was by no means a great storm, yet the constant fury of the wind, unbroken by lull or gust, and the lines of huge breaking seas running under a cloudless sky impressed me more than anything I have experienced in ships. By day we lived in a world of blue-and-white—pale-blue sky; sea of a dark, angry blue; acres of white foam. To go on deck by night and watch the leaping ridges of salt water rear up to windward—formless, threatening, fringed with wan phosphorescence—was to revise any beliefs one might have had regarding the friendliness of nature.

On the evening of the second day we were laid-to under a rag of foresail, riding the seas obliquely, a few points off the wind. The schooner took them like an eider duck; it was so thick in the cabin that I slid back the hatch and squeezed through into the clean turmoil above. The mood of the Pacific was too impressive for pleasure, but I was glad at least of the fresh air and able to derive a species of awed enjoyment from what went on about me. It may have been fatigue, or carelessness, or inexperience—at any rate, the man at the wheel suddenly allowed the schooner to bear off; she was climbing the slope of a sea at the time—the crest of it caught her weather side with a crash and next instant a rush of solid water swept the decks. Thin and faint as the voices of sea birds above the roaring of the wind, the cries of native passengers drifted back, "Aue! Aue!"; the hatch slid back abruptly; the skipper burst on deck—bristling, gesticulating, clad in a waistcloth—to deliver an address in passionate Mangaian, insulting and only partially audible.

Under the swinging lamp in the cabin I found Tari—our singular and philosophic supercargo, whose calm no ordinary gale could disturb—bending over his books, a bottle and a glass in racks at his elbow. A mat was spread on the floor and on it—huddled under a quilt of bright patchwork—lay Apakura, his young native wife. Her feet were bound in a pareu and the quilt pulled over her head, for the cockroaches were everywhere. I entered my stateroom to lie down. A large cockroach, insolent and richly perfumed, trotted along the springs of the upper berth and halted just above my face. Waves of the hand had no effect on him—I had reasons for not wishing to crush him in his tracks. One of his comrades began a tentative nibbling at my hair—something tickled my foot—I started convulsively. The sudden rolls of the schooner flung me against her side; it was useless to try to sleep. As I sat down beside him, Tari closed his books and motioned me to fill a glass.

A faint noise of shouting came from on deck; the engine-room bell sounded a sudden and peremptory signal. The hatch opened with a gust of spray—the head of the skipper appeared dimly in the swaying light. "Atitu," he shouted; "I'm going to run into the lee and stand off and on till this blows over." The engine started and Tari and I went on deck for a glimpse of the land, looming close and vague in the starlight. Presently, as we took our seats in the cabin, the schooner ceased her violent pitching and began to ride a long, easy swell. Tari rose, stepped to where his wife lay sleeping, picked up the slender bundle in the quilt, and disappeared into his stateroom; next moment he was beside me again, uncorking a fresh bottle of rum.

"She's had a bad time of it," he said, "with a berth on the weather side; she was spilled on the floor half a dozen times before she gave up and came out here. I shouldn't have let her come along—I had my doubts of the weather, but it was a chance to see the relatives she's got scattered through the group. They're constantly visiting one another; blood means a lot down here where they recognize degrees of consanguinity absurdly farfetched to our minds. First cousins are like brothers, second and third cousins considered members of one's immediate family, and so on through the descendants of remote ancestors. When you stop to think of it, this respect for ties of blood—in the isolated communities of Polynesia—rests on a solid base."

I asked him a question concerning the end of these island people—whether they will fade away and disappear, like our own Narragansett and Seminole, without leaving their mark on the supplanting race or whether they will be absorbed gradually, developing in the process of absorption a new type. Tari set down his glass.

"One thing is certain," he replied—"if left to themselves they would soon be extinct. Wherever you go among the islands you will find couple after couple of full-blooded natives—young, strong, wholesome, and childless. No doubt the white man is partially to blame, but, for myself, I believe the race is worn out with isolation and old age. They are justified in their dread of being childless, but an infusion of European blood—however small—works a miracle; you must have noticed this, to me a most striking and significant fact. It is the cross of white and brown that is repopulating the islands to-day; one can venture a glimpse into the future and see the process of absorption complete—the Polynesian is not fated to disappear without leaving a trace behind ... and perhaps it will be more than a trace, for half-caste children cling strongly to the distaff side.

"The question of half-castes is an interesting one, particularly to men like me—but it is a waste of time to struggle against nature; in the end the solution is nearly always the same. Varana's children furnish the best example I have run across—you've never been to Rimarutu, I fancy; it is not often visited nowadays; probably you've never heard of Varana. And yet he was an extraordinary man, his life an almost unique study in extremes. Like everything real, the story has no beginning, unless one were able to trace back the strain that gifted the man with his exceptional temperament; as for an end, that is still working itself out on Rimarutu. It is, in fact, no story at all, but a bit of life itself—unmarked by any dominating situation, haphazard, inconclusive, grimly logical. No one can know the whole of it—the play of motives, the decisions, the pure chance—but I worked with Varana for years and have patched his story together after a fashion. Now and then, when the mood struck him, he used to speak of himself; sometimes at night when we were working his schooner from island to island; sometimes by day, as we lay smoking under the palms of a remote atoll, while the canoes of the divers dotted the lagoon. On those occasions I had glimpses of a man not to be judged by the standards of everyday life—a man actuated by motives as simple as they were incomprehensible to those about him. His death, if he is dead—But I will speak of that in its place.

"His real name was Warner—a big, blue-eyed man, slow-spoken and a little dreamy in manner, with an immense blond mustache and a serenity nothing could disturb. I never knew him to hesitate in making a decision or to speak unless he had something to say. All decent men liked him, and the natives, who were better able than a white man to fathom his simplicity, took to him from the first. He had been miserably out of place in England—squeezed through Cambridge, which he detested, unhappily married, done out of a fortune by the defaulting brother-in-law whose last debt he paid, and divorced just before he came out here.

"It is often observed that when an Englishman's feelings are hurt he travels, and in this respect Varana was not exceptional. One day, a little more than a generation ago, he stepped off the mail boat at Papeete—a rather typical English tourist, I fancy—dressed in tropical costumes from Bond Street and accompanied by an extraordinary quantity of luggage. At the club he ran across Jackson of the Atoll Trading Company—the old man liked him from the first and they used to spend the evenings together, lingering over their glasses, talking a little in low tones. A fortnight later Varana left as quietly as he had come—outbound in one of Jackson's schooners for a cruise through the Paumotus.

"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. And the nights ashore, when the moon rose at the end of a path of rippling silver, and the people gathered before their thatched houses to sing.... It was not long before Varana realized that he had found his anodyne.

"At home he had been a yachtsman of sorts; by the time they reached Motutangi the brown skipper was leaving a good part of the working of the schooner to his guest. They were diving in the lagoon that year at the end of a long rahui on the shell—a sort of closed season, scrupulously respected by the natives; half a dozen schooners were anchored off the village, where every house overflowed with people from the surrounding islands, and by day their canoes blackened the water above the patches of shell.

"The hurricane gave ample warning of its approach—Varana told me as much as that. He had spent the night ashore with a trader, whose old glass rose and fell spasmodically, sinking always a little lower, until it stood at a figure which sent the trader off, white and cursing, to break open a fresh case of gin. None of the divers went out at daybreak; with the other people, they stood in little frightened groups before the houses. The older men were already beginning to hack off the tops of the stout palms in which they planned to roost. By the time Varana came off in a canoe the schooners were double anchored, the wind was shifting uneasily in sharp gusts, and a tremendous surf was thundering on the outer beach. The native skipper, like the people ashore, knew perfectly well what was coming and, like most of his kind, his spirit broke in the face of a large emergency—before the feeling that the forces of nature were about to overwhelm him. Well, I've been through one hurricane—I can't say that I blame him much! Varana found him not exactly in a funk, but in a state of passive resignation, hoping vaguely that his two anchors would let him ride it out inside. The crew was clustered on the after deck, exchanging scared whispers. Varana, who had the instinct of a deep-water sailor, took in the situation at a glance, and next moment he had taken command of the schooner.

"Without a word of protest the men reefed, got sail on her, heaved up one anchor, and cut the other cable. Varana had very little to say about the rest—how he edged out through the pass and managed to claw off just as the cyclone struck Motutangi—but afterward the story went the rounds of every group. All the other schooners in the lagoon, as well as most of the people ashore, were lost. How Varana weathered it, without piling up his vessel on any one of half a dozen atolls, is a sort of miracle.

"A week later, when he had sailed his battered schooner—the only survivor of the disaster at Motutangi—into Papeete harbor, he found himself famous by nightfall, for the native captain gave him entire credit for the achievement. Old Jackson's imagination was touched, or perhaps it was the destruction of so many rival schooners in the shell and copra trade—at any rate, he acted on impulse for once in his life, sent for Varana, and offered him a remarkably good berth with a fat screw attached. But the wanderer only smiled and shook his head—he had had a taste of the outer islands. It shakes one's faith in Providence to realize that most men die without finding the place in life for which they were designed.

"It was old Jackson who told him of Rimarutu—probably during one of their almost silent evenings at the club. It was a mistake—Jackson thought—to believe that a man could shut himself off from the world; the mood would pass in time, but if Varana wished seriously to try it, he would find no better place than Rimarutu. There was some copra to be had and a little shell in the lagoon; the people numbered about two hundred, a quiet, pleasant lot, not given to wandering from their island. Varana had salvaged a few thousand pounds from the wreck of his affairs at home; Jackson helped him pick up a schooner at a bargain and load her with what was needed; there was some difficulty about a crew, but his uncanny gift with the natives got him three men content to follow his fortunes. On the morning when he shook hands with the old man, stepped aboard his boat, and sailed out of the harbor, Varana severed the last tie with the world he had known.

"I could tell you a good deal about his life on the island—I worked with him for nearly ten years. He began by renting a bit of land—for his store and copra shed—from the chief and setting himself to learn the language. The Polynesian is a shrewd judge of character; they saw that this man was just, kindly, fearless, and to be trusted. Those who had traveled a little declared Varana a phenomenon—a white trader who respected women and never lay on his veranda in a stupor, surrounded by empty bottles. He seemed to know instinctively the best way to take these people, with whom, from the very first, he found himself on terms of a mutual understanding. They regarded him with a mixture of liking and respect, not accorded us, perhaps, as often as we are apt to think; he worked with them, he played with them, and finally took a daughter of the island as his wife—yet it was characteristic that he never permitted himself to run barefoot and that even after twenty years of friendship the native entering Varana's house took off his hat. I remember Tupuna as a woman of thirty—tall, robust, and grave, with delicate hands and masses of bright, rippling hair; the years were kind to her—even in middle life she did not lose a certain quiet charm. Make no mistake—they were happily mated, this man, turned out by what Englishmen believe the highest civilization in the world, and the daughter of an island chief whose father had been a savage and an eater of men. She was not spoiled like so many traders' wives; when they had been on the reef she walked home behind, carrying the torches and the fish—but he felt for her an affection deep as it was undemonstrative, a strong attachment, proven at the end in his own extreme and romantic way.

"During the early years of his life on Rimarutu, Varana had enough to do with his store, his occasional trips for supplies, and his work for the betterment of the island people. He found them living on fish and coconuts, depending for all their luxuries on a dwindling production of copra. He showed them how to thin their palms, how to select nuts for new plantings, how to dry their copra with a minimum of effort. The shell in the lagoon was nearly exhausted; he persuaded the chiefs of the two villages to forbid diving for a term of years. After experiments conducted with Tupuna's aid he set the men to catching flying fish, which swarmed in the waters about the island, and taught the women to split them, rub in salt, and dry them on lines in the sun. Rimarutu is high, as atolls go—five or six yards above the sea in spots; he laid out beds of puraka taro, and had pits dug on the high portions of the island, lined the bottoms with rock to keep the taproots from salt water, filled them with humus and topsoil—scraped up in handfuls—and planted breadfruit, mango, and lime, brought from the high islands to the north. At long intervals, when in need of something that only civilization could supply—paint, rigging, or a new set of sails—he went north with a cargo of copra and dried fish and took on a brief charter with Jackson. On these trips he visited scores of islands, and came to know the people of a thousand miles of ocean.

"It was not until his son was born that Varana began to think seriously of money. His daughters had given him no concern; he explained to me once his peculiar philosophy as to their future. Perhaps he was right. With their happiness in mind, he preferred to bring them up as island girls—without education or knowledge of the outside world and no greater prospects than those of their full-blooded playmates—rather than give them the chances of the usual half-caste: half-educated and partially Europeanized, whose most brilliant hope is marriage with a white man of the inferior sort. But the birth of Terii set the father to thinking.

"The child was about ten when I saw him first, a fine strong boy, very fair for a half-caste, with his father's eyes, a high carriage of the head, and skin touched with a faint bloom of the sun. Tupuna was immensely proud of him. I was a youngster then and new to the islands, but I had heard of Varana before Jackson introduced me to him. It was at Jackson's place, on the upper veranda, that he told me how he had leased Fatuhina; some one had spoken of my work. I had operated diving machines? He needed a man familiar with them, for he had leased an atoll with some big shell patches in the lagoon, and machines would be necessary to work the deeper portions. I was doing nothing at the time. I liked what I had heard of Varana, and I liked the man better still. In an hour we had come to an understanding. I worked with him, off and on, from that time until the beginning of the war.

"Without caring in the least for wealth, Varana had set out to make himself rich. Long before I knew him he had decided the question of his son: Terii was to have the same chances that his father had had before him—was to see both sides and choose for himself.

"Even Varana's friends spoke of his luck; to my mind his success was inevitable. Regarded with an almost superstitious affection by the people of widely scattered groups, he possessed channels of information closed forever to the ordinary man. It was in this way that he learned of the shell in Fatuhina lagoon; perhaps he did not know that the native who approached him, one evening on a distant atoll, to speak casually of the matter and stroll away, had paddled across twelve miles of sea with no other object than to bring the news to Varana. When the Gaviota was beached he was the first to learn of it—that affair alone brought him a neat fortune; and when men had fine pearls to sell they saw him before they went to the Jews. By the time his son was twelve Varana was a rich man.

"I was on Rimarutu when he left to take the boy to England. Tupuna shed a few tears, but there was no scene—she knew he would return. 'I go to take our son to my own land,' he told her; 'there will be six moons before I come.' Five months later I was waiting with the schooner when he stepped off the mail boat. That night, as he lay on a mat on the afterdeck, dressed in a pareu and a pair of slippers, he spoke of England briefly in the midst of our talk on island matters. 'Damned senseless treadmill,' he remarked; 'I can't think how I stood it so many years.' The ordinary man, who had left home under a cloud of misfortune to return twenty years later, after wanderings in distant lands, with a fortune and a beautiful child, would have lingered not without a certain relish. But Varana was different; he grudged every moment spent in civilization and lived only for the day when he would again take the wheel of his schooner and watch the ridges of Tahiti sink beneath the horizon.

"The years passed rapidly and tranquilly on Rimarutu. The days of Varana's activity were over; he was no longer young, though he kept his store and took the schooner out at long intervals for supplies. Then came the outbreak of the war.

"I was in Gallipoli when the letter reached me, written in the native language by Varana's old mate. It told a story fantastically unreal—incredible from the viewpoint of everyday life—and yet to me who knew him, as to the people of his island, the end of Varana seemed a natural thing, in keeping with what had gone before. Tupuna had fallen ill (the old man wrote) and had died suddenly and peacefully, as natives do. Varana stood beside her grave with no great display of grief, returned to his house and spent three days putting his affairs in order. On the fourth day he gave the mate a thick envelope of documents, called together the people of the island and bade each one of them farewell. When he turned to leave they did not disperse; the women had begun to sob—they felt already the desolation of a final parting. It was the hour of sunset, when the trade wind dies away and the lagoon lies like a mirror under an opalescent sky.... I can see in imagination those simple and friendly islanders, standing in little groups before the settlement—raising no voice in protest, moving no hand in restraint—while the man they loved walked to the ocean beach, launched a tiny canoe in the surf, and paddled out to the west. The nearest land in that direction is distant six hundred miles. When he had passed the breakers—they say—Varana did not once turn his head; the watchers stood motionless while the sky faded, their eyes fixed on the dot that was his canoe—a dwindling dot, swallowed up at last in the night."

Tari ceased to speak. He was sitting propped on the lounge, arms folded, legs stretched out, eyes staring at the table. Without seeming aware of what he did, he filled his glass, raised it to his lips, and drank. Presently he emerged from his revery to light a pipe.

"In due time," he went on, "I had word from the lawyers, inclosing a copy of the will and informing me that I had been named executor with old Jackson, who seemed to have discovered the secret of eternal life. There was also a letter from Varana, written after Tupuna's death—a friendly and casual note, with a mere line at the end, asking me to do what I could for his boy. The land Tupuna had brought him was to be divided equally among his daughters; all the rest was for Terii, saving his parting gift to me. Only one condition was attached—Terii must visit Rimarutu before inheriting the property of his father; once he had set foot on the island, he would be his own master, free to choose his path in life.

"The boy was nineteen when the war broke out; he joined up at once as a cadet in the Flying Corps. During the second year I began to hear of Lieutenant Warner—he had shot down a German plane near Zeebrugge; he had been wounded; he had received the Military cross. Once I saw his picture in the Sphere—a handsome lad, very smart in the old uniform of the R. F. C., with a jaunty cap over one eye and ribbons on his breast. This was the little savage whose shrill cries I used to hear at dawn, when he raced with his half-naked companions on the beach! At the end of the war he was Captain Terry Warner, a celebrity in a small way.... I felt a certain pride in him, of course. We had done our best to meet, but something always happened to prevent my getting a glimpse of him.

"I ran across him as I was homeward bound, leaving San Francisco for the islands. I had already gone aboard and was standing by the rail, watching the last of the luggage swing over the side in nets, when a motor drove up to discharge a party of men and women—fashionables of the city, from their looks. One of them, a lean, tanned boy, with the overcoat of a British officer over his civilian clothes, was saying good-by to the others, shaking hands and smiling very attractively. A little later, when the lines were being cast off, I saw him close beside me at the rail. A girl in blue was standing on the dock, waving up at him. 'Good-by, Terry!' she called. I looked closely; there could be no doubt—it was the son of Varana.

"We had long talks on the voyage south; the lad had not forgotten me. The memory of the old life—of the island, of his mother, of his father—would always be fresh in his mind, but he regarded those days as a distant and beautiful episode, now forever closed. He was going to visit Rimarutu for the last time—to bid farewell to those who remembered him. He had not forgotten the friends of his boyhood; there were many little presents in his boxes, and he told me that the schooner—reported sound as on the day of her launching—would be his gift to Varana's old mate. Afterward he would return to San Francisco, where opportunities had been offered him; he had brought letters to America and had been well received.

"The schooner was in port when we arrived. Varana's mate met us on the dock; there were tears in the old man's eyes as he took the boy's hands in his own and murmured in a trembling voice, 'O Terii iti e.' The tourists descending the gangplank looked with interest at the spectacle of Captain Warner, almost embracing an old barefoot kanaka, dressed in dungarees and a faded shirt, wrinkled brown face working with emotion. As Terii shook hands with the crew—some of them boys with whom he had played in childhood—I noticed that a phrase or two of the native came to his lips—twelve years had not been sufficient to blot out all memory of his mother's tongue.

"We had a long passage south, beating against the trade; Varana had installed an engine in the schooner, but time is cheaper than petrol in this part of the world. Terii delighted in handling the boat; there was salt water in his blood; and his father had seen to his training in navigation and the ways of the sea. With each new day I perceived symptoms of a change in the boy. White suits and canvas slippers gave way to pajamas and bare feet; finally the pajamas were replaced by a pareu, taken from the trade-room stock. The summers at home had not been wasted; I used to watch him at the wheel, working the schooner to windward, an eye on the canvas aloft, steering with the easy certain movements of a seaman born. He was in love with the schooner before we had been out a week, and he had reason—Frisco-built for the last of the pelagic sealing, Varana's boat was the fastest thing of her tonnage in the South Seas. More than once in our talks Terii seemed to forget the plans he had confided to me.... She needed a new foresail; the set of this one did not please him; he was going to have her copper renewed in places; she was getting dingy below; the cabin needed a touch of paint. At times, speaking of these things, he stopped short in the midst of a sentence and changed the talk to other subjects. The language came back to him surprisingly; he was able to understand and make himself understood before we raised the palms of Rimarutu.

"The mate took her in through the pass. It was late afternoon, cool and cloudless, with a gentle sea nuzzling at the reef. The island was like the memory of a dream—fresh green palms, snowy beaches, cat's-paws ruffling the lagoon in long, blue streaks—so beautiful that the sight of it made one's heart ache and the breath catch in one's throat. A dozen canoes put out to meet us from the first settlement; there were greetings from friends and relatives—embraces and tears. Terii lay silent, propped on his elbows and staring ahead, as we slipped across the lagoon; the island people spoke in tones so low that I could hear the crisp sound of the schooner's bows parting the landlocked water. The other village lay beyond the beach ahead of us, Varana's village, where Terii had been born—a place of dreams in the mystery of the evening light. It was not difficult to guess at the boy's thoughts—the moment was one of those which make up the memories of a lifetime. Every man has known them—rapture, pain, the enjoyment of supreme beauty, the flavor of exotic and unrepeatable experience; but not every man is permitted to taste such contrasts as this boy had known in twenty-four years of life.... I was a little envious, I think, of the rarity of that poignant home-coming.

"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. I was wakeful in a revery, living over the old days with my friend, wondering, with the usual idle and somber doubt, if we were destined to meet again. Low over the palm tops a planet glimmered like a shaded lamp; the Milky Way arched overhead through a sky powdered with fixed stars—remote suns, about which revolve myriads of worlds like ours.... I rebelled at the thought that the strong soul of Varana should be snuffed out. Terii said nothing for a long time; I thought he had dropped off to sleep, but suddenly I heard his voice: 'I have the strangest feeling to-night,' he said, thoughtfully; 'if my father were here I could believe that I had never been away, that everything since I left—England, school, my friends, the war—was no more than a dream. I can't explain to you, but somehow this island seems the most real thing in the world. I've been talking with my aunt—I'd almost forgotten her name, you know—and I managed to understand a good bit of what she had to say.... There is no doubt she believes it herself. My father comes to her every now and then, she says, for a talk on family matters; last night he told her we would come to-day, and that I would stop here to take his old place among the people. It seems they are good enough to want me to stay—I almost wish I could.'...

"The drums were going at daybreak—the feast in Terii's honor was the greatest the island had known since heathen days. The entire population was on hand; the beach black with canoes; dozens of good-humored babies on mats under the trees, with small brothers and sisters stationed to fan the flies away. The people sat in long rows in the shade, strings of shell about their necks, their heads wreathed in hibiscus and sweet fern. Terii was placed between the chief of the other village and Tehina, the chief's daughter, a full-blooded Rimarutu girl of sixteen, barefoot, dressed in a white frock, with gold pendants in her ears and a thick, shining braid of hair. There is an uncommon charm about the women of that island—a stamp of refinement, a delicacy of frame and feature, remarked as long ago as the days of Spanish voyaging in the Pacific. Blood counts for something in Polynesia, and one needed only a glance at Tehina to know that the best blood of the island flowed in her veins; her ancestor—if tradition may be credited—was in the long canoe with Penipeni when the god pulled Rimarutu up from the bottom of the sea. I like those people, and in spite of the night's depression I managed to enjoy the fun—I even danced a bit! Finally I saw that the dancers were taking their seats; voices were lowered, heads were turned.

"Tehina was dancing alone to the rhythm of a hundred clapping hands. In twenty years of the islands I have never seen a girl step more daintily. Little by little she moved toward Terii until she stood directly before him, inviting him to dance, hands fluttering, swaying with an unconscious grace, smiling into his eyes. Every head turned; there were smiles, good-humored chuckles, nudges; they were proud of this girl and anxious that the son of Varana should dance with her. They had not long to wait. Next moment Terii had leaped to his feet and was dancing, with more enthusiasm than skill, to a long burst of cheers and clapping.

"When the canoes put off at nightfall I noticed that Tehina did not leave; she had stopped to visit her uncle, the parson of the village church. I saw Terii with her often during the days that followed—fishing on the lagoon, swimming in the cove, lying on mats in the moonlight where groups of young people were telling their interminable stories of the past. He seemed a little shy of me, and no longer exchanged confidences in the hour which precedes sleep. One evening, smoking and strolling alone after dinner, I passed the parson's house and became aware of the vague figure of Terii, walking to and fro impatiently beside the veranda. He stopped—I heard the rattle of a coral pebble on the roof. A moment later Tehina glided like a phantom around the corner of the house, and they went off arm in arm along the path to the sea. I thought to myself that the lad was not doing badly after his twelve years away from the island, but the blood was in him, of course—there was instinct in his manner of tossing the pebble and in the unhesitating way he had led the girl toward the outer beach: the haunt of dreadful presences, a place no ordinary islander would visit after dark. I fancied him sitting there—the rumble of the surf in his ears, watching the lines of breakers rear up under the moon—with Tehina beside him, admiring and afraid. When his eye was not on her she would glance right and left along the beach and back toward the bush, half expecting to see some monstrous thing, crouched and watching with fiery eyes. As for the boy, one could only guess at the troubled flow of his thoughts, stirred by cross-currents of ancestry and experience. In her own environment Tehina was a girl to make any man look twice; for him, with his mother's blood and the memories of his childhood, she must have possessed a powerful appeal—the touch of her hand; her voice, soft and low-pitched, murmuring the words of a half-forgotten tongue; her dark eyes shining in the moonlight; the scent of the strange blossoms in her hair. It was the test, the final conflict Varana had foreseen. I had my own opinion of the result, and yet the other life pulled hard.

"The days passed in pleasant island fashion; the loading of the schooner went on; there was no mention of a change in plans. The chief came to take his daughter home, and when she had gone Terii spoke to me, not too convincingly, of his return to civilization. My trip to Rimarutu was a matter of pleasure alone; I was already planning to take this berth, and was not sorry when Terii announced one morning that we would sail north that afternoon. One seems perpetually saying good-by down here—these islands are havens of a brief call, of sad farewells, of lingering and regretful memory. Our parting from the people of Rimarutu was more than usually painful; they had hoped to the last that Terii would leave some word, some promise; but he remained silent, though I could see that the leave-taking was not without effect.

"Finally the last canoe put off for shore; the anchor came up, the motor started, and Terii steered across the lagoon for the pass. The sails were still furled, for there was a light head wind. I watched his face as he stood in silence at the wheel; there was a look in his eyes which made me sorry for the boy. We crossed the lagoon, glided past green islets, and drew abreast of the other village. The people lined the shore, fluttering handkerchiefs, shouting good wishes and farewells.

"Beyond the settlement the pass led out, blue and deep, between sunken piers of coral, where the surf thundered in patches of white. All at once the old mate sang out and pointed—a dot was on the water ahead of us, a swimmer moving out from land to cut us off. The son of Varana turned the wheel; the schooner swung inshore; I heard a quick command and felt the speed of the engine slacken.

"Terii was staring ahead with a strange intensity—instinct or premonition was at work. I looked again as we drew near; a cloud of dark hair floated behind the swimmer's head; it was a woman—Tehina! Terii sprang to the rail. A moment later she had been lifted over the side and was standing beside him in the cockpit, dripping, trembling a little with cold and fear, doing her best to smile. The mate was pulling at Terii's arm and pointing back toward the village. A whaleboat had put out from shore and was heading for us at the top speed of the rowers; it was the chief himself, I believe, who stood in the stern and whose shouts were beginning to reach our ears.

"At that moment Terii proved that he was his father's son. He glanced back once, and then, without the smallest interval of hesitation, his arm went about the wet shoulder of Tehina.

"'Full speed ahead,' he ordered in a cool voice."

Tari poured rum into my glass, and tilted the last of the bottle into his own. The schooner was taking it easily with her engine at half speed, riding a gentle swell. The ship's bell rang twice, paused, and rang again—a sharp and mellow sound. It was long past midnight.

"If you ever get down to Rimarutu," said Tari, as he rose to go on deck, "you will find Terii there—he bids fair to leave the island even less than Varana did."