J82200267 0370
 
 3 1822 00267 0370 ^
 
 *
 
 
 
 <s
 
 UNWIN'S I/- NOVELS. 
 
 net 
 Bound in Cloth, with Picture Wrappers. 
 
 1. The Way of an Eagle. By ETHEL M. DELI. 
 
 2. McGlusky the Reformer. By A. G. HALES. 
 
 3. The Trail of '98. By ROBERT W. SERVICE. 
 
 4. Ann Veronica. By H. G. WELLS. 
 
 5. The Knave of Diamonds. By ETHEL M. DBLL. 
 
 6. The Beetle: A Mystery. By RICHARD MARSH. 
 
 7. Almayer's Folly. By JOSEPH CONRAD. 
 
 8. The Shulamite. By ALICE AND CLAUDE ASKEW, 
 
 9. New Chronicles of Don Q. 
 
 By K. AND HESKETH PRICHARD. 
 
 10. The Canon in Residence. 
 
 By VICTOR L. WIIITECHURCH, 
 
 11. 1*he Camera Fiend.. 
 
 By THE AUTHOR OF " RAFFLES." 
 
 12. Monte Carlo. By MRS. H. D'E-VERS STACPOOLE. 
 
 13. Called Back. By HUGH CON WAY. 
 
 14. The Sticklt Minister. By S. R. CROCKETT. 
 
 15. The Crimson Azaleas. 
 
 By H. DE VERB STACPOOLE. 
 
 16. My Lady of the Chimney Corner. 
 
 By ALEXANDER IRVINE. 
 
 17. Patsy. . By H. DE VESK STACPOOLE. 
 
 18. The Indiscretion of the Duchess. 
 
 By ANTHONY HOPS. 
 
 19. By Reef and Palm. By Louis BECKE. 
 
 20. Queen Sheba's Ring. By H. RIDER HAGGARD. 
 
 21. Uncanny Tales. By F. MARIO:* CRAWFORD. 
 
 Other Volumes in Preparation. 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1, Adelphi Terrace, LONDON. \
 
 First Edition iSr^ 
 
 Second Impression 1894- 
 
 Third Impression 1895 
 
 Fourth Impression. . . 1895 
 
 Fifth Impression . . . , 1898 
 
 Sixth Impression 1913 
 
 Seventh Impression 1916 
 
 [All rights reserved.]
 
 c o N T E;N T s 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION I 
 
 CHALLIS THE DOUBTER l8 
 " 'TIS IN THE BLOOD " . . -33 
 
 THE REVENGE OF MACY O'SHEA ... 42 
 
 THE RANGERS OF THE TIA KAU ... 56 
 
 PALLOU'S TALOI 66 
 
 A BASKET OF BREAD-FRUIT. . . 79 
 
 \ 
 
 ENDERBY'S COURTSHIP .... 89 
 
 LONG CHARLEY'S GOOD LITTLE WIFE . . 105 
 
 THE METHODICAL MR. BURR OF MAJURU . 115 
 
 A TRULY GREAT MAN . . . . 128 
 
 THE DOCTOR'S WIFE . . . . . 137 
 
 THE FATE OF THE A LI DA . . . 148 
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET. . . . l8l 
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 22O
 
 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 WHEN in October, 1870, I sailed into the 
 harbour of Apia, Samoa, in the ill-fated 
 Albatross, Mr. Louis Becke was gaining his 
 first experiences of island life as a trader on 
 his own account by running a cutter between 
 Apia and Savaii. 
 
 It was rather a notable moment in Apia, 
 for two reasons. In the first place, the 
 German traders were shaking in their shoes 
 for fear of what the French squadron might 
 do to them, and we were the bearers of the 
 good news from Tahiti that the chivalrous 
 Admiral Clouet, with a very proper mag- 
 nanimity, had decided not to molest them ;
 
 2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 and, secondly, the beach was still seething 
 with excitement over the departure on the 
 previous day of the pirate Pease, carrying 
 with him the yet more illustrious " Bully " 
 Hayes. 
 
 It happened in this wise. A month or 
 two before our arrival,. Hayes had dropped 
 anchor in Apia, and some ugly stories of 
 recent irregularities in the labour trade had 
 come to the ears of Mr. Williams, the English 
 consul. Mr. Williams, with the assistance 
 of the natives, very cleverly seized his 
 vessel in the night, and ran her ashore, and 
 detained Mr. Hayes pending the arrival of 
 an English man-of-war to which he could 
 be given in charge. But in those happy 
 days there were no prisons in Samoa, so 
 that his confinement was not irksome, and 
 his only hard labour was picnics, of which 
 he was the life and soul. All went pleas- 
 antly until Mr. Pease a degenerate sort of 
 pirate who made his living by half bullying,
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 half swindling lonely white men on small 
 islands out of their cocoanut oil, and 
 unarmed merchantmen out of their stores 
 came to Apia in an armed ship with a Malay 
 crew. From that moment Hayes's life be- 
 came less idyllic. Hayes and Pease con- 
 ceived a most violent hatred of each other, 
 and poor old Mr. Williams was really worried 
 into an attack of elephantiasis (which 
 answers to the gout in those latitudes) by 
 his continual efforts to prevent the two 
 desperadoes from flying at each other's 
 throat. Heartily glad was he when Pease 
 who was the sort of man that always 
 observed les convenances when possible, and 
 who fired a salute of twenty-one guns on 
 the Queen's birthday came one afternoon 
 to get his papers " all regular," and clear 
 for sea. But lo ! the next morning, when 
 his vessel had disappeared, it was found 
 that his enemy Captain Hayes had dis- 
 appeared also, and the ladies of Samoa were
 
 4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 left disconsolate at the departure of the 
 most agreeable man they had ever known. 
 
 However, all this is another story, as 
 Mr. Kipling says, and one which I hope 
 Mr. Becke will tell us more fully some day, 
 for he knew Hayes well, having acted as 
 supercargo on board his ship, and shared a 
 shipwreck and other adventures with him. 
 
 But even before this date Mr. Becke had 
 had as much experience as falls to most 
 men of adventures in the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 Born at Port Macquarrie in Australia, 
 where his father was clerk of petty sessions, 
 he was seized at the age of fourteen with 
 an intense longing to go to sea. It is 
 possible that he inherited this passion 
 through his mother, for her father, Charles 
 Beilby, who was private secretary to the 
 Duke of Cumberland, invested a legacy that 
 fell to him in a small vessel and sailed with 
 his family to the then very new world of 
 Australia. However this may be, it was
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 impossible to keep Louis Becke at home ; 
 and, as an alternative, an uncle undertook 
 to send him, and a brother two years older, 
 to a mercantile house in California. His 
 first voyage was a terrible one. There were 
 no steamers, of course, in those days, and 
 they sailed for San Francisco in a wretched 
 old barque. For over a month they were 
 drifting about the stormy sea between 
 Australia and New Zealand a partially 
 dismasted and leaking wreck. The crew 
 mutinied they had bitter cause to and 
 only after calling at Rurutu in the Tubuai 
 Group and obtaining fresh food did they 
 permit the captain to resume command of 
 the half-sunken old craft. They were ninety 
 days in reaching Honolulu, and another 
 forty in making the Californian coast. 
 
 The two lads did not find the routine of a 
 merchant's office at* all to their taste ; and 
 while the elder obtained employment on a 
 cattle ranche, Louis, still faithful to the sea,
 
 6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 got a berth as clerk in a steamship company, 
 and traded to the Southern ports. In a 
 year's time he had money enough to take 
 passage in a schooner bound on a shark- 
 catching cruise to Christmas and Palmyra 
 Islands in the North Pacific. The life was 
 a very rough one, and full of incident and 
 adventure which I hope he will relate some 
 day. Returning to Honolulu, he fell in 
 with an old man who had bought a schooner 
 for a trading venture amongst the Western 
 Carolines. Becke put in $1,000, and sailed 
 with Mm as supercargo, he and the skipper 
 being the only white men on board. He 
 soon discovered that, though a good seaman, 
 the old man knew nothing of navigation. 
 In a few weeks they were among the Marshall 
 Islands, and the captain went mad from 
 delirium tremens. Becke and the three 
 native sailors ran the vessel into a little 
 uninhabited atoll, and for a week had to 
 keep the captain tied up to prevent his
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 killing himself. They got him right at 
 last and stood to the westward. On their 
 voyage they were witnesses of a tragedy (in 
 this instance fortunately not complete), 
 on which the pitiless sun of the Pacific has 
 looked down very often. They fell in with 
 a big Marshall Island sailing canoe that had 
 been blown out of sight of land, and had 
 drifted six hundred miles to the westward. 
 Out of her complement of seventy people, 
 thirty were dead. They gave them pro- 
 visions and water, and left them to make 
 Strong's Island (Kusaie), which was a in 
 sight. Becke and the chief swore Marshall 
 Island Bruderschaft with each other. Years 
 afterwards, when he came to live in the 
 group, the chief proved his friendship in a 
 signal manner. 
 
 The cruise proved a profitable one, and 
 from that time Mr. Becke determined to 
 become a trader and to learn to know the 
 
 people of every group of the Pacific ; and 
 A*
 
 8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 returning to California, he made for Samoa, 
 and from thence to Sydney. But at this time 
 the Palmer River gold rush had just broken 
 out in North Queensland, and a brother who 
 was a bank manager on the celebrated 
 Charters Towers goldfields, invited him to 
 come up, as everyone seemed to be making 
 his fortune. He wandered between the 
 rushes for two years, not making a fortune 
 but acquiring much useful experience, 
 learning amongst other things the art of a 
 blacksmith, and becoming a crack shot with 
 a^rifle. Returning to Sydney, he sailed for 
 the Friendly Islands (Tonga) in company 
 with the king of Tonga's yacht the 
 Taufaahau. The Friendly Islanders dis- 
 appointed him (at which no one that knows 
 them will wonder), and he went on to 
 Samoa, and set up as a trader on his own 
 account for the first time. He and a 
 Manhiki half-caste brought a cutter, and 
 went into partnership, trading throughout
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 the group. This was the time of Colonel 
 Steinberger's brief tenure of power. The 
 natives were righting and the cutter was 
 seized on two occasions. When the war 
 was over he made a study of the language, 
 and became a great favourite with the 
 natives, as indeed seems to have been the 
 case in most of the places he went to in 
 Polynesia and Micronesia. From Samoa he 
 was sent away in charge of a trading vessel 
 under sealed orders to the Marshall Islands. 
 These orders turned out to be to hand the 
 vessel over to the notorious Captain 
 " Bully " Hayes. (Some day he promises 
 that he will give us the details of this very 
 curious adventure.) He found Hayes 
 awaiting him in his famous brig Leonora in 
 Milli Lagoon. He handed over his charge 
 and took passage with him in the brig. 
 After some months cruising in the Carolines 
 they were wrecked on Strong's Island 
 (Kusaie). Hayes made himself the ruler of
 
 io INTRODUCTION 
 
 the island, and Mr. Becke and he had a 
 bitter quarrel. The natives treated the 
 latter with great kindness, built him a house, 
 and gave him land on the lee side of the 
 island, where he lived happily enough for 
 five months. Hayes was captured by an 
 English man-of-war, but escaped and went 
 to Guam. Mr. Becke went back in the 
 cruiser to the Colonies, and then again sailed 
 for Eastern Polynesia, living in the Gam- 
 biers, Paumotus, and Easter and Pitcairn 
 Islands. In this part of the ocean he picked 
 up an abandoned French barque on a reef, 
 floated her, and loaded her with cocoanuts, 
 intending to sail her to New Zealand with a 
 native crew, but they went ashore in a 
 hurricane and lost everything. Meeting 
 with the managing partner of a Liverpool 
 firm he took service with them as a trader 
 in the Ellice and Tokelau groups ; finally 
 settling down as a residential trader. Then 
 he took passage once more for the Carolines
 
 INTRODUCTION n 
 
 and was wrecked on Peru, one of the savage 
 Gilbert islands (lately annexed), losing every 
 dollar that he possessed. He returned to 
 Samoa and engaged as " recruiter " in the 
 labour trade. -He got badly hurt in an 
 encounter with some natives and went to 
 New Zealand to recover. Then he sailed 
 to New Britain on a trading venture, and 
 fell in with and had much to do with the 
 ill-fated colonising expedition of the Marquis 
 de Rayo in New Ireland. A bad attack of 
 malarial fever, and a wound in the neck 
 (labour recruiting or even trading among 
 the blacks of Melanesia seems to have been 
 a much less pleasant business than residence 
 among the gentle brown folk of the Eastern 
 Pacific) made him leave and return to the 
 Marshall Islands, where Lailik, the chief 
 whom he had succoured at sea years before, 
 made him welcome. He left on a fruitless 
 quest after an imaginary guano island, and 
 from then until two years ago he has been
 
 12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 living on various islands in both the North 
 and South Pacific, leading what he calls " a 
 wandering and lonely but not unhappy 
 existence," " Lui," as they call him, being a 
 man both liked and trusted by the natives 
 from lonely Easter Island to the far-away 
 Pellews. During one of his visits to the 
 Colonies he married a young Irish lady, a 
 daughter of Colonel Maunsell of H.M. 
 nth Regiment, by whom he has two 
 children. For the last .two years he has 
 been living in Australia and contributing 
 South Sea stories to the Colonial papers. 
 He is still in the prime of life, and whether 
 he will now remain within the bounds of 
 civilisation, or whether some day he will 
 return to his wanderings as Odysseus is fabled 
 to have done in his old age, I fancy that he 
 hardly knows himself. But when once the 
 charm of a wild roving life has got into a man's 
 blood, the trammels of civilisation are irk- 
 some and its atmosphere is hard to breathe.
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 It will be seen from this all-too-condensed 
 sketch of Mr. Becke's career that he knows, 
 the Pacific as few men alive or dead have 
 ever known it. He is one of the rare men 
 who have led a very wild life and have the 
 culture and talent necessary to give some 
 account of it. As a rule, the men who 
 know don't write, and the men who write 
 don't know. 
 
 Every one who has a taste for good 
 stories will feel, I believe, the force of these. 
 Every one who knows the South Seas, and 
 I believe many who do not, will feel that 
 they have the unmistakable stamp of truth. 
 And truth to nature is pace Mr. Oscar 
 Wilde a great merit in a story, not only 
 because of that thrill of pleasure hard to 
 analyse, but largely made up of associations, 
 memories, and suggestions, that faithfulness 
 of representation in picture or book gives to 
 the natural man ; but because of the fact 
 that nature is almost infinitely rich and the
 
 14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 unassisted imagination of man but a poor 
 and sterile thing, tending constantly towards 
 some ossified convention. " Treasure 
 Island " is a much better story than " The 
 Wreckers," yet I, for one, shall never cease 
 to regret that Mr. Stevenson did not possess, 
 when he wrote " Treasure Island," that 
 knowledge of what men and schooners do 
 in wild seas that was his when he gave us 
 " The Wreckers." The detail would have 
 been so much richer and more convincing. 
 
 It is open to any one to say that these 
 tales are barbarous, and what Mrs. Meynell, 
 in a very clever and amusing essay, has 
 called " decivilised." Certainly there is a 
 wide gulf separating life on a Pacific island 
 from the accumulated culture of centuries 
 of civilisation in the midst of which such 
 as Mrs. Meynell move and have their being. 
 And if there can be nothing good in literature 
 that does not spring from that culture, these 
 stories must stand condemned. But such a
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 view is surely too narrow. Much as I 
 admire that lady's writings, I never can 
 think of a world from which everything was 
 eliminated that did not commend itself to 
 the dainty taste of herself and her friends 
 without a feeling of impatience and suffoca- 
 tion. It takes a huge variety of men and 
 things to make a good world. And ranches 
 and canons, veldts and prairies, tropical 
 forests and coral islands, and all that goes 
 to make up the wild life in the face of nature 
 or, among primitive races, far and free from 
 the artificial conditions of an elaborate 
 civilisation, form an element in the world 
 the loss of which would be bitterly felt by 
 
 many a man who has never set foot outside 
 
 x 
 
 his native land. 
 
 There is a certain monotony perhaps about 
 these stories. To some extent this is in- 
 evitable. The interests and passions of 
 South Sea Island life are neither numerous 
 nor complex, and action is apt to be rapid
 
 16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 and direct. A novelist of that modern school 
 that fills its volumes, often fascinatingly 
 enough, by refining upon the shadowy 
 refinements of civilised thought and feeling, 
 would find it hard to ply his trade in South 
 Sea Island society. His models would 
 always be cutting short in five minutes the 
 hesitations and subtleties that ought to have 
 lasted them through a quarter of a lifetime. 
 But I think it is possible that the English 
 reader might gather from this little book an 
 unduly strong impression of the uniformity 
 of Island life. The loves of white men and 
 brown women, often cynical and brutal, 
 sometimes exquisitely tender and pathetic, 
 necessarily fill a large space in any true 
 picture of the South Sea Islands, and Mr. 
 Becke, no doubt of set artistic purpose, has 
 confined himself in the collection of tales 
 now offered almost entirely to this facet of 
 the life. I do not question that he is right 
 in deciding to detract nothing from the
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 striking effect of these powerful stories, 
 taken as a whole, by interspersing amongst 
 them others of a different character. But 
 I hope it may be remembered that the 
 present selection is only an instalment, and 
 that if it finds favour with the British public 
 we may expect from him some of those tales 
 of adventure, and of purely native life and 
 custom, which no one could tell so well as he. 
 
 PEMBROKE. 
 
 June, 1894.
 
 CHALLIS THE DOUBTER 
 
 THE WHITE LADY AND THE BROWN WOMAN 
 
 FOUR years had come and gone since the 
 day that Challis, with a dull and savage 
 misery in his heart, had, cursing the love- 
 madness which once possessed him, walked 
 out from his house in an Australian city 
 with an undefined and vague purpose of 
 going " somewhere " to drown his sense of 
 wrong and erase from his memory the face 
 of the woman who, his wife of not yet a 
 year, had played with her honour and his. 
 So he thought, anyhow. 
 
 You see, Challis was " a fool " at least 
 so his pretty, violet-eyed wife had told him
 
 CHALLIS THE DOUBTER 19 
 
 that afternoon with a bitter and contempt- 
 uous ring in her voice when he had brought 
 another man's letter written to her and 
 with an impulsive and jealous haste had 
 asked her to explain. He was a fool, she 
 had said, with an angry gleam in the violet 
 eyes, to think she could not " take care " 
 of herself. Admit receiving that letter ? 
 Of course ! Did he think she could help 
 other men writing silly letters to her ? Did 
 he not think she could keep out of a mess ? 
 And she smiled the self-satisfied smile of a 
 woman conscious of many admirers and of 
 her own powers of intrigue. 
 
 Then Chain's, with a big effort, gulping 
 down the rage that stirred him, made his 
 great mistake. He spoke of his love for her. 
 Fatuity ! She laughed at him, said that as 
 she detested women, his love was too exacting 
 for her if it meant that she should never be 
 commonly friendly with any other man.
 
 20 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 Challis looked at her steadily for a few 
 moments, trying to smother the wild flood 
 of black suspicion aroused in him by the 
 discovery of the letter and confirmed by her 
 sneering words, and then said quietly but 
 with a dangerous inflexion in his voice 
 
 " Remember you are my wife. If you 
 have no regard for your own reputation, you 
 shall have some for mine. I don't want to 
 
 entertain my friends by thrashing R , 
 
 but Fm not such a fool as you think. And 
 if you go further in this direction you'll find 
 me a bit of a brute." 
 
 Again the sneering laugh " Indeed ! 
 Something very tragic will occur, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " No," said Challis, grimly, " something 
 very prosaic common enough among men 
 with pretty wives I'll clear out." 
 
 " I wish you would do that now," said his 
 wife, " I hate you quite enough." 
 
 Of course she didn't quite mean it. She
 
 CHALLIS THE DOUBTER 21 
 
 really liked Challis in her own small-souled 
 way principally because his money had 
 given her the social pleasures denied her 
 during her girlhood. With an unmoved 
 face and without farewell he left her and 
 went to his lawyer's. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later he arose to go, 
 and the lawyer asked him when he intended 
 returning. 
 
 " That all depends upon her. If she 
 wants me back again, she can write, through 
 you, and I'll come if she has conducted 
 herself with a reasonable amount of propriety 
 for such a pretty woman." 
 
 Then, with an ugly look on his face, 
 Challis went out ; next day he embarked in 
 the Lady Alicia for a six months' cruise 
 among the Islands of the North-west Pacific. 
 
 That was four years ago, and to-day 
 Challis, who stands working at a little table
 
 22 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 set in against an open window, hammering 
 out a ring from a silver coin on a marlinspike 
 and vyce, whistles softly and contentedly 
 to himself as he raises his head and glances 
 through the vista of cocoanuts that surround 
 his dwelling on this lonely and almost for- 
 gotten island. 
 
 " The devil ! " he thinks to himself, I 
 must be turning into a native. Four years ! 
 What an ass I was ! And I've never 
 written yet that is, never sent a letter 
 away. Well, neither has she. Perhaps, 
 after all, there was little in that affair of 
 
 R 's. ... By God ! though, if there 
 
 was, I've been very good to them in leaving 
 them a clear field- Anyhow, she's all right 
 as regards money. I'm glad I've done that. 
 It's a big prop to a man's conscience to 
 feel he hasn't done anything mean ; 
 and she likes money most women do. 
 Of course I'll go back if she writes. 
 If not well, then, these sinful islands
 
 CHALLIS THE DOUBTER 23 
 can claim me for their own ; that is, Nalia 
 
 can." 
 
 A native boy with shaven head, save for 
 a long tuft on the left side, came down from 
 the village, and, seating himself on the 
 gravelled space inside the fence, gazed at 
 the white man with full, lustrous eyes. 
 
 " Halloa, tama ! " said Chain's, " whither 
 goest now ? " 
 
 " Pardon, Tialli. I came to look at thee 
 making the ring. Is it of soft silver and 
 for Nalia, thy wife ? " 
 
 "Ay, O Shaven Head, it is. Here, take 
 this masi and go pluck me a young nut to 
 drink," and Challis threw him a ship- 
 biscuit. Then he went on tapping the little 
 band of silver. He had already forgotten 
 the violet eyes, and was thinking with almost 
 childish eagerness of the soft glow in the 
 black orbs of Nalia when she should see his 
 finished handiwork.
 
 24 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 The boy returned with a young cocoanut, 
 unhusked. " Behold, Tialli. This nut is a 
 uto ga'au, sweet husk. When thou hast 
 drunk the juice give it me back, that I may 
 chew the husk which is sweet as the sugar- 
 cane of Samoa," and he squatted down again 
 on the gravel. 
 
 Challis drank, then threw him the husk 
 and resumed his work. Presently the boy, 
 tearing off a strip of the husk with his white 
 teeth, said, " Tialli, how is it that there be 
 no drinking-nuts in thy house ? }: 
 
 " Because, O turtle-head, my wife is 
 away ; and there are no men in the village 
 to-day ; and because the women of this 
 motu* have no thought that the papalagt* 
 may be parched with thirst, and so come 
 not near me with a cocoanut." This latter 
 in jest. 
 
 " Nay, Tialli. Not so. True it is that 
 
 1 Island or country. 3 Foreigner.
 
 CHALLIS THE DOUBTER 25 
 
 to-day all the men are in the bush binding 
 jala leaves around the cocoanut trees, else 
 do the rats steal up and eat the buds and 
 clusters of little nuts. And because Nalia, 
 thy wife, is away at the other White Man's 
 house no woman cometh inside the door." 
 
 Challis laughed. " O evil-minded people 
 of Nukunono ! And must I, thy papalagi, 
 be parched with thirst because of this ? ' : 
 
 " Faiaga oe, Tialli, thou but playest with 
 me. Raise thy hand and call out * I thirst ! ' 
 and every woman in the village will run to 
 thee, each with a drinking-nut, and those 
 that desire thee, but are afraid, will give two. 
 But to come inside when Nalia is away 
 would be to put shame on her." 
 
 The wnite man mused. The boy's solemn 
 chatter entertained him. He knew well the 
 native customs ; but, to torment the boy, 
 he commenced again.
 
 26 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 " 0, foolish custom ! See how I trust my 
 wife, Nalia. Is she not even now in the 
 house of another white man ? " 
 
 ' True. But, then, he is old and feeble, 
 and thou young and strong. None but a 
 fool desires to eat a dried flying-fish when a 
 fresh one may be had." 
 
 " O, wise man with the .shaven crown,' ' 
 said Chain's, with mocking good nature, 
 " thou are full of wisdom of the ways of 
 women. And if I were old and withered, 
 would Nalia then be false to me in the house 
 
 of another and younger white man ? " 
 
 i 
 
 " How could she ? Would not he, too, 
 have a wife who would watch her ? And if 
 he had not, and were nofo noa (single), 
 would he be such a fool to steal that which 
 he can buy for there are many girls 
 without husbands as good to look on as that 
 Nalia of thine. And all women are alike," 
 and then, hearing a woman's voice calling 
 his name, he stood up.
 
 CHALLIS THE DOUBTER 27 
 
 " Farewell, ulu tula poto " (Wise Bald- 
 head), said Challis, as the boy, still chewing 
 his sweet husk, walked back to the native 
 houses clustered under the grove of pua 
 
 trees. 
 
 
 
 Ere dusk, Nalia came home, a slenderly- 
 built girl with big dreamy eyes, and a heavy 
 mantle of wavy hair. A white muslin gown, 
 fastened at the throat with a small silver 
 brooch, was her only garment, save the folds 
 of the navy-blue-and- white lava lava round 
 her waist, which the European-fashioned 
 garment covered. 
 
 Challis was lying down when she came in. 
 Two girls who came with her carried baskets 
 of cooked food, presents from old Jack Kelly, 
 Challis's fellow-trader. At a sign from 
 Nalia the girls took one of the baskets of 
 food and went away. Then, taking off her 
 wide-brimmed hat oifala leaf, she sat down 
 beside Challis and pinched his cheek.
 
 28 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 " O lazy one ! To let me walk from the 
 house of Tiaki all alone ! " 
 
 " Alone ! There were three of thee." 
 
 " Tapa ! Could I talk to them ! I, a 
 white man's wife, must not be too familiar 
 with every girl ; else they would seek to get 
 presents from me with sweet words. Besides, 
 could I carry home the fish and cooked fowl 
 sent thee by old Tiaki ? That would be 
 unbecoming to me, even as it would be if 
 thou climbed a tree for a cocoanut " and 
 the Daughter of the Tropics laughed 
 merrily as she patted Chain's on his sun- 
 burnt cheek. 
 
 Challis rose, and going to the little table 
 took from it the ring. 
 
 " See, Nalia, I am not lazy as thou sayest. 
 This is thine." 
 
 The girl, with an eager Aue ! took the 
 bauble and placed it on her finger. She 
 made a pretty picture, standing there in 
 the last glow of the sun as it sank into the
 
 CHALLIS THE DOUBTER 29 
 
 ocean, her languorous eyes filled with a 
 tender light. 
 
 Challis, sitting on the end of the table 
 regarding her with half-amused interest as 
 does a man watching a child with a toy, 
 suddenly flushed hotly : " By God, I can't 
 be such a fool as to begin to love her in 
 reality, but yet . . . come here, Nalia," 
 and he drew her to him, and, turning her 
 face up so that he might look into her eyes, 
 he asked : 
 
 " Nalia, hast thou ever told me any 
 lies ? " 
 
 The steady depths of those dark eyes 
 looked back into his, and she answered : 
 
 " Nay, I fear thee too much to lie. Thou 
 mightst kill me." 
 
 " I do but ask thee some little things. 
 It matters not to me what the answer is. 
 Yet see that thou keepest nothing hidden 
 from me."
 
 30 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 The girl, with parted lips and one hand 
 on his, waited. 
 
 " Before thou became my wife, Nalia, 
 hadst thou any lovers ? " 
 
 " Yes, two Kapua and Tafu-le-Afi." 
 
 " And since ? " 
 
 " May I choke and perish here before thee 
 if I lie! None." 
 
 Challis, still holding her soft brown chin 
 in his hand, asked her one more question 
 a question that only one of his temperament 
 would have dared to ask a girl of the 
 Tokelaus. 
 
 " Nalia, dost thou love me ? " 
 
 "Aye, alofa tumau (everlasting love). Am 
 I a fool ? Are there not Letia, and Miriami, 
 and Eline, the daughter of old Tiaki, ready 
 to come to this house if I love any but thee ? 
 Therefore my love is like the suckers of the 
 fafe (octopus) in its strength. My mother 
 has taught me much wisdom." 
 
 A curious feeling of satisfaction possessed
 
 CHALLIS THE DOUBTER 31 
 
 the man, and next day Letia, the " show " 
 girl of the village, visiting Challis's store to 
 buy a tin of salmon, saw Nalia the Lucky 
 One seated on a mat beneath the seaward 
 side of the trader's house, surrounded by a 
 billowy pile of yellow silk, diligently sewing. 
 
 " Ho, dear friend of my heart ! Is that 
 silken dress for thee ? For the love of God, 
 let me but touch it. Four dollars a fathom 
 it be priced at. Thy husband is indeed the 
 king of generosity. Art thou to become 
 a mother ? " 
 
 " Away, silly fool, and do thy buying and 
 pester me not." 
 
 Chain's, coming to the corner of the house, 
 leant against a post, and something white 
 showed in his hand. It was a letter. His 
 letter to the woman of violet eyes, written 
 a week ago, in the half-formed idea of 
 sending it some day. He read it through, 
 and then paused and looked at Nalia. She
 
 32 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 raised her head and smiled. Slowly, piece 
 by piece, he tore it into tiny little squares, 
 and, with a dreamy hand-wave, threw them 
 away. The wind held them in mid-air for 
 a moment, and then carried the little white 
 flecks to the beach. 
 
 " What is it ? " said the bubbling voice of 
 Letia the Disappointed. 
 
 " Only a piece of paper that weighed as a 
 piece of iron on my bosom. But it is gone 
 
 now." 
 
 " Even so," said Letia, smelling the 
 gaudy label on the tin of salmon in the 
 anticipative ecstasy of a true Polynesian, 
 " pe se mea fa'agotoimoana (like a thing 
 buried deep in ocean). May God send me 
 a white man as generous as thee a whole 
 tin of samani for nothing ! Now do I know 
 that Nalia will bear thee a son." 
 
 And that is why Challis the Doubter has 
 never turned up again.
 
 (33 ) 
 
 " TIS IN THE BLOOD " 
 
 WE were in Manton's Hotel at Levuka 
 Levuka in her palmy days. There were 
 Robertson, of the barque Rotumah ; a fat 
 German planter from the Yasawa group ; 
 Harry the Canadian, a trader from the 
 Tokelaus and myself. 
 
 Presently a knock came to the door, and 
 Allan, the boatswain of our brig, stood hat 
 in hand before us. He was a stalwart half- 
 caste of Manhiki, and, perhaps, the greatest 
 manaia (Lothario) from Ponape to Fiji. 
 
 " Captain say to come aboard, please. 
 He at the consul's for papers he meet you 
 at boat," and Allan left. 
 
 " By shingo, dot's a big fellow," said 
 planter Oppermann.
 
 34 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 " Ay," said Robertson, the trading 
 skipper, " and a good man with his mauleys, 
 too. He's the champion knocker-out in 
 Samoa, and is a match for any Englishman 
 in Polynesia, let alone foreigners " with a 
 sour glance at the German. 
 
 " Well, good-bye, all," I said ; " I'm sorry, 
 Oppermann, I can't stay for another day 
 for your wedding, but our skipper isn't to 
 be got at anyhow." 
 
 The trading captain and Harry walked 
 with me part of the way, and they com- 
 menced the usual Fiji gup. 
 
 " Just fancy that fat-headed Dutchman 
 going all the way to Samoa and picking on 
 a young girl and sending her to the Sisters 
 to get educated properly ! As if any old 
 beach-girl isn't good enough for a blessed 
 Dutchman. Have you seen her ! " 
 
 " No," I said, " Oppermann showed me 
 her photo. Pretty girl. Says she's been 
 three years with the Sisters in Samoa, and
 
 " 'TIS IN THE BLOOD " 35 
 
 has got all the virtues of her white father, 
 and none of the vices of her Samoan mammy. 
 Told me he's spent over two thousand 
 dollars on her already." 
 
 Robertson smiled grimly. " Ay, I don't 
 doubt it. He's been all round Levuka 
 cracking her up. I brought her here last 
 week, and the Dutchman's been in a chronic 
 state of silly ever since. She's an almighty 
 fine girl. She's staying with the Sisters here 
 till the marriage. By the Lord, here she is 
 now coming along the street ! Bet a dollar 
 she's been round Vagadace way, where there 
 are some fast Samoan woman living. 'Tis 
 in the blood, I tell you." 
 
 The future possessor of the Oppermann 
 body and estate was a pretty girl. Only 
 those who have seen fair young Polynesian 
 half-castes before they get married, and 
 grow coarse, and drink beer, and smoke like 
 a factory chimney know how pretty. 
 
 Our boat was at the wharf, and just as
 
 36 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 we stood talking Allan sauntered up and 
 asked me for a dollar to get a bottle of gin. 
 Just then the German's fiancee reached us. 
 Robertson introduced Harry and myself to 
 her, and then said good-bye. She stood 
 there in the broiling Fijian sun with a dainty 
 sunshade over her face, looking so lovely 
 and cool in her spotless muslin dress, and 
 withal so innocent, that I no longer wondered 
 at the Dutchman's " chronic state of silly." 
 
 Allan the Stalwart stood by waiting for 
 his dollar. The girl laughed joyously when 
 Harry the Canadian said he would be at 
 the wedding and have a high time, and held 
 out her soft little hand as he bade her adieu 
 and strolled off for another drink. 
 
 The moment Harry had gone Allan was a 
 new man. Pulling off his straw hat, he 
 saluted her in Samoan, and then opened 
 fire. 
 
 " There are many teine lalelei (beautiful 
 girls) in the world, but there is none so
 
 " 'TIS IN THE BLOOD " 37 
 
 beautiful as thou. Only truth do I speak, 
 for I have been to all countries of the world. 
 Ask him who is here our supercargo 
 if I lie. O, maid with the teeth of pearl 
 and face like Fetuao (the morning star), my 
 stomach is drying up with the fire of 
 love." 
 
 The sunshade came a little lower, and the 
 fingers played nervously with the ivory 
 handle. I leant against a cocoanut tree and 
 listened. 
 
 " Thy name is Vaega. See that ! How 
 do I know ? Aha, how do I ? Because, 
 for two years or more, whenever I passed 
 by the stone-wall of the Sister's dwelling in 
 Matafele, I climbed up and watched thee, 
 Star of the Morning, and I heard the other 
 girls call thee Vaega. Oho ! and some 
 night I meant to steal thee away." 
 
 The rascal ! He told me two days after- 
 wards that the only time he ever climbed 
 the Mission wall was to steal mangoes.
 
 38 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 The sunshade was tilted back, and dis- 
 played two big, black eyes, luminous with 
 admiring wonder. 
 
 " And so thou hast left Samoa to come 
 here to be devoured by this fat hog of a 
 Dutchman ! Dost thou not know, O 
 foolish, lovely one, that she who mates with 
 a Siamani (German) grows old in quite a 
 little time, and thy face, which is now 
 smooth and fair, will be coarse as the rind 
 of a half-ripe breadfruit, because of the bad 
 food these swine of Germans eat ? " 
 
 " Allan," I called, " here's the captain ! " 
 
 There was a quick clasp of hands as the 
 Stalwart One and the Maid hurriedly spoke 
 again, this time in a whisper, and then the 
 white muslin floated away out of sight. 
 
 The captain was what he called " no so 
 dry " viz., half-seas over, and very jolly. 
 He told Allan he could have an hour to 
 himself to buy what he wanted, and then 
 told me that the captain of a steam collier
 
 " 'TIS IN THE BLOOD " 39 
 
 had promised to give us a tug out at day- 
 light. "I'm right for the wedding-feast 
 after all," I thought. 
 
 
 
 But the wedding never came off. That 
 night, Oppermann, in a frantic state, was 
 tearing round Levuka hunting for his love, 
 who had disappeared. At daylight, as the 
 collier steamed ahead and tautened our 
 tow-line, we could see the parties of searchers 
 with torches scouring the beach. Our 
 native sailors said they had heard a scream 
 about ten at night and seen the sharks 
 splashing, and the white liars of Levuka 
 shook their heads and looked solemn as they 
 told tales of monster sharks with eight-foot 
 jaws always cruising close in to the shore 
 at night. 
 
 Three days afterwards Allan came to me 
 with a stolid face and asked for a bottle of 
 wine, as Vaega was very sea-sick. I gave
 
 40 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 him the wine, and threatened to tell the 
 captain. He laughed, and said he would 
 fight any man, captain or no captain, who 
 meddled with him. And, as a matter of 
 fact, he felt safe the skipper valued him 
 too much to bully him over the mere 
 stealing of a woman. So the limp and sea- 
 sick Vaega was carried up out of the sweating 
 foc'sle and given a cabin berth, and Allan 
 planked down two twenty-dollar pieces for 
 her passage to the Union Group. When she 
 got better she sang rowdy songs, and laughed 
 all day, and made fun of the holy Sisters. 
 And one day Allan beat her with a deal 
 board because she sat down on a bandbox 
 in the trade-room and ruined a hat belonging 
 to a swell official's wife in Apia. And she 
 liked him all the better for it. 
 
 The fair Vaega was Mrs. Allan for just 
 six months, when his erratic fancy was 
 captivated by the daughter of Mauga, the
 
 " TIS IN THE BLOOD " 41 
 
 chief of Tutuila, and an elopement resulted 
 to the mountains. The subsequent and 
 inevitable parting made Samoa an un- 
 desirable place of residence for Allan, who 
 shipped as boatsteerer in the Niger of New 
 Bedford. As for Vaega, she drifted back 
 to Apia, and there, right under the shadow 
 of the Mission Church, she flaunted her 
 beauty. The last time I saw her was in 
 Charley the Russian's saloon, when she 
 showed me a letter. It was from the 
 bereaved Oppermann, asking her to come 
 back and marry him. 
 
 " Are you going ? " I said. 
 
 " E pule le Atua " (if God so wills), " but 
 he only sent me twenty dollars, and that 
 isn't half enough. However, there's an 
 American man-of-war coming next week, 
 and these other girls will see then. I'll 
 make the papalagi 1 officers shell out. To 
 fa, alii." 
 
 1 Foreign.
 
 (42 ) 
 
 THE REVENGE OF MACY O'SHEA 
 
 A STORY OF THE MARQUESAS 
 I 
 
 TIKENA the Club-Footed guided me to an 
 open spot in the jungle-growth, and, sitting 
 down on the butt of a twisted toa, indicated 
 by a sweep of his tatooed arm the lower 
 course of what had once been the White 
 Man's dwelling. 
 
 " Like unto himself was this, his house," 
 he said, puffing a dirty clay pipe, " square- 
 built and strong. And the walls were of 
 great blocks made of panisina of coral and 
 lime and sand mixed together ; and around 
 each centre-post posts that to lift one 
 took the strength of fifty men was wound 
 two thousand fathoms of thin plaited cinnet,
 
 REVENGE OF MACY O'SHEA 43 
 
 stained red and black. Apa ! he was a 
 great man here in these motu (islands) 
 although he fled from prison in your land ; 
 and when he stepped on the beach the 
 marks of the iron bands that had once been 
 round his ankles were yet red to the sight. 
 There be none such as he in these days. 
 But he is now in Hell." 
 
 This was the long-deferred funeral oration 
 of Macy O'Shea, sometime member of the 
 chain-gang of Port Arthur, and subse- 
 quently runaway convict, beachcomber, 
 cutter-off of whaleships, and Gentleman of 
 Leisure in Eastern Polynesia. And of his 
 many known crimes the deed done in this 
 isolated spot was the darkest of all. Judge 
 of it yourself. 
 
 
 
 The arrowy shafts of sunrise had scarce 
 pierced the deep gloom of the silent forest 
 ere the village woke to life. Right beside 
 the thatch-covered dwelling of Macy O'Shea,
 
 44 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 now a man of might, there towers a stately 
 tamanu tree ; and, as the first faint murmur 
 of women's voices arises from the native 
 huts, there is a responsive twittering and 
 cooing in the thickly-leaved branches, and 
 further back in the forest the heavy booming 
 note of the red-crested pigeon sounds forth 
 
 like the beat of a mufHed drum. 
 
 
 
 With slow, languid step, Sera, the wife of 
 Macy O'Shea, comes to the open door and 
 looks out upon the placid lagoon, now just 
 rippling beneath the first breath of the 
 trade-wind, and longs for courage to go out 
 there there to the point of the reef and 
 spring over among the sharks. The girl 
 she is hardly yet a woman shudders a 
 moment and passes her white hand before 
 her eyes, and then, with a sudden gust of 
 passion, the hand clenches. " I would kill 
 him kill him if there was but a ship here to 
 get away ! I would sell myself over and
 
 REVENGE OF MACY O'SHEA 45 
 
 over again to the worst whaler's crew that 
 ever sailed the Pacific if it would bring me 
 freedom from this cruel, cold-blooded 
 devil ! " 
 
 A heavy tread on the matted floor of the 
 inner room and her face pales to the hue of 
 death. But Macy O'Shea is somewhat shy 
 of his two years' wife this morning, and she 
 hears the heavy steps recede as he walks 
 over to his oil-shed. A flock of gogo cast 
 their shadow over the lagoon as they fly 
 westward, and the woman's eyes follow 
 them " Kill him, yes. I am afraid to 
 die, but not to kill. And I am a stranger 
 here, and if I ran a knife into his fat throat, 
 these natives would make me work in the 
 taro-fields, unless one wanted me for him- 
 self." Then the heavy step returns, and 
 she slowly faces round to the bloodshot eyes 
 and drink-distorted face of the man she
 
 46 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 hates, and raises one hand to her lips to 
 hide a blue and swollen bruise. 
 
 The man throws his short, square-set 
 figure on a rough native sofa, and, passing 
 one brawny hand meditatively over his 
 stubbly chin, says, in a voice like the snarl 
 of a hungry wolf, " Here, I say, Sera, slew 
 round ; I want to talk to you, my beauty." 
 
 The pale, set face flushed and paled again. 
 " What is it, Macy O'Shea ? " 
 
 " Ho, ho, ' Macy O'Shea,' is it ? Well, 
 just this. Don't be a fool. I was a bit put 
 about last night, else I wouldn't have been 
 so quick with my fist. Cut your lip, I see. 
 Well, you must forget it ; any way, it's the 
 first time I ever touched you. But you 
 ought to know by now that I am not a man 
 to be trifled with ; no man, let alone a 
 woman, is going to set a course for Macy 
 O'Shea to steer by. And, to come to the 
 point at once, I want you to understand
 
 REVENGE OF MACY O'SHEA 47 
 
 that Carl Ristow's daughter is coming here. 
 I want her, and that's all about it." 
 
 The woman laughed scornfully. " Yes, I 
 
 know. That was why " She pointed 
 
 to her lips. " Have you no shame ? I 
 know you have no pity. But listen. I 
 swear. to you by the Mother of Christ that 
 I will kill her kill you, if you do this." 
 
 O' Shea's cruel mouth twitched and his 
 jaws set, then he uttered a hoarse laugh. 
 " By God ! Has it taken you two years to 
 get jealous ? " 
 
 A deadly hate gleamed in the dark, 
 passionate eyes. " Jealous, Mother of God ! 
 Jealous of a drunken, licentious wretch such 
 as you ! I hate you, hate you ! If I had 
 courage enough I would poison myself to be 
 free from you." 
 
 O'Shea's eyes emitted a dull sparkle. 
 " I wish you would, damn you ! Yet you
 
 48 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 *$j 
 are game enough, you say, to kill me and 
 
 Malia ? " 
 
 " Yes. But not for love of you. But 
 because of the white blood in me. I can't 
 I won't be degraded by you bringing 
 another woman here." 
 
 " ' For Dios,' as your dad used to say 
 before the devil took his soul, we'll see about 
 that, my beauty. I suppose because your 
 father was a d d garlic-eating, ear- 
 ringed Dago, and your mother a come-by- 
 chance Tahiti half-caste, you think he was as 
 good as me." 
 
 " As good as you, O bloody-handed dog 
 of an English convict. He was a man, and 
 the only wrong he ever did was to let me 
 become wife to a devil like you." 
 
 The cruel eyes were close to hers now, 
 and the rough, brawny hands gripped her 
 wrists. " You spiteful Portuguese quarter- 
 bred ! Call me a convict again and 
 
 I'll twist your neck like a fowl's. You she-
 
 REVENGE OF MACY O'SHEA 49 
 
 devil ! I'd have made things easy for you 
 but I won't now. Do you hear ? " and 
 the grip tightened. " Ristow's girl will be 
 here to-morrow, and if you don't knuckle 
 down to her it'll be a case of ' Vamos ' for 
 you you can go and get a husband among 
 the natives," and he flung her aside and 
 went to the god that ran him closest for his 
 soul, next to women his rum-bottle. 
 
 O'Shea kept his word, for two days later 
 Malia, the half-caste daughter of Ristow, 
 the trader at Ahunui, stepped from out her 
 father's whaleboat in front of O' Shea's 
 house. The transaction was a perfectly 
 legitimate one, and Malia did not allow any 
 inconvenient feeling of modesty to interfere 
 with such a lucrative arrangement at this 
 whereby her father became possessed of a 
 tun of oil and a bag of Chilian dollars, and she 
 of much finery. In those days missionaries
 
 50 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 had not made much headway, and gen- 
 tlemen like Messrs. Ristow and O'Shea 
 took all the wind out of the Gospel drum. 
 
 And so Malia dressed as a native girl, with 
 painted cheeks and bare bosom, walked 
 demurely up from the boat to the purchaser 
 of her sixteen-years' old beauty, who, with 
 arms folded across his broad chest, stood 
 in the middle of the path that led from the 
 beach to his door. And within, with set 
 teeth and a knife in the bosom of her blouse 
 bodice, Sera panted with the lust of Hate 
 and Revenge. 
 
 The bulky form of O'Shea darkened the 
 doorway. " Sera," he called in English, 
 with a mocking, insulting inflexion in his 
 voice, " come here and welcome my new 
 wife ! " 
 
 Sera came, walking slowly over with a 
 smile on her lips and holding out her left
 
 REVENGE OF MACY O'SHEA 51 
 
 hand to Malia, said in the native language, 
 " Welcome ! " 
 
 " Why," said O'Shea, with mocking 
 jocularity, " that's a left-handed welcome, 
 Sera." 
 
 "Aye," said the girl with the White 
 Man's blood, " my right hand is for this " 
 and the knife sank home into Malia 's 
 yellow bosom. " A cold bosom for you 
 to-night, Macy O'Shea," she laughed, as the 
 value of a tun of oil and a bag of Chilian 
 dollars gasped out its life upon the matted 
 floor. 
 
 II 
 
 The native drum was beating. As the 
 blood-quickening boom reverberated through 
 the village, the natives came out from their 
 huts and gathered around the House of the 
 Old Men, where, with bound hands and feet, 
 Sera, the White Man's wife., sat, with her 
 back to one of the centre-posts. And
 
 52 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 opposite her, sitting like a native on a mat 
 of kapaUj was the burly figure of O'Shea, 
 with the demon of disappointed passion 
 eating away his reason and a mist of blood 
 swimming before his eyes. 
 
 The people all detested her, especially the 
 soft-voiced, slender-framed women. In that 
 one thing savages resembled Christians 
 the deadly hatred with which women hate 
 those of their sex whom they know to be 
 better and more pure than themselves. So 
 the matter was decided quickly. Mesi so 
 they called O'Shea should have justice. If 
 he thought death, let it be death for this 
 woman who had let out the blood of his 
 new wife. Only one man, Loloku the Boar 
 Hunter, raised his voice for her, because 
 Sera had cured him of a bad wound when 
 his leg had been torn open by the tusk of a 
 wild boar. But the dull glare from the eyes
 
 REVENGE OF MACY O'SHEA 53 
 
 of O'Shea fell on him and he said no more. 
 Then at a sign from the old men the people 
 rose from the mats and two unbound the 
 cords of of a from the girl and led her out 
 into the square and looked at O'Shea. 
 " Take her to the boat," he said. 
 
 Ristow's boat had been hauled up, turned 
 over, and covered with the rough mats 
 called kapau to keep off the heat of the sun. 
 With staggering feet, but undaunted heart, 
 the girl Sera was led down. Only once she 
 turned her head and looked back. Perhaps 
 Loloku would try again. Then, as they 
 came to the boat, a young girl, at a sign 
 from O'Shea, took off the loose blouse, and 
 they placed her, face downwards, across the 
 bilge of the boat, and two pair of small, 
 eager, brown hands each seized one of hers 
 and dragged the white, rounded arms well 
 over the keel of the boat. O'Shea walked
 
 54 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 round to that side, drawing through his 
 hands the long, heavy, and serrated tail of 
 the/at the gigantic stinging-ray of Oceana. 
 He would have liked to wield it himself, but 
 then he would have missed part of his 
 revenge he could not have seen her face. 
 So he gave it to a native, and watched, with 
 the smile of a fiend, the white back turn 
 black and then into bloody red as it was cut 
 to pieces with the tail of 
 
 The sight of the inanimate thing that had 
 given no sign of its agony beyond the 
 shudderings and twitchings of torn and 
 mutilated flesh was perhaps disappointing 
 to the tiger who stood and watched the dark 
 stream that flowed down on both sides of 
 the boat. Loloku touched his arm " Mesi, 
 stay your hand. She is dead else." 
 
 "Ah," said O'Shea, "that would be a 
 pity, for with one hand shall she live to 
 plant taro."
 
 REVENGE OF MACY O'SHEA 55 
 
 And, hatchet in hand, he walked in 
 between the two brown women who held 
 her hands. They moved aside and let go. 
 Then O'Shea swung his arm and the blade 
 of the hatchet struck into the planking, and 
 the right hand of Sera fell on the sand. 
 
 A man put his arms around her, and 
 lifted her off the boat. He placed his hand 
 on the blood-stained bosom and looked at 
 Macy O'Shea. 
 
 " E mate * " he said. 
 
 iDead.
 
 ( 56) 
 
 THE RANGERS OF THE TIA KAU 
 
 BETWEEN Nanomea and Nanomaga two 
 of the Ellice Group but within a few miles 
 of the latter, is an extensive submerged 
 shoal, on the charts called the Grand Cocal 
 Reef, but by the people of the two islands 
 known as Tia Kau (The Reef). On the 
 shallowest part there are from four to ten 
 fathoms of water, and here in heavy weather 
 the sea breaks. The British cruiser 
 Basilisk, about 1870, sought for the reef, 
 but. reported it as non-existent. Yet the 
 Tia Kau is well known to many a Yankee 
 whaler and trading schooner, and is a 
 favourite fishing-ground of the people of 
 Nanomaga when the sharks give them a 
 chance.
 
 RANGERS OF THE TIA KAU 57 
 
 One night Atupa, King of Nanomaga, 
 caused a huge fire to be lit on the beach as 
 a signal to the people of Nanomea that a 
 malaga, or party of voyagers, was coming 
 over. Both islands are low not more than 
 fifteen feet above sea-level and are distant 
 from one another about thirty-eight miles. 
 The following night the reflection of the 
 answering fire on Nanomea was seen, and 
 Atupa prepared to send away his people 
 in seven canoes. They would start at sun- 
 down, so as to avoid paddling in the heat 
 (the Nanomagans have no sailing canoes), 
 and be guided to Nanomea, which they 
 expected to reach early in the morning, by 
 the reflection of the great fires of cocoanut 
 and pandanus leaves kindled at intervals of 
 a few hours. About seventy people were 
 to go, and all that day the little village 
 busied itself in preparing for the Nanomeans' 
 gifts of foods cooked puraka, fowls, pigs, 
 and flying-fish.
 
 58 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 Atupa, the heathen king, was troubled in 
 his mind in those days of August, 1872. The 
 John Williams had been there and landed 
 a Samoan missionary, who had pressed him 
 to accept Christianity. Atupa, dreading a 
 disturbing element in his kingdom, had, at 
 first, declined ; but the ship had come again, 
 and the king having consented to try the 
 new religion, a teacher landed. But since 
 then he and his chiefs had consulted the 
 oracle, and had been told that the shades of 
 Maumau Tahori and Foilagi, their deified 
 ancestors, had answered that the new 
 religion was unacceptable to them, and that 
 the Samoan teacher must be killed or sent 
 away. And for this was Atupa sending off 
 some of his people to Nanomea with gifts 
 of goodwill to the chiefs to beseech them 
 to consult their oracles, also so that 
 the two islands might take concerted 
 action against this new foreign god, which 
 said that all men were equal, that all
 
 RANGERS OF THE TIA KAU 59 
 
 were bad, and He and His Son alone 
 good. 
 
 
 
 The night was calm when the seven canoes 
 set out. Forty men and thirty women and 
 children were in the party, and the craft were 
 were too deeply laden for any but the 
 smoothest sea. On the ama (outrigger) of 
 each canoe were the baskets of food and 
 bundles of mats for their hosts, and seated 
 on these the children, while the women sat 
 with the men and helped them to paddle. 
 Two hours' quick paddling brought them 
 to the shoal-water of Tia Kau, and at the 
 same moment they saw to the N.W. the sky- 
 glare of the first guiding fire. 
 
 It was then that the people in the first 
 canoe, wherein was Palu, the daughter of 
 Atupa, called out to those behind to prepare 
 their asu (balers), as a heavy squall was 
 coming down from the eastward. Then
 
 60 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 Laheii, an old warrior in another canoe, cried 
 out that they should return on their track 
 a little and get into deep water ; " for," said 
 he, " if we swamp, away from Tia Kau, it 
 is but a little thing, but here ' and he 
 clasped his hands rapidly together and then 
 tore them apart. They knew what he 
 meant the sharks that, at night-time for- 
 saking the deep waters, patrolled in droves 
 of thousands the shallow waters of the reef 
 to devour the turtle and the schools of tafau 
 uli and other fish. In quick, alarmed 
 silence the people headed back, but even 
 then the first fierce squall struck them, and 
 some of the frail canoes began to fill at once. 
 " / matagi ! i matagi ! " (head to the wind) 
 a man called out ; " head to the wind, or 
 we perish ! 'Tis but a puff and it's gone." 
 
 But it was more than a puff. The seven 
 canoes, all abreast, were still in shallow
 
 RANGERS OF THE TIA KAU 61 
 
 water, and the paddlers kept them dead in 
 the teeth of the whistling wind and stinging 
 rain, and called out words of encouragement 
 to one another and to the women and 
 children, as another black squall burst upon 
 them and the curling seas began to break. 
 The canoe in which was Atupa's daughter 
 was the largest and best of all the seven, 
 but was much overladen, and on the out- 
 rigger grating were four children. These 
 the chief's daughter was endeavouring to 
 shield from the rain by covering them with 
 a mat, when one of them, a little girl, 
 endeavoured to steady herself by holding 
 to one of the thin pieces of grating ; it broke, 
 and her arm fell through and struck the 
 water, v and in an instant she gave a dull, 
 smothered wail. Palu, the woman, seized 
 her by her hair and pulled the child up 
 sitting, and then shrieked with terror 
 the girl's arm was gone !
 
 62 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 And then in the blackness of night, 
 lightened now by the white, seething, boiling 
 surge, the people saw in the phosphorescent 
 water countless hundreds of the savage 
 terrors of the Tia Kau darting hither and 
 thither amongst the canoes for the smell 
 of blood had brought them together 
 instantly. Presently a great grey monster 
 tore the paddle from out the hands of the 
 steersman of the canoe wherein were the 
 terrified Palu and the four children, and 
 then, before the man forward could bring 
 her head to the wind, she broached to and 
 filled. Like ravening wolves the sharks 
 dashed upon their prey, and ere the people 
 had time to give more than a despairing cry 
 those hideous jaws and gleaming cruel teeth 
 had sealed their fate. Maddened with fear, 
 the rest of the people threw everything out 
 of the six other canoes to lighten them, and 
 as the bundles of mats and baskets of food 
 touched the water the sharks seized and bit,
 
 RANGERS OF THE TIA KAU 63 
 
 tore and swallowed. Then, one by one, every , 
 paddle was grabbed from the hands of the 
 pullers, and the canoes broached to and 
 rilled in that sea of death all save one, 
 which was carried by the force of the wind 
 away from the rest. In this were the only 
 survivors two men. 
 
 The agony could not have lasted long. 
 " Were I to li*e as long as he whom the 
 faifeau (missionary) tells us lived to be nine 
 hundred and sixty and nine, I shall hear 
 the groans and cries and shrieks of that po 
 malaia, that night of evil luck," said one of 
 the two who lived, to the white trader at 
 Nanomea. " Once did I have my paddle 
 fast in the mouth of a little devil, and it 
 drew me backwards, backwards, over the 
 stern till my head touched the water. 
 Tab ! but I was strong with fear, and held 
 
 on, for to lose it meant death by the teeth, 
 c
 
 64 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 , And Tulua he who came out alive with me, 
 seized my feet and held on, else had I gone. 
 But look thou at this " and he pointed to 
 his scarred neck and back and shoulders 
 " ere I could free my foe (paddle) and raise 
 my head I was bitten thus by others. Ah, 
 Papalagi, some men are born to wisdom, 
 but most are fools. Had notAtupa been 
 filled with vain fears, he had killed the man 
 who caused him to lose s^> many of our 
 people." 
 
 " So," said the white man, " and wouldst 
 thou have killed the man who brought thee 
 the new faith ? Fie ! " 
 
 " Aye, that would I in those days when 
 I 'was po uli uli* But not now, for I am 
 Christian. Yet had Atupa killed and buried 
 the stranger, we could have lied and said he 
 died of a sickness when they of his people 
 
 1 Heathen ; lit. " In the blackest night."
 
 RANGERS OF THE TIA KAU 65 
 
 came to seek him. And then had I now my 
 son Tagipo with me, he who went into the 
 bellies of the sharks at Tia Kau."
 
 (66) 
 
 PALLOU'S TALOI 
 
 A MEMORY OF THE PAUMOTUS 
 
 I STAYED once at Rotoava in the Low 
 Archipelago, Eastern Polynesia while 
 suffering from injuries received in a boat 
 accident one wild night. My host, the 
 Rotoava trader, was a sociable old pirate, 
 whose convivial soul would never let him 
 drink alone. He was by trade a boat- 
 builder, having had, in his early days, a 
 shed at Miller's Point, in Sydney, where he 
 made money and married a wife. But this 
 latter event was poor Tom Oscott's undoing, 
 and in the end he took his chest of tools on 
 board the Thyra and sailed away to Poly- 
 nesia. Finally, after many years' wander- 
 ing, he settled down at Rotoava as a trader
 
 PALLOU'S TALOI 67 
 
 and boat-builder, and a noted drinker of 
 bottled beer. 
 
 The only method by which I could avoid 
 his incessant invitations to " have another " 
 was to get his wife and children to carry me 
 down to his work-shed, a lovely spot 
 surrounded by giant puka trees. Here, 
 under the shade, I had my mats spread, and 
 with one of his children sitting at my head 
 to fan away the flies, I lay and watched, 
 through the belt of cocoanuts that lined 
 the beach, the blue rollers breaking on the 
 reef and the snow-white boatswain-birds 
 floating high overhead. 
 
 Tom was in the bush one morning when 
 his family carried me to the boat-shed. He 
 had gone for a log of seasoned toa T wood to 
 another village. At noon he returned, and 
 I heard him bawling for me. His little 
 
 1 A hard wood much used in boat-building.
 
 68 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 daughter, the fly-brusher, gave an answering 
 yell, and then Tom walked down the path, 
 carrying two bottles of beer ; behind him 
 Lucia, his eldest daughter, a monstrous 
 creature of giggles and adipose tissue, with 
 glasses and a plate of crackers ; lastly, old 
 Marie, the wife, with a little table. 
 
 " By , you've a lot more sense'n me. 
 
 It's better lyin' here in the cool than foolin' 
 around in the sun ; so I've brought yer 
 suthin' to drink." 
 
 " Oh, Tom," I groaned, " I'm sure that 
 beer's bad for me." 
 
 The Maker of Boats sat on his bench, and 
 said that he knew of a brewer's carter in 
 Sydney who, at Merriman's pub, on Miller's 
 Point, had had a cask of beer roll over him. 
 Smashed seven ribs, one arm, and one thigh. 
 Doctors gave him up ; undertaker's man 
 called on his wife for coffin order ; but a 
 sailor chap said he'd pull him through. 
 Got an indiarubber tube and made him
 
 PALLOU'S TALOI 69 
 
 suck up as much beer as he could hold ; 
 kept it up till all his bones " settled " again, 
 and he recovered. Why shouldn't I if I 
 only drank enough ? >: 
 
 " Hurry up, old dark-skin ! " this to the 
 faded Marie. Uttering merely the word 
 " Hog ! " she drew the cork. I had to 
 drink some, and every hour or so Tom would 
 say it was very hot, and open yet another 
 bottle. At last I escaped the beer by 
 nearly dying, and then the kind old fellow 
 hurried away in his boat to Apatiki 
 another island of the group and came back 
 with some bottles of claret, bought from 
 the French trader there. 
 
 With him came two visitors a big half- 
 caste of middle age, and his wife, a girl of 
 twenty or thereabout. This was Edward 
 Pallou and his wife Taloi. 
 
 
 
 I was in the house when Tom returned, 
 enjoying a long-denied smoke. Pallou and
 
 70 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 his wife entered and greeted me. The man 
 was a fine, well-set-up fellow, wiry and 
 muscular, with deep-set eyes, and bearing 
 across his right cheek a heavy scar. His 
 wife was a dainty little creature with red 
 lips, dazzling teeth, hazel eyes, and long, 
 wavy hair. The first thing I noticed about 
 her was that instead of squatting on a mat 
 in native fashion she sank into a wide chair, 
 and lying back inquired, with a pleasant 
 smile and in perfect English, whether I was 
 feeling any better. She was very fair, even 
 for a Paumotuan half-caste, as I thought 
 she must be, and I said to Pallou, " Why, 
 any one would take your wife to be an 
 English- woman ! " 
 
 " Not I," said Taloi, with a rippling 
 laugh as she commenced to make a banana- 
 leaf cigarette ; " I am a full-blooded South 
 Sea Islander. I belong to Apatiki, and was 
 born there. Perhaps I have white blood in 
 me. Who knows ? only wise mothers. But
 
 PALLOU'S TALOI 71 
 
 when I was twelve years old I was adopted 
 by a gentleman in Papeite, and he sent me 
 to Sydney to school. Do you know Sydney ? 
 
 Well, I was three years with the Misses , 
 
 in Street. My goodness ! I was glad to 
 
 leave and so were the Misses to see 
 
 me go. They said I was downright wicked, 
 because one day I tore the dress off a girl 
 who said my skin was tallowy, like my 
 name. When I came back to Tahiti my 
 guardian took me to Raiatea, where he had 
 a business, and said I must marry him, the 
 beast." 
 
 " Oh, shut up, Taloi ! " growled the deep- 
 voiced Pallou, who sat beside me. " What 
 the deuce does this man care about your 
 doings ? " 
 
 " Shut up yourself, you brute ! Can't I 
 talk to any one I like, you turtle-headed 
 fool ? Am I not a good wife to you, you 
 great, over-grown savage ? Won't you let 
 a poor devil of a woman talk a little ? Look
 
 72 
 
 here, Tom, do you see that flash jacket he's 
 wearing ? Well, I sat tip two nights making 
 that for him to come over here with and 
 show off before the Rotoava girls. Go and 
 die, you " 
 
 The big half-caste looked at Tom and me. 
 His lips twitched with suppressed passion, 
 and a dangerous gleam shone a moment in 
 his dark eyes. 
 
 " Here, I say, Taloi," broke in Tom, good- 
 humouredly, " just go easy a bit with Ted. 
 As for him a-looking at any of the girls here, 
 I knows better and so do you." 
 
 Taloi's laugh, clear as the note of a bird, 
 answered him, and then she said she was 
 sorry, and the lines around Pallou's rigid 
 mouth softened down. It was easy to see 
 that this grim half-white loved, for all her 
 bitter tongue, the bright creature who sat 
 in the big chair. 
 
 Presently Taloi and Lucia went out to
 
 PALLOU'S TALOI 73 
 
 bathe, and Pallou remained with me. Tom 
 joined us, and for a while no one spoke. 
 Then the trader, laying down his pipe on the 
 table, drew his seat closer, and commenced, 
 in low tones, a conversation in Tahitian with 
 Pallou. From the earnest manner of old 
 Tom and the sullen gloom that overspread 
 Pallou's face, I could discern that some 
 anxiety possessed them. 
 
 At last Tom addressed me, " Look here, 
 
 , Ted here is in a mess, and we've just 
 
 been a-talkin* of it over, and he says perhaps 
 you'll do what you can for him." 
 
 The half-caste turned his dark eyes on me 
 and looked intently into mine. 
 
 " What is it, Tom ? " 
 
 " Well, you see, it come about this way. 
 You heard this chap's missus Taloi 
 a-talkin' about the Frenchman that wanted 
 to marry her. He had chartered a little 
 schooner in Papeite to go to Raiatea. 
 Pallou here was mate, and, o' course he,
 
 74 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 being from the same part of the group as 
 Taloi, she ups and tells him that the French- 
 man wanted to marry her straightaway ; and, 
 then, I s'pose, the two gets a bit chummy, 
 and Pallou tells her that if she didn't want 
 the man he'd see as how she wasn't forced 
 agin' her will. So when the vessel gets to 
 Raiatea it fell calm, just about sunset. The 
 Frenchman was in a hurry to get ashore, and 
 tells his skipper to put two men in the boat 
 and some grub, as he meant to pull ashore 
 to his station. So they put the boat over 
 the side, and Frenchy and Taloi and Pallou 
 and two native chaps gets in and pulls for 
 the land. 
 
 " They gets inside Uturoa about mid- 
 night. ' Jump out,' says the Frenchman to 
 Taloi ; but the girl wouldn't, but ties herself 
 up around Pallou and squeals. * Sakker ! ' 
 says the Frenchy, and he grabs her by the 
 hair and tries to tear her away. ' 'Ere, 
 stop that,' says Pallou ; * the girl ain 't
 
 PALLOU'S TALOI 75 
 
 willinV an' he pushes Frenchy away. 
 ' Sakker ! ' again, and Frenchy whips out his 
 pistol and nearly blows Pallou's face off'n 
 him ; and then, afore he knows how it was 
 done, Ted sends his knife home into the other 
 fellow's throat. The two native sailors 
 runned away ashore, and Pallou and Taloi 
 takes the oars and pulls out again until they 
 drops. Then a breeze comes along, and 
 they up stick and sails away and gets clear 
 of the group, and brings up, after a lot of 
 suffering at Rurutu. And ever since then 
 there's been a French gunboat a-lookin' for 
 Pallou, and he's been hidin' at Apatiki for 
 nigh on a twelvemonth, and has come over 
 here now to see if, when your ship comes 
 back, you can't give him and the missus a 
 passage, away somewhere to the westward, 
 out o' the run of that there gunboat, the 
 
 Vaudrtuil" 
 
 
 
 I promised I would " work it " with the
 
 76 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 captain, and Pallou put out his brawny 
 hand the hand that " drove it home into 
 Frenchy's throat " and grasped mine in 
 silence. Then he lifted his jacket and 
 showed me his money-belt, filled. 
 
 " I don't want money," I said. " If you 
 have told me the whole story, I would help 
 any man in such a fix as you." And then 
 Taloi, fresh from her bath, came in and sat 
 down on the mat whilst fat Lucia combed 
 and dressed her glossy hair and placed 
 therein scarlet hisbiscus flowers ; and to 
 show her returned good temper, she took 
 from her lips the cigarette she was smoking 
 and offered it to the grim Pallou. 
 
 A month later we all three left Rotoava, 
 and Pallou and Taloi went ashore at one of 
 the Hervey Group, where I gave him charge 
 of a station with a small stock of trade, and 
 we sailed away eastward to Pitcairn and 
 Easter Islands.
 
 PALLOU'S TALOI 77 
 
 Pallou did a good business and was well 
 liked, and some seven months afterwards, 
 when we were at Maga Reva, in the Gambier 
 Group, I got a letter from him. " Business 
 goes well," he wrote, " but Taloi is ill ; I 
 think she will die. You will find everything 
 square, though, when you come." 
 
 But I was never to see that particular 
 island again, as the firm sent another vessel 
 in place of ours to get Pallou's produce. 
 When the captain and the supercargo went 
 ashore, a white trader met them, with a 
 roll of papers in his hand. 
 
 " Pallou's stock-list," he said. 
 
 " Why, where is he ? gone away ? >3 
 
 " No, he's here still ; planted alongside 
 his missus." 
 
 " Dead ! " 
 
 " Yes. A few months after he arrived 
 here that pretty little wife of his died. He 
 came to me and asked if I would come and 
 take stock with him. I said he seemed in a
 
 78 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 bit of a hurry to start stock-taking before 
 the poor thing was buried ; but anyhow, I 
 went, and we took stock, and he counted 
 his cash and asked me to lock the place up 
 if anything happened to him. Then we had 
 a drink, and he bade me good-day and said 
 he was going to sit with Taloi awhile before 
 they took her away. He sent the native 
 women out of the bedroom, and the next 
 minute I heard a shot. He'd done it, right 
 enough. Right through his brain, poor 
 chap. I can tell you he thought a lot of 
 that girl of his. There's the two graves, 
 over there by that fetau tree. Here's his 
 stock-list and bag of cash and keys. Would 
 you mind giving me that pair of rubber sea- 
 boots he left ? "
 
 (79*) 
 
 A BASKET OF BREAD-FRUIT 
 
 IT was in Steinberger's time. A trader 
 had come up to Apia in his boat from the 
 end of Savaii, the largest of the Samoan 
 Group, and was on his way home again when 
 the falling tide caused him to stop awhile 
 at Mulinu'u Point about two miles from 
 Apia. Here he designed to smoke and talk 
 and drink kava at the great camp with some 
 hospitable native acquaintances during the 
 rising of the water. Soon he was taking 
 his ease on a soft mat, watching the bevy 
 of aua luma J " chawing " kava. 
 
 Now the trader lived at Falealupo, at the 
 extreme westerly end of Savaii ; but the 
 Samoans, by reason of its isolation and 
 
 1 The local girls.
 
 8o BY REEF -AND PALM 
 
 extremity, have for ages called it by another 
 name an unprintable one and so some 
 of the people present began to jest with the 
 trader for living in such a place. He fell in 
 with their humour, and said that if those 
 present would find him for a wife a girl 
 unseared by the breath of scandal he would 
 leave Falealupo for Safune, where he had 
 bought land. 
 
 " Malie ! " said an old dame, with one eye 
 and white hair, " the papalagi ' is inspired 
 to speak wisdom to-night ; for the Safune 
 grow the sweetest nuts and the biggest taro 
 and bread-fruit ; and, lo ! here among the 
 kava-chewers is a young maid from Safune 
 mine own grand-daughter Salome. And 
 against her name can no one in Samoa laugh 
 in the hollow of his hand," and the old 
 creature, amid laughter and cries of Isa ! 
 e le ma le lo matua (The old woman is without 
 shame), crept over to the trader, and, with 
 
 1 Foreigner.
 
 A BASKET OF BREAD-FRUIT 81 
 
 one skinny hand on his knee, gazed steadily 
 
 into his face with her one eye. 
 
 
 
 The trader looked at the girl at Salome. 
 She had, at her grandmother's speech, 
 turned her head aside, and taking the 
 " chaw " of kava-root from her pretty 
 mouth, dissolved into shamefaced tears. 
 The trader was a man of quick perceptions, 
 and he made up his mind to do in earnest 
 what he had said in jest this because of 
 the tears of Salome. He quickly whispered 
 to the old woman, " Come to the boat 
 before the full of tide and we will talk." 
 
 When the kava was ready for drinking 
 the others present had forgotten all about 
 the old woman and Salome, who had both 
 crept away unobserved, and an hour or two 
 was passed in merriment, for the trader 
 was a man well liked. Then, when he rose 
 and said to fa, they begged him not to 
 attempt to pass down in his boat inside the
 
 82 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 reef, as he was sure to be fired upon, for how 
 were their people to tell a friend from an 
 enemy in the black night ? But he smiled, 
 and said his boat was too heavily laden to 
 face the ocean swell. So they bade him 
 to fa, and called out manuia oe x as he 
 lifted the door of thatch and went. 
 
 The old woman awaited him, holding the 
 girl by the hand. On the ground lay a 
 basket, strongly tied up. Salome still wept, 
 but the old woman angrily bade her cease 
 and enter the boat, which the crew had now 
 pushed bow-on to the beach. The old 
 woman lifted the basket and carefully put 
 it on board. 
 
 " Be sure," she said to the crew, " not to 
 sit on it, for it is but ripe bread-fruit I am 
 taking to my people in Manono." 
 
 " Give them here to me," said the trader, 
 
 1 Bless von
 
 A BASKET OF BREAD-FRUIT 83 
 
 and he put the basket in the stern out of 
 the way. The old woman came aft, too, 
 and crouched at his feet and smoked a sulut. 1 
 The cold land-breeze freshened as the sail 
 was hoisted and then the crew besought the 
 trader not to run down inside the reef. 
 Bullets, they said, if fired in plenty, always 
 hit something, and the sea was fairly smooth 
 outside the reef. And old Lupetea grasped 
 his hand and muttered in his ear, " For the 
 sake of this my little daughter go outside. 
 See, now, I am old, and to lie when so near 
 death as I am is foolish. Be warned by me 
 and be wise ; sail out into the ocean, and at 
 daylight we will be at Salua in Manono. 
 Then thou canst set my feet on the shore 
 I and the basket. But the girl shall go with 
 thee. Thou canst marry her, if that be to 
 thy mind, in the fashion of the papalagt, or 
 take her fa'a Samoa* Thus will I keep 
 
 1 A cigarette rolled in dried banana leaf. 2 Samoan fashion.
 
 84 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 faith with thee. If the girl be false, her 
 neck is but little and thy fingers strong." 
 
 Now the trader thought in this wise : 
 :e This is well for me, for if I get the girl 
 away thus quietly from all her relations I 
 will save much in presents," and his heart 
 rejoiced, for although not mean he was a 
 careful man. So he steered his boat between 
 the seething surf that boiled and hissed on 
 both sides of the boat-passage. 
 
 As the boat sailed past the misty line of 
 cloud-capped Upolu, the trader lifted the 
 girl up beside him and spoke to her. She 
 was not afraid of him, she said, for many 
 had told her he was a good man, and not a 
 ula vale (scamp), but she wept because now, 
 save her old grandmother, all her kinsfolk 
 were dead. Even but a day and a half ago 
 her one brother was killed with her cousin. 
 They were strong men, but the bullets were
 
 A BASKET OF BREAD-FRUIT 85 
 
 swift, and so they died. And their heads 
 had been shown at Matautu. For that she 
 had grieved and wept and eaten nothing, 
 and the world was cold to her. 
 
 " Poor little devil ! " said the trader to 
 himself " hungry." Then he opened a 
 locker and found a tin of sardines. Not a 
 scrap of biscuit. There was plenty of 
 biscuit, though, in the boat, in fifty-pound 
 tins, but on these mats were spread, whereon 
 his crew were sleeping. He was about to 
 arouse them when he remembered the old 
 dame's basket of ripe bread-fruit. He 
 laughed and looked at her. She, too, slept, 
 coiled up at his feet. But first he opened 
 the sardines and placed them beside the 
 girl, and motioned her to steer. Her eyes 
 gleamed like diamonds in the darkness as 
 she answered his glance, and her soft fingers 
 grasped the tiller. Very quickly, then, he 
 felt among the packages aft till he came to 
 the basket.
 
 86 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 A quick stroke of his knife cut the cinnet 
 that lashed the sides together. He felt 
 inside. " Only two, after all, but big ones, 
 and no mistake. Wrapped in cloth, too ! 
 I wonder Hejl and furies, what's this ? >: 
 as his fingers came in contact with 
 something that felt like a human eye. 
 Drawing his hand quickly back, he fumbled 
 in his pockets for a match, and struck it. 
 Bread-fruit ! No. Two heads with closed 
 eyes, and livid lips blue with the pallor of 
 death, showing their white teeth. And 
 Salome covered her face and slid down in 
 the bottom of the boat again, and wept 
 afresh for her cousin and brother, and the 
 boat came up in the wind, but no one awoke. 
 
 The trader was angry. But after he had 
 tied up the basket again he put the boat on 
 her course once more and called to the girl. 
 She crept close to him and nestled under his 
 overcoat, for the morning air came across
 
 A BASKET OF BREAD-FRUIT 87 
 
 the sea from the dew-laden forests and she 
 was chilled. Then she told the story of 
 how her grandma had begged the heads 
 from those of Malietoa's troops who had 
 taken them at Matautu, and then gone to 
 the camp at Mulinu'u in the hope of getting 
 a passage in some boat to Manono, her 
 country, where she would fain bury them. 
 And that night he had come, and old 
 Lupetea had rejoiced and sworn her to 
 secrecy about the heads in the basket. And 
 that also was why Lupetea was afraid for 
 the boat to go down inside the passage, for 
 there were many enemies to be met with, 
 and they would have shot old Lupetea 
 because she was of Manono. * That was all. 
 Then she ate the sardines, and, leaning her 
 head against the trader's bosom, fell asleep. 
 
 As the first note of the great grey pigeon 
 sounded the dawn, the trader's boat sailed
 
 88 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 softly up to the Salua beach, and old 
 Lupetea rose, and, bidding the crew good- 
 bye, and calling down blessings on the head 
 of the good and clever white man as she 
 rubbed his and the girl's noses against her 
 own, she grasped her Basket of Bread-fruit 
 and went ashore. Then the trader, with 
 Salome by his side, sailed out again into the 
 ocean.
 
 (89) 
 
 ENDERBY'S COURTSHIP 
 
 THE two ghastly creatures sat facing each 
 other in their wordless misery as the wind 
 died away and the tattered remnants of the 
 sail hung motionless after a last faint flutter. 
 The Thing that sat aft for surely so 
 grotesquely horrible a vision could not be a 
 Man pointed with hands like the talons of 
 a bird of prey to the purple outline of the 
 island in the west, and his black, blood- 
 baked lips moved, opened and essayed to 
 speak. The other being that, with bare 
 and skinny arms clasped around its bony 
 knees, sat crouched in the bottgm of the 
 boat, leaned forward to listen. 
 
 " Ducie Island, Enderby," said the first 
 in a hoarse, rattling whisper ; " no one on it ;
 
 90 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 but water is there . . . and plenty of birds 
 and turtle, and a few cocoanuts. 
 
 At the word " water " the listener gave a 
 curious gibbering chuckle, unclasped his 
 hands from his knees, and crept further 
 towards the speaker. 
 
 " And the current is setting us down to it, 
 wind or no wind. I believe we'll see this 
 pleasure-trip through, after all " and the 
 black lips parted in a hideous grimace. 
 
 The man whom he called Enderby sank 
 his head again upon his knees, and his dulled 
 and bloodshot eyes rested on something 
 that lay at the captain's feet the figure of 
 a woman enveloped from her shoulders 
 down in a ragged native mat. For some 
 hours past she had lain thus with the grey 
 shadows of coming dissolution hovering 
 about her 8 pallid face, and only the faintest 
 movement of lips and eyelids to show that 
 she still lived.
 
 ENDERBY'S COURTSHIP 91 
 
 The black-whiskered man who steered 
 looked down for a second upon the face 
 beneath him with the unconcern for others 
 born of the agony of thirst and despair, and 
 again his gaunt face turned to the land. 
 Yet she was his wife, and not six weeks back 
 he had experienced a cold sort of satisfaction 
 in the possession of so much beauty. 
 
 He remembered that day now. Enderby, 
 the passenger from Sydney, and he were 
 walking the poop ; his wife was asleep in a 
 deck-chair on the other side. An open 
 book lay in her lap. As the two men passed 
 and re-passed her, the one noted that the 
 other would glance in undisguised and 
 honest admiration at the figure in the chair. 
 And Enderby, who was as open as the day, 
 had said to him, Langton, that the sleeping 
 Mrs. Langton made as beautiful a picture 
 as he had ever seen. 
 
 The sail stirred, rilled out, and then 
 drooped again, and the two spectres, with
 
 92 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 the sleeping woman between, still sat with 
 their hungry eyes gazing over toward the 
 land. As the sun sank, the outlines of the 
 verdure-clad summits and beetling cliffs 
 stood forth clearly for a short minute or 
 two, as if to mock them , with hope, and 
 then became enshrouded in the tenebrous 
 night. 
 
 Another hour and a faint sigh came from 
 the ragged mat. Enderby, for ever on the 
 watch, had first seen a white hand silhouetted 
 against the blackness of the covering, and 
 knew that she was still alive. And as he 
 was about to call Langton, who lay in the 
 stern-sheets muttering in hideous dreams, 
 he heard the woman's voice calling him. 
 With panting breath and trembling limbs 
 he crawled over beside her and gently 
 touched her hand. 
 
 " Thank God, you are alive, Mrs. Langton.
 
 ENDERBY'S COURTSHIP 93 
 
 Shall I wake Captain Langton ? We must 
 be nearing the land." 
 
 " No, don't. Let him sleep. But I 
 called you, Mr. Enderby, to lift me up. I 
 want to see where the rain is coming from." 
 
 Enderby groaned in anguish of spirit. 
 
 " Rain ? God has forgotten us, I ," 
 
 and then he stopped in shame at betraying 
 his weakness before a woman. 
 
 The * soft, tender tones again " Ah, do 
 help me up, please," I can feel the rain is 
 near." Then the man, with hot tears of 
 mingled weakness and pity coursing down 
 his cheeks, raised her up. 
 
 " Why, there it is, Mr. Enderby and 
 the land as well ! And it's a heavy squall, 
 too," and she pointed to a moving, inky 
 mass that half concealed the black shadow 
 of the island. " Quick, take my mat ; one 
 end of it is tight and will hold water." 
 
 " Langton, La-a-ngton ! Here's a rain 
 squall coming," and Enderby pressedjthe
 
 94 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 woman's hand to his lips and kissed it again 
 and again. Then with eager hands he took 
 the mat from her, and staggering forward to 
 the bows stretched the sound end across and 
 bellied it down. And then the moving mass 
 that was once black, and was now white, 
 swept down upon them and brought them 
 life and joy. 
 
 Langton, with an empty beef-tin in his 
 hand, stumbled over his wife's * figure, 
 plunged the vessel into the water and drank 
 again and again. 
 
 " Curse you, you brute ! " shouted 
 Enderby through the wild noise of the 
 hissing rain. " Where is your wife ? Are 
 you going to let her lie there without a 
 drink ? " 
 
 Langton answered not, but drank once 
 more. Then Enderby, with an oath, tore 
 the tin from his hand, filled it and took it 
 to her, holding her up while she drank. And 
 as her eyes looked gratefully into his while
 
 ENDERBY'S COURTSHIP 95 
 
 he placed her tenderly back in the stern- 
 sheets, the madness of a moment over- 
 powered him, and he kissed her on the lips- 
 Concerned only with the nectar in the mat, 
 Langton took no regard of Enderby as he 
 opened the little locker, pulled out a coarse 
 dungaree jumper and wrapped it round the 
 thinly-clad and drenched figure of the 
 
 woman. 
 
 
 
 She was weeping now, partly from the 
 joy of knowing that she was not to die of 
 the agonies of thirst in an open boat in mid- 
 Pacific and partly because the water had 
 given her strength to remember that Lang- 
 ton had cursed her when he had stumbled 
 over her to get at the water in the mat. 
 
 . 
 
 She had married him because of his hand- 
 some face and dashing manner for one 
 reason, and because her Scotch father, also 
 a Sydney-Tahitian trading captain, had
 
 96 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 pointed out to her that Langton had made 
 and was still making money in the island 
 trade. Her ideal of a happy life was to 
 have her husband leave the sea and buy an 
 estate either in Tahiti or Chili. She knew 
 both countries well : the first was her birth- 
 place, and between there and Valparaiso and 
 Sydney her money-grubbing old father had 
 traded for years, always carrying with him 
 his one daughter, whose beauty the old man 
 regarded as a " vara guid thing " and likely 
 to procure him a " weel-to-do mon " for a 
 son-in-law. 
 
 Mrs. Langton cared for her husband in a 
 prosaic sort of way, but she knew no more 
 of his inner nature and latent utter selfish- 
 ness a year after her marriage than she had 
 known a year before. Yet, because of the 
 strain of dark blood in her veins her mother 
 was a Tahitian half-caste she felt the 
 mastery of his savage resolution in the face 
 of danger in the thirteen days of horror that
 
 ENDERBY'S COURTSHIP 97 
 
 had elapsed since the brigantine crashed on 
 an uncharted reef between Pitcairn and 
 Ducie Islands, and the other boat had parted 
 company with them, taking most of the 
 provisions and water. And to hard, callous 
 natures such as Langton's, women yield 
 easily and admire which is better than 
 loving, for both. 
 
 But that savage curse still sounded in her 
 ears, and unconsciously made her think of 
 Enderby, who had always, ever since the 
 eighth day in the boat, given her half his 
 share of water. Little did she know the 
 agony it had cost him the day before, when 
 the water had given out, to bring her the 
 whole of his allowance. And as she drank, 
 the man's heart had beaten with a trull 
 sense of pity, the while his baser nature 
 called out, " Fool ! it is bis place, not yours, 
 to suffer for her." 
 
 At daylight the boat was close in to the
 
 98 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 land, and Langton, in his cool, cynical 
 fashion, told his wife and Enderby to finish 
 up the last of the meat and biscuit for if 
 they capsized getting through into the 
 lagoon, he said, they would never want any 
 more. He had eaten all be wanted unknown 
 to the others, and looked with an unmoved 
 face at Enderby, soaking some biscuit in the 
 tin for his wife. Then, with the ragged sail 
 fluttering to the wind, Langton headed the 
 boat through the passage into the glassy 
 waters of the lagoon, and the two tottering 
 men, leading the woman between them, 
 sought the shelter of a thicket scrub, im- 
 penetrable to the rays of the sun, and slept. 
 And then for a week Enderby went and 
 scoured the reefs for food for her. 
 
 One day at noon Enderby awoke. The 
 woman still slept heavily, the first sign of 
 returning strength showing as a faint tinge
 
 ENDERBY'S COURTSHIP 99 
 
 in the pallor of her cheek. Langton was 
 gone. A sudden chill passed over him 
 had Langton taken the boat and left them 
 to die on lonely Ducie ? With hasty step 
 Enderby hurried to the beach. The boat 
 was there, safe. And at the farther end of 
 the beach he saw Langton, sitting on the 
 sand, eating. 
 
 " Selfish brute ! " muttered Enderby. " I 
 wonder what he's got ? " Just then he 
 saw, close overhead, a huge ripe pandanus, 
 and, picking up a heavy, flat piece of coral, 
 he tried to ascend the triplicated bole of the 
 tree and hammer off some of the fruit. 
 Langton looked up at him, and showed his 
 white teeth in a mocking smile at the futile 
 effort. Enderby walked over to him, stone 
 in hand. He was not a vindictive man, 
 but he had grown to hate Langton fiercely 
 during the past week for his selfish neglect 
 of his wife. And here was the fellow 
 gorging himself on turtle-eggs, and his
 
 ioo BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 tender, delicate wife living on shellfish and 
 pandanus. 
 
 * e 
 
 " Langton," he said, speaking thickly and 
 pretending not to notice the remainder of 
 the eggs, " the tide is out and we may get a 
 turtle in one of the pools if you come with 
 me. Mrs. Langton needs something better 
 than that infernal pandanus fruit. Her lips 
 are quite sore and bleeding from eating 
 it." 
 
 The Inner Nature came out. " Are 
 they ? My wife's lips seem to give you a 
 very great deal of concern. She has not 
 said anything to me. And I have an 
 
 idea " The look in Enderby's face 
 
 shamed into silence the slander he was about 
 to utter. Then he added coolly " But as 
 for going with you after a turtle, thanks, I 
 won't. I've found a nest here and have had 
 a good square feed. If the man-o'-war 
 hawks and boobies hadn't been here before
 
 ENDERBY'S COURTSHIP 101 
 
 me I'd have got the whole lot." Then he 
 tore the skin off another egg with his teeth. 
 
 With a curious guttural voice Enderby 
 asked " How many eggs were left ? " 
 
 " Thirty or so perhaps forty." 
 
 " And you have eaten all but those ? " 
 pointing with savage contempt to five of the 
 round, white balls ; " give me those for your 
 wife." 
 
 " My dear man, Louise has too much 
 Island blood in her not to be able to do 
 better than I or you in a case like ours. 
 And as you have kindly constituted yourself 
 her providore, you had better go and look 
 for a nest yourself." 
 
 " You dog ! " and the sharp-edged coral 
 stone crashed into his brain. 
 
 
 
 When Enderby returned, he found Mrs. 
 Langton sitting up on the creeper-covered 
 mound that overlooked the beach where he 
 had left Langton.
 
 102 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 " Come away from here," he said, " into 
 the shade. I have found a few turtle 
 eggs." 
 
 They walked back a little and sat down. 
 But for the wild riot in his brain, Enderby 
 would have noted that every vestige of 
 colour had left her face. 
 
 ' You must be hungry," he thought he 
 was saying to her, and he placed the white 
 objects in her lap. 
 
 She turned them slowly over and over in 
 her hands and then dropped them with a 
 shudder. Some were flecked with red. 
 
 " For God's sake," the man cried, " tell 
 me what you know ! " 
 
 " I saw it all," she answered. 
 
 "I swear to you, Mrs. Lan " (the 
 
 name stuck in his throat), " I never meant 
 it. As God is my witness, I swear it. If 
 we ever escape from here I will give myself 
 up to justice as a murderer." 
 
 The woman, with hands spread over her
 
 ENDERBY'S COURTSHIP 103 
 
 face, shook her head from side to side and 
 sobbed. Then she spoke. " I loved him 
 once. . . . Yet it was for me . . . and you 
 saved my life over and over again in the 
 boat. All sinners are forgiven, we are told. 
 . . . Why should not you be ? ... and it 
 was for me you did it. And I won't let you 
 give yourself up to justice or any one. I'll 
 say he died in the boat." And then the 
 laughter of hysterics. 
 
 When, some months later, the Josephine, 
 whaler of New London, picked them up on 
 her way to Japan, via the Carolines and 
 Pelews, the captain satisfactorily answered 
 the query made by Enderby if he could 
 marry them. He " rayther thought he 
 could. A man who was used ter ketchin' 
 and killin' whales, the powerfullest creature 
 of Almighty Gawd's creation, was ekal to 
 marryin' a pair of unfortunit human 
 
 D*
 
 104 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 beans in sich a pre-carus situation as 
 theirs." 
 
 And, by the irony of fate, the Enderbys 
 (that isn't their name) are now living in a 
 group of islands where there's quite a trade 
 done in turtle, and whenever a ship's captain 
 comes to dine with them they never have 
 the local dish turtle eggs for dinner. 
 " We see them so often," Enderby explains, 
 " and my wife is quite tired of them."
 
 LONG CHARLEY'S GOOD LITTLE WIFE 
 
 THERE was the island, only ten miles away, 
 and there it had been for a whole week. 
 Sometimes we had got near enough to see 
 Long Charley's house and the figures of 
 natives walking on the yellow beach ; and 
 then the westerly current would take us 
 away to leeward again. But that night a 
 squall came up, and in half an hour we were 
 running down to the land. When the lights 
 on the beach showed up we hove-to until 
 daylight, and then found the surf too heavy 
 to let us land. 
 
 We got in close to the reef, and could see 
 that the trader's copra-house was full, for 
 there were also hundreds of bags outside,
 
 io6 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 awaiting our boats. It was clearly worth 
 staying for. The trader, a tall, thin, py jama- 
 clad man, came down to the water's edge, 
 waved his long arm, and then turned back 
 and sat down on a bag of copra. We went 
 about and passed the village again, and once 
 more the long man came to the water's 
 edge, waved his arm, and retired to his seat. 
 
 In the afternoon we saw a native and 
 Charley together among the bags ; then the 
 native left him, and, as it was now low tide, 
 the kanaka was able to walk to the edge of 
 the reef, where he signalled to us. Seeing 
 that he meant to swim off, the skipper went 
 in as close as possible, and backed his fore- 
 yard. Watching his chance for a lull in the 
 yet fierce breakers, the native slid over the 
 reef and swam out to us as only a Line 
 Islander or a Tokelau man can swim. 
 
 " How's Charley ? " we asked, when the 
 dark man reached the deck. 
 
 " Who ? Charley ? Oh he fine, plenty
 
 LONG CHARLEY'S WIFE 107 
 
 copra. Tapa ! my bowels are filled with the 
 sea for one dollar ! Here ariki vaka 
 (captain) and you tuhi tubi (supercagro)," 
 said the native, removing from his per- 
 forated and pendulous ear-lobe a little roll 
 of leaf, " take this letter from the mean one 
 that giveth but a dollar for facing such a 
 galu (surf). Hast plenty tobacco on board, 
 friends of my heart ? Apa, the surf ! Not 
 a canoe crew could the white man get to 
 face it. Is it good twist tobacco, friends, 
 or the flat cakes ? Know that I am a man 
 of Nanomea, not one of these dog-eating 
 people here, and a strong swimmer ; else the 
 letter had not come." 
 
 The supercargo took the note. It was 
 rolled up in many thicknesses of banana- 
 leaf, which had kept it dry : . 
 
 " Dear friends, I have Been waiting for 
 you for near 5 months. I am Chock full of 
 Cobberah and Shark Fins one Ton. I am
 
 io8 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 near Starved Out, No Biscit, no Beef, no 
 flour, not Enything to Eat. for god's Saik 
 send me a case of Gin ashore if you Don't 
 mean to Hang on till the sea goes Down. 
 Not a Woman comes Near me because I am 
 Run out of Traid so please try also to Send 
 a Peece of Good print as there are some 
 fine Women here from Nukunau and I 
 think I can get one for a wife if I am smart. 
 If you Can't take my Cobberah and mean to 
 Go away send the Squair face J for god's saik 
 and something for the Woman. Your 
 obliged Friend, CHARLES." 
 
 We parcelled a bottle of gin round with a 
 small coir line, and sent it ashore by the 
 Nanomea man. Charley and a number of 
 natives came to the edge of the reef to lend 
 a hand in landing the bearer of the treasure. 
 Then they all waded back to the beach, 
 
 1 Square f ace = Hollands gin.
 
 LONG CHARLEY'S WIFE 109 
 
 headed by the white man in the dirty 
 pyjamas and sodden-looking fata hat. 
 Reaching his house, he turned his following 
 away and shut the door. 
 
 " I bet a dollar he wouldn't swap billets 
 with the angel Gabriel at this partikler 
 moment," said the profane mate, thought- 
 fully. 
 
 We started weighing and shipping the 
 copra next day. After finishing up, the 
 solemn Charley invited the skipper and 
 supercargo to remain ashore till morning. 
 His great trouble, he told us, was that he 
 had not yet secured a wife, " a reg'lar wife, 
 y'know." He had, unluckily, " lost the 
 run " of the last Mrs. Charley during his 
 absence at another island of the group, and 
 negotiations with various local young 
 women had been broken off owing to his 
 having run out of trade. In the South Seas,
 
 no BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 as in Australia and elsewhere, to get the 
 girl of your heart is generally a mere matter 
 of trade. There were, he told us with a 
 melancholy look, " some fine Nukunau girls 
 here on a visit, but the one I want don't 
 seem to care much about stayin', unless all 
 this new trade fetches her." 
 
 " Who is she ? " inquired the skipper. 
 
 " Tibakwa's daughter." 
 
 " Let's have a look at her," said the 
 skipper, a man of kind impulses, who felt 
 sorry at the intermittency of the Long One's 
 connubial relations. 
 
 The tall, scraggy trader shambled to the 
 door and bawled out " Tibakwa, Tibakwa, 
 Tibakwa, O ! " three times. 
 
 The people, singing in the big moniep or 
 town-house, stopped their monotonous 
 droning, and the name of Tibakwa was 1 
 yelled vociferously throughout the village 
 in true Gilbert Group style. In the Gilberts, 
 if a native in one corner of a house speaks
 
 LONG CHARLEY'S WIFE 111 
 
 to another in the opposite he bawls loud 
 enough to be heard a mile off. 
 
 
 
 Tibakwa (The Shark) was a short, squat 
 fellow with his broad back and chest scored 
 and seamed with an intricate and inartistic 
 network of cicatrices made by shark's-teeth 
 swords. His hair, straight, coarse and jet- 
 black, was cut away square from just above 
 his eyebrows to the top of his ears, leaving 
 his fierce countenance in a sort of frame. 
 Each ear-lobe bore a load one had two or 
 three sticks of tobacco, twined in and about 
 the distended circle of flesh, and the other 
 a clasp-knife and wooden pipe. Stripped 
 to the waist, he showed his muscular out- 
 lines to perfection, and he sat down unasked 
 in the bold, ' self-confident, half-defiant 
 manner natural to the Line Islander. 
 
 " Where's Tirau ? " asked the trader. 
 " Here," said the man of wounds, pointing
 
 ii2 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 outside, and he called out in a voice like the 
 bellow of a bull " lirau 0, nako mat ! >: 
 (Come here !) 
 
 Tirau came in timidly, clothed only in 
 a ridi or girdle, and slunk into a far 
 corner. 
 
 The melancholy trader and the father 
 pulled her out, and she dumped herself 
 down in the middle of the room with a 
 muttered " E puakaka te matan ! ' : (Bad 
 white man). 
 
 " Fine girl, Charley," said the skipper, 
 digging him in the ribs. " Ought to suit 
 you, eh ! Make a good little wife." 
 
 Negotiations commenced anew. Father 
 willing to part, girl frightened commenced 
 to cry. The astute Charley brought out 
 some new trade. Tirau's eye here displayed 
 a faint interest. Charley threw her, with 
 the air of a prince, a whole piece of turkey 
 twill, twelve yards value three dollars, cost 
 about 2s. 3d. Tirau put out a little hand
 
 LONG CHARLEY'S WIFE 113 
 
 and drew it gingerly toward her. Tibakwa 
 gave us an atrocious wink. 
 
 " She's cottoned ! " exclaimed Charley. 
 
 And thus without empty and* hollow dis- 
 play, were two loving hearts made to beat 
 as one. As a practical proof of the solemnity 
 of the occasion, the bridegroom then and 
 there gave Tirau his bunch of keys, which 
 she carefully tied to a strand of her rtdi, and, 
 smoking one of the captain's Manillas, she 
 proceeded to bash out the mosquitoes from 
 the nuptial couch with a fan. We assisted 
 her, an hour afterwards, to hoist the sleeping 
 body of Long Charley therein, and telling 
 her to bathe his head in the morning with 
 cold water we rose to go. 
 
 " Good-bye, Tirau ! " we said. 
 
 " Tiakapo" l said the Good Little Wife, 
 as she rolled up an empty square gin bottle 
 
 141 Good-night"
 
 ii4 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 in one of Charley's shirts for a pillow, and 
 disposed her graceful figure on the floor 
 mats, beside his bed, to fight mosquitoes 
 until daylight.
 
 ( us) 
 
 THE METHODICAL MR. BURR 
 OF MAJURU 
 
 ONE day Ned Burr, a fellow trader, walked 
 slowly up the path to my station, and with 
 a friendly nod sat down and watched 
 intently as, with native assistance, I set 
 about salting some pork. Ned lived thirty 
 miles from my place, on a little island at the 
 entrance to the lagoon. He was a 
 prosperous man, and only drank under the 
 pressure of the monotony caused by the 
 non-arrival of a ship to buy his produce. 
 He would then close his store, and, aided by 
 a number of friendly male natives, start on 
 a case of gin. But never a woman went into 
 Ned's house, though many visited the store, 
 where Ned bought their produce, paid for
 
 ii6 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 it in trade or cash, and sent them off, 
 after treating them on a strictly business 
 basis. 
 
 Now the Marshall Island women much 
 
 % 
 
 resented this. Since Ned's wife had died, 
 ten years previously, the women, backed by 
 the chiefs, had made most decided, but 
 withal diplomatic, assaults upon his celibacy. 
 The old men had respectfully reminded him 
 that his state of singleness was a direct slight 
 to themselves as leading men. If he refused 
 to marry again he surely would not cast 
 such a reflection upon the personal characters 
 of some two or three hundred young girls as 
 to refuse a few of them the position of 
 honorary wives pro tern., or until he found 
 one whom he might think worthy of higher 
 honours. But the slow-thinking, methodical 
 trader only opened a bottle of gin, gave 
 them fair words and a drink all round, and
 
 METHODICAL MR. BURR 117 
 
 absolutely declined to open any sort of matri- 
 monial negotiations. 
 
 * 
 
 " I'm come to hev some talk with you 
 when you've finished saltin'," he said, as 
 he rose and meditatively prodded a junk of 
 meat with his forefinger. 
 
 " Right, old man," I said. " I'll come 
 now," and we went into the big room and 
 sat down. 
 
 " Air ye game ter come and see me get 
 married ? " he asked, looking away past me, 
 through the open door, to where the surf 
 thundered and tumbled on the outer reef. 
 
 " Ned," I said, solemnly, " I know you 
 don't joke, so you must mean it. Of course 
 I will. I'm sure all of us fellows will be 
 delighted to hear you're going to get some 
 nice little carajz l to lighten up that big 
 house of yours over there. Who's the 
 girl, Ned ?j" 
 
 1 An unmarried girl.
 
 ii8 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 " Le-jennabon." 
 
 "Whew!" I said, "why, she's the 
 daughter of the biggest chief on Arhnu. I 
 didn't think any white man could get her, 
 even if he gave her people a boat-load of 
 dollars as a wedding-gift." 
 
 " Well, no," said Ned, stroking his beard 
 meditatively, " I suppose I should feel a bit 
 set up ; but two years ago her people said 
 that, because I stood to them in the matter 
 of some rifles when they had trouble with 
 King Jibberick, I could take her. She was 
 rather young then, any way, but I've been 
 over to Arhnu several times, and I've had 
 spies out, and damn me if I ever could hear 
 a whisper against her. I'm told for sure 
 that her father and uncles would ha'e killed 
 any one that came after her. So I'm a-goin' 
 to take her and chance it." 
 
 " Ned," I said, " you know your own 
 affairs and these people better than I do. 
 Yet are you really going to pin your faith on
 
 METHODICAL MR. -BURR 119 
 
 a Marshall Island girl ? You are not like 
 any of us traders. You see, we know what 
 to expect sometimes, and our morals are 
 a lot worse than those of the natives. And 
 it doesn't harrow our feelings much if any 
 one of us has to divorce a wife and get 
 another ; it only means a lot of new dresses 
 and some guzzling, drinking, and speechify- 
 ing, and some bother in teaching the new 
 wife how to make bread. But your wife 
 that died was a Manhikian another kind. 
 They don't breed that sort here in the 
 Marshalls. Think of it twice, Ned, before 
 you marry her." 
 
 The girl was a beauty. There are many 
 like her in that far-away cluster of coral 
 atolls. That she was a chiefs child it was 
 easy to see ; the abject manner in which the 
 commoner natives always behaved them- 
 selves in her presence showed their respect 
 for Le-jennabon. Of course we all got very
 
 120 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 jolly. There were half a dozen of us traders 
 there, and we were, for a wonder, all on 
 friendly terms. Le-jennabon sat on a fine 
 mat in the big room, and in a sweetly 
 dignified manner received the wedding gifts. 
 One of our number, Charlie de Buis, though 
 in a state of chronic poverty, induced by 
 steadfast adherence to square gin at five 
 dollars a case, made his offerings a gold 
 locket covering a woman's miniature, a 
 heavy gold ring, and a pair of fat cross-bred 
 Muscovy ducks. The bride accepted them 
 with a smile. 
 
 " Who is this ? " she asked, looking at 
 the portrait " your white wife ? ' 
 
 "No," replied the bashful Charles, 
 " another man's. That's why I give it 
 away, curse her. But the ducks I bred 
 myself on Majuru." 
 
 
 
 A month or two passed. Then, on one 
 Sunday afternoon, about dusk, I saw Ned's
 
 METHODICAL MR. BURR 121 
 
 whale-boat coming over across the lagoon. 
 I met him on the beach. Trouble was in his 
 face, yet his hard, impassive features were 
 such that only those who knew him well 
 could discover it. Instead of entering the 
 house he silently motioned . me to come 
 further along the sand, where we reached 
 an open spot clear of cocoanuts. Ned sat 
 down and filled his pipe. I waited patiently. 
 The wind had died away, and the soft swish 
 and swirl of the tide as the ripples lapped 
 the beach was the only sound that broke 
 upon the silence of the night. 
 
 " You were right. But it doesn't matter 
 now. . . ." He laughed softly. " A week 
 ago a canoe-party arrived from Ebon. There 
 were two chiefs. Of course they came to 
 my house to trade. They had plenty of 
 money. There were about a hundred 
 natives belonging to them. The younger
 
 122 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 man was chief of Likieb a flash buck. The 
 first day he saw Le-jennabon he had a lot 
 too much to say to her. I watched him. 
 Next morning my toddy-cutter came and 
 told me that the flash young chief from 
 Likieb had stuck him up and drunk my 
 toddy, and had said something about my 
 wife you know how they talk in parables 
 when they mean mischief. I would have 
 shot him for the toddy racket, but I was 
 waitin' for a better reason. . . . The old hag 
 who bosses my cook-shed said to me as she 
 passed, ' Go and listen to a song of 
 cunning over there ' pointing to a clump 
 of bread-fruit trees. I walked over 
 quietly. Le-jennabon and her girls were 
 sitting down on mats. Outside the 
 fence was a lad singing this in a low 
 voice 
 
 *' ' Marriage hides the tricks of lovers,' 
 
 Le-jennabon and the girls bent their heads
 
 METHODICAL MR. BURR 123 
 
 and said nothing. Then the devil's imp 
 commenced again 
 
 " ' Marriage hides the tricks of lovers.' 
 
 Some of the girls laughed and whispered to 
 Le-jennabon. She shook her head, and 
 looked around timorously. Plain enough, 
 wasn't it ? Presently the boy crept up to 
 the fence, and dropped over a wreath of 
 yellow blossoms. The girls laughed. One 
 of them picked it up, and offered it to 
 Le-jennabon. She waved it away. Then, 
 again, the cub outside sang softly 
 
 " ' Marriage bides the tricks of lovers,' 
 
 and they all laughed again, and Le-jennabon 
 put the wreath on her head, and I saw the 
 brown hide of the boy disappear among the 
 trees. 
 
 " I went back to the house. I wanted to 
 make certain she would follow the boy first.
 
 i2 4 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 After a few minutes some of Le-jennabon's 
 women came to me, and said they were going 
 to the weather side it's narrer across, as 
 you know to pick flowers. I said all right, 
 to go, as I was going to do something else, 
 so couldn't come. Then I went to the trade- 
 room and got what I wanted. The old cook- 
 hag showed me the way they had gone, and 
 grinned when she saw what I had slid down 
 inside my pyjamas. I cut round and got 
 to the place. I had a right good idea where 
 
 it was. 
 
 . . 
 
 " The girls soon came along the path, and 
 then stopped and talked to Le-jennabon and 
 pointed to a clump of bread-fruit trees 
 standing in an arrowroot-patch. She 
 seemed frightened but went. Half-way 
 through she stopped, and then I saw my 
 beauty raise his head from the ground and 
 march over to her. I jest giv' him time ter 
 enjoy a smile, and then I stepped out and
 
 METHODICAL MR. BURR 125 
 
 toppled him over. Right through his car- 
 case them Sharp's rifles make a hole you 
 could put your fist into. 
 
 " The girl dropped too sheer funk. Old 
 Lebauro, the cook, slid through the trees 
 and stood over him, and said, ' U, guk ! 
 He's a fine-made man,' and gave me her 
 knife ; and then I collared Le-jennabon 
 and " 
 
 " For God's sake, Ned, don't tell me you 
 killed her too ! " 
 
 He shook his head slowly. 
 
 " No, I couldn't hurt her. But I held her 
 with one hand, she feeling dead and cold, 
 like a wet deck-swab ; then the old cook- 
 woman undid my flash man's long hair, and, 
 twining her skinny old claws in it, pulled it 
 taut, while I sawed at the chap's neck with 
 my right hand. The knife was heavy and 
 sharp, and I soon got the job through. Then 
 I gave the thing to Le-jennabon to carry.
 
 126 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 " I made her walk in front of me. Every 
 time she dropped the head I slewed her 
 round and made her lift it up again. And 
 the old cook-devil trotted astern o' us. 
 When we came close to the town I says 
 to Le-jennabon : 
 
 " ' Do you want to live ? ' 
 
 " * Yes,' says she in a voice like a whisper. 
 
 " c Then sing,' says I, * sing .loud 
 
 " ' Marriage hides the tricks of Jovers,' 
 
 And she sang it in a choky kind of quaver. 
 
 " There was a great rush o' people ter see 
 the procession. They stood in a line on 
 both sides of the path and, stared and said 
 nothin'. 
 
 " Presently we comes to ' -where Jail the 
 Likieb chief's people was quartered. They 
 knew the head and ran back for their rifles, 
 but my crowd in the village was too strong, 
 and, o' course, sided with me, and took away 
 their guns. Then the crowd^ gathers round
 
 METHODICAL MR. BURR 127 
 
 my place, and I makes Le-jennabon hold 
 up the head and sing again sing that devil's 
 chant. 
 
 " ' Listen,' I says to the people, ' listen 
 to my wife singing a love-song.' Then I 
 takes the thing, wet and bloody, and slings 
 it into the middle of the Likieb people, and 
 gave Le-jennabon a shove and sent her 
 
 inside." 
 
 
 
 I was thinking what would be the best 
 thing to say, and could only manage " It's 
 a bad business, Ned." 
 
 " Bad ! That's where you're wrong," 
 and, rising, Ned brushed the sand off the legs 
 of his pyjamas. " It's just about the 
 luckiest thing as could ha' happened. Ye 
 see, it's given Le-jennabon a good idea of 
 what may happen to her if she ain't mighty 
 correct. An' it's riz me a lot in the esteem 
 of the people generally as a man who hez 
 business principles."
 
 ( 128 ) 
 
 A TRULY GREAT MAN 
 
 A MID-PACIFIC SKETCH 
 
 THEN the flag of " Bobby " Towns, of 
 Sydney, was still mighty in the South Seas. 
 The days had not come in which steamers 
 with brass-bound super-cargoes, carrying tin 
 boxes and taking orders, like merchant's 
 bagmen, for goods " to arrive," exploited 
 the Ellice, Kingsmill, and Gilbert Groups. 
 Bluff-bowed old wave-punchers like the 
 Spec, the Lady Alicia, and the E. K. Bateson 
 plunged their clumsy hulls into the rolling 
 swell of the mid-Pacific, carrying their 
 " trade " of knives, axes, guns, bad rum, and 
 good tobacco, instead of, as now, white 
 umbrellas, paper, boots and shoes, Ger- 
 man sewing-machines and fancy prints
 
 A TRULY GREAT MAN 129 
 
 "zephyrs," the smartly-dressed supercargo 
 calls them, as he submits a card of patterns 
 to Emilia, the native-teacher's wife, who, as 
 the first Lady in the Land, must have first 
 choice. 
 
 In those days the sleek native missionary 
 was an unknown quantity in the Tokelaus 
 and Kingsmills, and the local white 
 trader answered all requirements. He was 
 generally a rough character a runaway 
 from some Australian or American whaler, 
 or a wandering Ishmael who, for reasons of 
 his own, preferred living among the intract- 
 able, bawling, and poverty-stricken people 
 of the equatorial Pacific to dreaming away 
 his days in the monotonously happy valleys 
 of the Society and Marquesas groups. 
 . 
 
 Such a man was Probyn, who dwelt on 
 one of the low atolls of the Ellice Islands. 
 He had landed there one day from a Sydney
 
 130 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 whaler with a chest of clothes, a musket or 
 two, and a tierce of twist tobacco ; with 
 him came a savage-eyed, fierce-looking 
 native wife, over whose shoulders fell long 
 waves of black hair ; and a child about five 
 years old. 
 
 The second mate of the whaler, who was 
 in charge of the boat, not liking the looks 
 of the natives that swarmed around the 
 new-comer, bade him a hurried farewell, 
 and pushed away to the ship, which lay-to 
 off the passage with her fore-yard aback. 
 Then the clamorous natives pressed more 
 closely around Probyn and his wife, and 
 assailed them with questions. 
 
 So far neither of them had spoken. 
 Probyn, a tall, wiry, scanty-haired man, 
 was standing with one foot on the tierce of 
 tobacco and his hands in his pockets. His 
 wife glared defiantly at some two or three 
 score of reddish-brown women who crowded 
 eagerly around her to stare into her face ;
 
 A TRULY GREAT MAN 131 
 
 holding to the sleeve of her dress was the 
 child, paralysed into the silence of fright. 
 
 The deafening babble and frantic gesticula- 
 tions were perfectly explicable to Probyn, 
 and he apprehended no danger. The head- 
 man of the town had not yet appeared, and 
 until he came this wild license of behaviour 
 would continue. At last the natives became 
 silent and parted to the right and left as 
 Tahori, the head-man, his fat body shining 
 with cocoa-nut oil and carrying an ebony- 
 wood club, stood in front of the white man 
 and eyed him up and down. The scrutiny 
 seemed satisfactory. He stretched out his 
 huge, naked arm and shook Probyn's hand, 
 uttering his one word of Samoan Taloja ! r 
 and then, in his own dialect, he asked : 
 " What is your name, and what do you 
 want ? " 
 
 " Sam," replied Probyn. And then, in 
 
 1 Lit, " My love to you," the Samoan salutation.
 
 132 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 the Tokelau language, which the wild-eyed 
 people around him fairly understood, " I have 
 come here to live with you and trade for oil " 
 and he pointed to the tierce of tobacco. 
 
 " Where are you from ? " 
 
 " From the land called Nukunono, in the 
 Tokelau." 
 
 " Why come here ? " 
 
 " Because I killed some one there." 
 
 " Good ! " grunted the fat man ; " there 
 are no twists in your tongue ; but why did 
 the boat hasten away so quickly ? " 
 
 " They were frightened because of the 
 noise. He with the face like a fowl's talked 
 too much " and he pointed to a long, 
 hatchet-visaged native, who had been 
 especially turbulent and vociferous. 
 
 * * 
 
 " Ha ! " and the fat, bearded face of 
 Tahori turned from the white man to him of 
 whom the white man had spoken " is it 
 thee, Makoi ? And so thou madest the
 
 A TRULY GREAT MAN 133 
 
 strangers hasten away ! That was wrong. 
 Only for thee I had gone to the ship and 
 gotten many things. Come here ! " 
 
 Then he stooped and picked up one of 
 Probyn's muskets, handed it to the white 
 man, and silently indicated the tall native 
 with a nod. The other natives fell back. 
 Niabong, Probyn's wife, set her boy on his 
 feet, put her hand in her bosom and drew 
 out a key, with which she opened the chest. 
 She threw back the lid, fixed her black eyes 
 on Probyn, and waited. 
 
 Probyn, holding the musket in his left 
 hand, mused a moment. Then he asked : 
 
 " Whose man is he ? " 
 
 " Mine," said Tahori ; " he is from 
 Oaitupu, and my bondman." 
 
 " Has he a wife ? " 
 
 " No ; he is poor and works in my pur oka l 
 field." 
 
 1 A coarse species of taro (arum esculentum) growing on 
 the low-lying atolls of the mid-Pacific.
 
 134 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 " Good," said Probyn, and he motioned 
 to his wife. She dived her hand into the 
 chest and handed him a tin of powder, 
 then a bullet, a cap, and some scraps of 
 paper. 
 
 Slowly he loaded the musket, and Tahori, 
 seizing the bondman by his arm, led him 
 out to the open, and stood by, club in hand, 
 on the alert. 
 
 Probyn knew his reputation depended on 
 the shot. The ball passed through the 
 chest of Makoi. Then four men picked up 
 the body and carried it into a house. 
 
 Probyn laid down the musket and 
 motioned again to Niabong. She handed 
 him a hatchet and blunt chisel. Tahori 
 smiled pleasantly, and, drawing the little 
 boy to him, patted his head. 
 
 Then, at a sign from him, a woman 
 brought Niabong a shell of sweet toddy. 
 The chief sat cross-legged and watched
 
 A TRULY GREAT MAN 135 
 
 Probyn opening the tierce of tobacco. 
 Niabong locked the box again and sat 
 upon it. 
 
 " Who are you ? >! said Tahori, still 
 caressing the boy. 
 
 " Niabong. But my tongue twists with 
 your talk here. I am of Naura (Pleasant 
 Island). By and 'by I will understand it." 
 
 " True. He is a great man, thy man," 
 said the chief, nodding at Probyn. 
 
 " A great man, truly. There is not one 
 thing in the world but he can do it." 
 
 " E moe," T said the fat man, approvingly : 
 " I can see it. Look you, he shall be as my 
 brother, and thy child here shall eat of the 
 best in the land." 
 
 Probyn came over with his two hands 
 filled with sticks of tobacco. " Bring a 
 basket," he said. 
 
 A young native girl slid out from the 
 cocoanuts at Tahori's bidding and stood 
 
 1 True. 
 E*
 
 136 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 behind him, holding a basket. Probyn 
 counted out into it two hundred sticks. 
 
 " See, Tahori. I am a jus? man to thee 
 because thou art a just man to me. Here 
 is the price of him that thou gavest to me." 
 
 Tahori rose and beckoned to the people 
 to return. " Look at this man. He is a 
 great man. His heart groweth from his 
 loins upwards to his throat. Bring food to 
 my house quickly, that he and his wife and 
 child may eat. And to-morrow shall every 
 man cut wood for the house, a house that 
 shall be in length six fathoms, and four in 
 width. Such men as he come from the 
 gods."
 
 d37) 
 
 THE DOCTOR'S WIFE 
 
 CONSANGUINITY FROM A POLYNESIAN 
 STANDPOINT 
 
 " OHO ! " said Lagisiva, the widow, tossing 
 her hair back over her shoulders, as she 
 raised the heavy, fluted tappa mallet in her 
 thick, strong right hand, and dealt the tappa 
 cloth a series of quick strokes " Oho ! " 
 said the dark-faced Lagisiva, looking up at 
 the White Man, " because I be a woman 
 dost think me a fool ? I tell thee I know 
 some of the customs of the papalagi the 
 white foreigners. Much wisdom have ye in 
 many things ; but again I tell thee, O friend 
 of my sons, that in some other things the 
 people of thy nation, ay, of all white nations, 
 they be as the beasts of the forest the wild 
 goat and pig without reason and without
 
 138 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 shame. Tah ! Has not my eldest son, 
 Tui Fau, whom the white men call Bob, 
 lived for seven years in Sini (Sydney), when 
 he returned from those places by New 
 Guinea, where he was diver ? And he has 
 filled my ears with the bad and shameless 
 customs of the papalagi. Tah ! I say 
 again thy women have not the shame of 
 ours. The heat of desire devoureth chastity 
 even in those of one blood." 
 
 " In what do they offend, O my mother ? ' 
 " Aue ! Life is short ; and, behold, this 
 piece of siapo J is for a wedding present, and 
 I must hurry ; but yet put down thy gun 
 and bag and we shall smoke awhile, and 
 thou shalt feel shame while I tell of one of 
 the papalagi custom the marrying of 
 brother and sister." 
 
 "Nay, mother," said the White Man, 
 " not brother and sister, but only cousins." 
 
 1 The tappa cloth of the South Seas, made from the 
 bark of the paper mulberry.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S WIFE 139 
 
 " Tah ! " and the big widow spat scorn- 
 fully on the ground, " those are words, 
 words. It is the same ; the same is the 
 blood, the same is the bone. Even in our 
 heathen days we pointed the finger at one 
 who looked with the eye of love on the 
 daughter of his father's brother or sister 
 for such did we let his blood out upon the 
 sand. And I, old Lagisiva, have seen a 
 white man brought to shame through this 
 wickedness." 
 
 " Tell me," said the White Man. 
 
 " He was a foma'i (doctor) and rich, and 
 came here because he desired to see strange 
 places, and was weary of his life in the land 
 of the papalagi. So he remained with us and 
 hunted the wild boar with our young men, 
 and became strong and hardy and like unto 
 one of our people. And then, because he 
 was for ever restless, he sailed away once and 
 returned in a small ship, and brought back
 
 140 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 trade and built a store and a fine house to 
 dwell in. The chief of this town gave him, 
 for friendship, a piece of land over there by 
 the Vai-ta-milo, and thus did he become a 
 still greater man ; his store was full of rich 
 goods, and he kept many servants, and at 
 night-time his house was as a blaze of fire, 
 for the young men and women would go 
 there and sing and dance, and he had many 
 lovers amongst our young girls. 
 
 " I, old Lagisiva, who am now fat and 
 dull, was one. Oho, he was a man of 
 plenty ! Did a girl but look out between 
 her eyelashes at a piece of print in the store, 
 lo ! it was hers, even though it measured 
 twenty fathoms in length and print was a 
 dollar a fathom in those days. So every 
 girl even those from parts far off cast 
 herself in his way, that he might notice her. 
 And he was generous to all alike in that 
 alone was wisdom.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S WIFE 141 
 
 " Once or twice every year the ships 
 brought him letters. And he would count 
 the marks on the paper, and tell us that 
 they came from a woman of the papalagi 
 his cousin, as you would call her whose 
 picture was hung over his table. She was 
 for ever smiling down upon us, and her eyes 
 were as his eyes, and if he but smiled then 
 were the two alike alike as are two children 
 of the same birth. When three years had 
 come and gone a ship brought him a letter, 
 and that night there were many of us at his 
 house, men and women, to talk with the 
 people from the ship. When those had 
 gone away to their sleep, he called to the 
 chief and said : 
 
 " ' In two days, O my friend, I set out 
 for my land again ; but to return, for much 
 do I desire to remain with you always. In 
 six months I shall be here again. And there 
 is one thing I would speak of. I shall bring 
 back a white wife, a woman of my own
 
 142 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 country whom I have loved for many years." 
 " Then Tamaali'i, the chief, who was my 
 father's father and very old, said, ( She shall 
 be my daughter, and welcome,' and many 
 of us young girls said also, ' she shall be 
 welcome ' although we felt sorrowful to 
 lose a man so good and open-handed. And 
 then did the foma'i call to the old chief and 
 two others, and they entered the store and 
 lighted lamps, and presently a man went 
 forth into the village and cried aloud, ' Come 
 hither, all people, and listen ! ' So, many 
 hundreds came, and we all went in and found 
 the floor covered with some of everything 
 that the white man possessed. And the 
 chief spoke and said : 
 
 " ' Behold, my people, this our good 
 friend goeth away to his own country that 
 he may bring back a wife. And because 
 many young unmarried girls will say, " Why 
 does he leave us are not we as good to 
 look upon as this other woman ? " does he
 
 THE DOCTOR'S WIFE 143 
 
 
 
 put these presents here on the ground and 
 these words into my mouth " Out of his 
 love to you, which must be a thing that is 
 past and forgotten, the wife that is coming 
 must not know of some little things that 
 is papalagi custom." 
 
 " And then every girl that had a wish 
 took whatever she fancied, and the white 
 man charged us to say naught that would 
 arouse the anger of the wife that was to come. 
 And so he departed. 
 
 
 
 " One hundred and ten fat hogs killed we 
 and roasted whole for the feast of welcome. 
 I swear it by the Holy Ones of God's King- 
 dom one hundred and ten. And yet this 
 white lily of his never smiled not even on 
 us young girls who danced and sang before 
 her, only she clung to his arm, and, behold, 
 when we drew close to her we saw it was the 
 woman in the picture his sister ! 
 
 " And then one by one all those that had
 
 144 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 gathered to do him honour went away in 
 shame shame that he should do this, wed 
 his own sister, and many women said worse 
 of her. But yet the feast the hogs and 
 yams, and taro, and fish, and fowls was 
 brought and placed by his doorstep, but no 
 one spake, and at night-time he was alone 
 with his wife, till he sent for the old chief, 
 and reproached him with bitter words for 
 the coldness of the people, and asked, ' Why 
 
 is this ? ' 
 
 
 
 " And the old man pointed to the picture 
 over the table, and said, * Is this she thy 
 wife ? ' 
 
 " ' Ay,' said the White Man. 
 
 " c Is she not of the same blood as thy- 
 self ? ' 
 
 " ' Even so/ said he. 
 
 " * Then shalt thou live alone in thy 
 shame,' said the old man ; and he went 
 away.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S WIFE 145 
 
 " So, for many months, these two lived. 
 He found some to work for him, .and some 
 young girls to tend his sister, whom he called 
 his wife, whilst she lay ill with her first 
 child. And the day after it was born, some 
 one whispered, ' He is accursed ! the child 
 cries not it is dumb.' For a week it lived, 
 yet never did it cry, for the curse of wicked- 
 ness was upon it. Then the white man 
 nursed her tenderly, and took her *away to 
 live in Fiji for six months. When they 
 came back it was the same no one cared 
 to go inside the house, and he cursed us, and 
 said he would bring men from Tokelau to 
 work for him. We said "naught. Then in 
 time another child was born, and it was 
 hideous to look upon, and that also died. 
 
 " Now, there was a girl amongst us whose 
 name was Suni, to whom the white woman 
 spoke much, for she was learning our
 
 146 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 tongue, and Suni, by reason of the white 
 woman's many presents, spoke openly to 
 her, and told her of the village talk. Then 
 the white woman wept, and arose and spoke 
 to the man for a long while. And she came 
 back to Suni and said, ' What thou hast 
 told me was in my own heart three years 
 ago ; yet, because it is the custom of my 
 people, I married this man, who is the son 
 of my father's brother. But now I shall go 
 away.' Then the white man came out and 
 beat Suni with a stick. But yet was his 
 sister, whom he called his wife, eaten up 
 with shame, and when a ship came they 
 went away and we saw her not again. For 
 about two years we heard no more of our 
 white man, till he returned and said the 
 woman was dead. And he took Suni for 
 wife, who bore him three children, and then 
 they went away to some other country I 
 know not where.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S WIFE 147 
 
 " I thank thee many, many times, O 
 friend of my sons. Four children of mine 
 here live in this village, yet not a one of 
 them ever asks me when I smoked last. 
 May God walk with thee for this stick of 
 tobacco."
 
 148 ) 
 
 THE FATE OF THE ALIDA 
 
 THE other day, in an Australian paper, I 
 read something that set me thinking of 
 Taplin of Taplin and his wife, and the fate 
 of the Alida. This is what I read : 
 
 " News has reached Tahiti that a steamer 
 had arrived at Toulon with two noted 
 prisoners on board. These men, who are 
 brothers named Rovique, long ago left 
 Tahiti on an island-trading trip, and when 
 the vessel got to sea they murdered the 
 captain, a passenger, the supercargo (Mr. 
 Gibson, of Sydney), and two sailors, and 
 threw their bodies overboard. The movers 
 in the affair were arrested at Ponape, in 
 the Caroline Islands. The vessel belonged 
 to a Tahitian prince, and was called the
 
 THE FATE OF THE ALIDA 149 
 
 Nuroabiti, but its name had been changed 
 after the tragedy. The accused persons 
 were sent to Manilla. From Manilla they 
 appear now to have been sent on to France." 
 
 We were lying inside Funafuti Lagoon, in 
 the Ellice Group. The last cask of oil had 
 been towed off to the brig and placed under 
 hatches, and we were to sail in the morning 
 for our usual cruise among the Gilbert and 
 Kingsmill Islands. 
 
 Our captain, a white trader from the shore, 
 and myself were sitting on deck " yarning " 
 and smoking. We lay about a quarter of a 
 mile from the beach such a beach, white 
 as the driven snow, and sweeping in a great 
 curve for five long miles to the north and 
 a lesser distance to the south and west. 
 
 Right abreast of the brig, nestling like 
 huge birds' nests in the shade of groves of 
 cocoanut and breadfruit trees, were the
 
 150 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 houses of the principal village in Funafuti. 
 
 Presently the skipper picked up his glasses 
 that lay beside him on the skylight, and 
 looked away down to leeward, where the 
 white saif& of a schooner beating up to the 
 anchorage were outlined against the line of 
 palms that fringed the beach of Funafala 
 the western-most island that forms one of 
 the chain enclosing Funafuti Lagoon. 
 
 " It's Taplin's schooner, right enough," 
 he said. " Let us go ashore and give him 
 and his pretty wife a hand to pack up." 
 
 Taplin was the name of the only other 
 white trader on Funafuti besides old Tom 
 Humphreys, our own man. He had been 
 two years on .the island, and was trading in 
 opposition to our trader, as agent for a 
 foreign house our owners were Sydney 
 people but his firm's unscrupulous method 
 of doing business had disgusted him. So
 
 THE FATE OF THE A LI DA 151 
 
 one day he told the supercargo of their 
 vessel that he would trade for them no 
 longer than the exact time he had agreed 
 upon two years. He had come to Funafuti 
 from the Pelews, and was now awaiting the 
 return of his firm's vessel to take him back 
 there again. Getting into our boat we were 
 pulled ashore and landed on the beach in 
 front of the trader's house. 
 
 " Well, Taplin, here's your schooner at 
 last," said old Tom, as we shook hands and 
 seated ourselves in the comfortable, pleasant- 
 looking room. " I see you're getting ready 
 to go." 
 
 Taplin was a man of about thirty or so, 
 with a quiet, impassive face and dark, deep- 
 set eyes that gave to his features a somewhat 
 gloomy look, except when he smiled, which 
 was not often. Men with that curious, far- 
 off look in their eyes are not uncommon 
 among the lonely islands of the wide Pacific. 
 Sometimes it comes to a man with long, long
 
 152 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 years of wandering to and fro ; and you will 
 see it deepen when, by some idle, chance 
 word, you move the memories of a forgotten 
 past ere he had even dreamed of the 
 existence of the South 6ea Islands, and for 
 ever dissevered himself from all links and 
 associations of the outside world. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, " I am nearly ready. 
 I saw the schooner at daylight, and knew it 
 was the Alida" 
 
 " Where do you think of going to, 
 Taplin ? " I asked. 
 
 " Back to the Carolines. Nerida belongs 
 down that way, you know ; and she is 
 fretting to get back again otherwise I 
 wouldn't leave this island. I've done pretty 
 well here, although the people I trade for 
 are well, you know what they are." 
 
 " Aye," assented old Humphreys, " there 
 isn't one of em but what is the two ends and
 
 THE FATE OF THE ALIDA 153 
 
 bight of a scoundrel ; and that supercargo 
 with the yaller moustache and womany 
 hands is the worst of the lot. I wonder if 
 he's aboard this trip ? I don't let him 
 inside my house ; I've got too many 
 daughters, and they all think him a fine 
 
 man." 
 
 Nerida, Taplin's wife, came out to us from 
 an inner room. She was a native of one of 
 the Pelew Islands, a tall slenderly built girl, 
 with pale, olive skin and big, soft eyes. A 
 flowing gown of yellow muslin the favourite 
 colour of the Portuguese blooded natives of 
 the Pelews buttoned high up to her throat, 
 draped her graceful figure. After putting 
 her little hand in ours, and greeting us in the 
 Funafuti dialect, she went over to Taplin, 
 and touching his arm, pointed out the 
 schooner that was now only a mile or so 
 away, and a smile parted her lips, and the
 
 154 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 star-like eyes glowed and filled with a tender 
 light. 
 
 I felt Captain Warren touch my arm as 
 he rose and went outside. I followed. 
 
 said Warren, " can't we do 
 something for' Taplin ourselves ? Isn't 
 there a station anywhere about Tonga or 
 Wallis Island that would suit him ? " 
 
 " Would he come, Warren ? He or 
 rather, that pretty wife of his seems bent 
 upon going away in the schooner to the 
 Carolines." 
 
 " Aye," said the skipper, " that's it. If it 
 were any other vessel I wouldn't care." 
 Then suddenly, "That fellow Motley (the 
 
 supercargo) is a d scoundrel capable 
 
 of any villainy where a woman is concerned. 
 Did you ever hear about old Raymond's 
 daughter, down at Mangareva ? >: 
 
 I had heard. Suffice it here to say that
 
 THE FATE OF THE A LI DA 155 
 
 by means of a forged letter purporting to 
 have been written by her father an old 
 English trader in the Gambier Group 
 Motley had lured the beautiful young half- 
 blood away from a school in San Francisco, 
 and six months afterwards turned her adrift 
 
 0. 
 
 on the streets of Honolulu. Raymond was 
 a lonely man, and passionately attached ta 
 his only child ; so no one wondered when, 
 reaching California a year after and finding 
 her gone, he shot himself in his room at an 
 hotel. 
 
 * 
 
 " I will ask him, anyway," I said ; and as 
 we went back into the house the Alida shot 
 past our line of vision through the cocoanuts, 
 and brought up inside the brig. 
 
 " Taplin," I said, " would you care about 
 taking one of our stations to the eastward ? 
 Name any island you fancy, and we wil 
 land you there with the pick of our ' trade ' 
 
 room."
 
 156 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 "Thank you. I would be only too glad 
 but I cannot. I have promised Nerida to 
 go back to Babelthouap or somewhere in 
 the Pelews, and Motley has promised to 
 land us at Ponape, in the Carolines. We 
 can get away from there in one of the Dutch 
 firm's vessels." 
 
 " I am very sorry, Taplin ' I com- 
 menced, when Captain Warren burst in 
 with " Look here, Taplin, we haven't got 
 much time to talk. Here's the Alidads 
 boat coming, with that (blank blank) 
 scoundrel Motley in it. Take my advice. 
 Don't go away in the AUda" And then 
 he looked at Nerida and whispered some- 
 thing. 
 
 A red spark shone in Taplin's dark eyes, 
 then he pressed Warren's hand. 
 
 " I know," he answered, " he's a most 
 infernal villain Nerida hates him too. But 
 you see how I am fixed. The AUda is our 
 only chance of getting back to the north-
 
 THE FATE OF THE ALIDA 157 
 
 west. But he hasn't got old Raymond to 
 deal with in me. Here they are." 
 
 Motley came in first, hat and fan in hand. 
 He was a fine-looking man, with blue eyes 
 and an unusually fair skin for an island 
 supercargo, with a long, drooping, yellow 
 moustache. Riedermann, the skipper, who 
 followed, was stout, coarse, red-faced, and 
 brutal. 
 
 " How are you, gentlemen ? " said Motley, 
 affably, turning from Taplin and his wife 
 and advancing towards us ; " Captain 
 Riedermann and I saw the spars of your 
 brig showing up over the cocoanuts yester- 
 day, and therefore knew we should have the 
 pleasure of meeting you." 
 
 Warren looked steadily at him for a 
 moment, and then glanced at his out- 
 stretched hand. 
 
 " The pleasure isn't mutual, blarst you,
 
 158 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 Mr. Motley," he said coldly, and he put his 
 hand in his pocket. 
 
 The supercargo took a step nearer to him 
 with a savage glare in his blue eyes. 
 " What do you mean by this, Captain 
 Warren ? " 
 
 " Mean," and the imperturbable Warren 
 seated himself on a corner of the table, and 
 gazed stolidly first at the handsome Motley 
 and then at the heavy, vicious features of 
 Riedermann. " Oh, anything you like. 
 Perhaps it's because it's not pleasant tb 
 see white men landing at a quiet island 
 like this with revolvers slung to their 
 waists under their pyjamas ; looks a bit 
 too much like Bully Hayes' style for 
 me," and then his tone of cool banter 
 suddenly changed to that of studied in- 
 solence. " I say, Motley, I was talking 
 about you just now to Taplin and Nerida ; 
 do you want to know what I was 
 saying ? Perhaps I had better tell you.
 
 THE FATE OF THE ALIDA 159 
 
 I was talking about Tita Raymond and 
 
 yourself ? J: 
 
 
 
 Motley put his right hand under his 
 pyjama jacket, but Taplin sprang forward, 
 seized his wrist in a grip of iron, and drew 
 him aside. 
 
 " The man who draws a pistol in my 
 house, Mr. Motley, does a foolish thing," he 
 said, in quiet, contemptuous tones, as he 
 threw the supercargo's revolver into a 
 corner. 
 
 With set teeth and clenched hands Motley 
 flung himself into a chair, unable to speak. 
 
 Warren, still seated on the table, swung 
 his foot nonchalantly to and fro and then 
 commenced at Riedermann. 
 
 " Why, how's this, Captain Riedermann ? 
 Don't you back up your supercargo's little 
 quarrels, or have you left your pistol on 
 board ? Ah, no, you haven't. I can see 
 it there right enough. Modesty forbids
 
 160 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 you putting a bullet into a man in the 
 presence of a lady, eh ? " Then slewing 
 round again he addressed Motley, " By God, 
 sir, it is well for you that we are in a white 
 man's house and that that man is my friend 
 and took away that pistol from your 
 treacherous hand ; if you had fired at me 7 
 would have ' looted ' you from one end of 
 Funafuti beach to the other and I've a 
 damned good mind to do it now, but won't, 
 as Taplin has to do some business with you." 
 
 "That will do Warren," I said. "We 
 don't want to make a scene in Taplin's 
 house. Let us go away and allow him to 
 finish his business." 
 
 Still glaring angrily at Riedermann and 
 Motley, Warren got down slowly from the 
 table. Then we bade Taplin and Nerida 
 good-bye and went aboard. 
 
 
 
 At daylight we saw Taplin and his wife 
 go off in the Alidads boat. They waved
 
 THE FATE OF THE ALIDA 161 
 
 their hands to us in farewell as the boat 
 pulled past the brig, and then the schooner 
 hove-up anchor, and with all sail set stood 
 away down to the north-west passage off 
 the lagoon. 
 
 A year or so afterward we were on a 
 trading voyage to the islands of the Tubuai 
 Group, and were lying becalmed, in company 
 with a New Bedford whaler. Her skipper 
 came on board the brig, and we started 
 talking of Taplin, whom the whaleship 
 captain knew. 
 
 " Didn't you hear ? " he said. " The 
 Alida never showed up again. * Turned 
 turtle/ I suppose, somewhere in the islands, 
 like all those slashing over-masted 'Frisco- 
 built schooners do, sooner or later." 
 
 " Poor Taplin," said Warren, " I thought 
 somehow we would never see him again."
 
 162 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 Five years had passed. Honest old* 
 Warren, fiery-tempered and true-hearted, 
 had long since died of fever in the Solomons, 
 and I was supercargo with a smart young 
 American skipper in the brigantine 
 Palestine, when we one day sailed along the 
 weather-side of a tiny little atoll in the 
 Caroline Islands. 
 
 The Palestine was leaking, and Packen- 
 ham, tempted by the easy passage into the 
 beautiful lagoon, decided to run inside and 
 discharge our cargo of copra to get at the 
 leak. 
 
 The island had but very few inhabitants 
 perhaps ten or twelve men and double 
 that number of women and children. No 
 ship, they told us, had ever entered the 
 lagoon but Bully Hayes's brig, and that was 
 nine years v before. There was nothing on 
 the island to tempt a trading vessel, and 
 even the sperm whalers as they lumbered 
 lazily past from Strong's Island to Guam
 
 THE FATE OF THE ALIDA 163 
 
 would not bother to lower a boat and 
 " dicker " for pearl-shell or turtle. 
 
 At the time of Hayes's visit the people 
 were in sore straits, and on the brink of 
 actual starvation, for although there were 
 fish and turtle in plenty, they had not the 
 strength to catch them. A few months 
 be'fore a cyclone had destroyed nearly all 
 the cocoanut trees, and an epidemic followed 
 it, and carried off half of|the scanty population. 
 
 The jaunty sea - rover than whom a 
 kinder-hearted man to natives never sailed 
 the South Seas took pity on the survivors, 
 especially the youngest and prettiest girls, 
 and gave them a passage in the famous 
 Leonora to another island where food 
 was plentiful. There they remained for some 
 years, till the inevitable mal du pays that is 
 inborn to every Polynesian and Micronesian, 
 became too strong to be resisted ; and so,
 
 164 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 one day, a wandering sperm whaler brought 
 them back again. 
 
 But in their absence strangers had come 
 to the island. As the people Iande4 from 
 the boats of the whaleship, two brown men, 
 a woman and a child, came out of one of the 
 houses, and gazed at them. Then they fled 
 to the farthest end of the island and hid.- 
 
 Some weeks passed before the returned 
 islanders found out the retreat of the 
 strangers, who were armed with rifles, and 
 called to them to " come out and be friends." 
 They did so, and by some subtle treachery 
 the two men were killed during the night. 
 The woman, who was young and handsome, 
 was spared, and, from what we could learn, 
 had been well treated ever since. 
 
 " Where did the strangers come from ? ' 
 we asked. 
 
 That they could not tell us. But the 
 woman had since told them that the ship 
 had anchored in the lagoon because she was
 
 THE FATE OF THE ALIDA 165 
 
 leaking badly ; and that the captain and 
 crew were trying to stop the leak when she 
 commenced to sink, and they had barely 
 time to save a few things when she sank. 
 In a few days the captain and crew left the 
 island in the boat ; and rather than face the 
 dangers of a long voyage in such a small 
 boat, the two natives and the woman 
 elected to remain on the island. 
 
 " That's a mighty fishy yarn," said 
 Packenham to me. " I daresay these 
 fellows have been doing a little cutting-off 
 business. But then I don't know of any 
 missing vessel. We'll go ashore to-morrow 
 and have a look round." 
 
 A little after sunset the skipper and I 
 were leaning over the rail watching the 
 figures of the natives as they moved to and 
 fro in the glare of the fires lighted here and 
 there along the beach. 
 
 "Hallo," said Packenham, "here's a 
 canoe coming, with only a woman in it. By
 
 166 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 thunder she's travelling, too, and coming 
 straight for the ship." 
 
 A few minutes more and the canoe was 
 alongside. The woman hastily picked up 
 a little girl that was sitting in the bottom, 
 looked up, and called out in English 
 
 " Take my little girl, please." 
 
 A native sailor leant over the bulwarks 
 and lifted up the child, and the woman 
 clambered after her. Then seizing the child 
 from the sailor, she flew along the deck and 
 into the cabin. 
 
 She was standing facing us as we followed 
 and entered, holding the child tightly to her 
 bosom. The soft light of the cabin lamp 
 fell full upon her features, and we saw that 
 she was very young and seemed wildly 
 excited. 
 
 " Who are you ? " began I, when she 
 advanced, put out a trembling hand to me, 
 and said, " Don't you know me, Mr. Super-
 
 THE FATE OF THE ALIDA 167 
 
 cargo ? I am Nerida, Taplin's wife." Then 
 she sank on a seat and sobbed violently. 
 
 We waited till she regained her composure 
 somewhat, and then I said, " Nerida, where 
 is Taplin ? ): 
 
 " Dead," she said in a voice scarce above 
 a whisper, " only us two are left I and little 
 Teresa." 
 
 Packenham held out his hands to the 
 child. With wondering, timid eyes, she 
 came, and for a moment or two looked 
 doubtingly upwards into the brown, hand- 
 some face of the skipper, and then nestled 
 beside him. 
 
 For a minute or so the ticking of the cabin 
 clock broke the silence, ere I ventured to 
 ask the one question uppermost in my mind. 
 
 " Nerida, how and where did Taplin 
 die ? " 
 
 " My husband was murdered at sea," she 
 F*
 
 168 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 said ; and then she covered her face with 
 her hands. 
 
 " Don't ask her any more now," said 
 Packenham, pityingly " let her tell us to- 
 morrow." 
 
 She raised her face. "Yes, I will tell 
 you to-morrow. You will take me away 
 with you, will you not, gentleman for my 
 child's sake ? " 
 
 " Of course," said the captain, promptly. 
 And he stretched out his honest hand to her. 
 
 " She's a wonderful pretty woman," said 
 Packenham, as we walked the poop later 
 on, and he glanced down through the open 
 skylight to where she and the child slept 
 peacefully on the cushioned transoms, " how 
 prettily she speaks English too ; do you 
 think she was fond of her husband, or was 
 it merely excitement that made her cry 
 native women are as prone to be as hysterical
 
 THE FATE OF THE A LI DA 169 
 
 as our own when under any violent 
 emotion." 
 
 " I can only tell you, Packenham, that 
 when I saw her last, five years ago, she was 
 a graceful girl of eighteen, and as full of 
 happiness as a bird is of song she looks 
 thirty now ; and her face is thin and drawn. 
 But I don't say all for love of Taplin." 
 
 " That will all wear off by and by," said 
 the skipper, confidently. 
 
 " Yes," I thought, " and she won't be a 
 widow long." 
 
 Next morning Nerida had an hour or two 
 among the prints and muslin in the trade- 
 room, and there was something of the old 
 beauty about her when she sat down to 
 breakfast with us. We were to sail at noon. 
 The leak had been stopped, and Packenham 
 was in high good-humour. 
 
 " Nerida," I inquired, unthinkingly, " do
 
 170 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 you know what became of the Alida. She 
 never turned up again." 
 
 " Yes," she answered, " she is here, at the 
 bottom of the lagoon. Will you come and 
 look at her." 
 
 After breakfast we lowered the dingy, the 
 captain and I pulling. Nerida steered us 
 out to the north end of the lagoon till. we 
 reached a spot where the water suddenly 
 deepened. It was, in fact, a deep pool some 
 three or four hundred feet in circumference, 
 closed in by a continuous wall of coral rock, 
 the top of which even at low water, would 
 be perhaps two or more fathoms under the 
 surface. 
 
 She held up her hands for us to back 
 water, then she gazed over the side into the 
 water. 
 
 " Look," she said, " there lies the Alida" 
 
 We bent over the side of the boat. The 
 waters of the lagoon were as smooth as glass
 
 THE FATE OF THE ALIDA 171 
 
 and as clear. We saw two slender rounded 
 columns that seemed to shoot up in a 
 slanting direction from out the vague blue 
 depths beneath, to within four or five 
 fathoms of the surface of the water. Swarms 
 of gorgeously-hued fish swam and circled in 
 and about the masses of scarlet and golden 
 weed that clothed the columns from their 
 tops downward and swayed gently to and 
 fro as they glided in and out. 
 
 A hawk-bill turtle, huge, black, and mis- 
 hapen, slid out from beneath the dark ledge 
 of the reef and swam slowly across the pool, 
 and then, between the masts, sank to the 
 bottom. 
 
 " 'Twas six years ago," said Nerida, as 
 we raised our heads. 
 
 That night, as the Palestine sped noise- 
 lessly. before the trade wind to the westward 
 she told me, in the old Funafuti tongue, the 
 tragedy of the Alida.
 
 172 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 " The schooner," she said, " sailed very 
 quickly, for on the fifteenth day out from 
 Funafuti we saw the far-off peaks of Strong's 
 Island. I was glad, for Kusaie is not 
 many days' sail from Ponape and I hated 
 to be on the ship. The man with the blue 
 eyes filled me with fear when he looked at 
 me ; and he and the captain and mate were 
 for ever talking amongst themselves in 
 whispers. 
 
 " There were five native sailors on board 
 two were countrymen of mine, and three 
 were Tafitos 1 
 
 " One night we were close to a little island 
 called Mokil, 2 and Taplin and I were 
 awakened by a loud cry on deck ; my two 
 countrymen were calling on him to help 
 them. He sprang on deck, pistol in hand, 
 and, behold ! the schooner was laid to the 
 wind with the land close to, and the boat 
 alongside, and the three white men were 
 
 1 Natives of the Gilbert Islands. 2 Duperrey's Island.
 
 THE FATE OF THE ALIDA 173 
 
 binding my countrymen with ropes, because 
 they would not get into the boat. 
 
 " ' Help us, friend ! ' they called to my 
 husband in their own tongue ; c the white 
 men say that if we go not ashore here at 
 Mokil they will kill us. Help us for they 
 mean evil to thee and Nerida. He with 
 the yellow moustache wants her for his 
 wife.' 
 
 " There were quick fierce words, and then 
 my husband struck Motley on the head with 
 his pistol and felled him, and then pointed 
 it at the mate and the captain, and made 
 them untie the men, and called to the two 
 Tafito sailors who were in the boat to let her 
 tow astern till morning. 
 
 " His face was white with the rage that 
 burned in him, and all that night he walked 
 to and fro and let me sleep on the deck near 
 him. 
 
 " * To-morrow,' he said, I will make this 
 captain land us on Mokil ' it was for that
 
 174 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 he would not let the sailors come up from 
 the boat. 
 
 " At dawn I slept soundly. Then I awoke 
 with a cry of fear, for I heard a shot, and 
 then a groan, and my husband fell across 
 me, and the blood poured out of his mouth 
 and ran down my arms and neck. I 
 struggled to rise and he tried to draw his 
 pistol, but the man with yellow hair and 
 blue eyes, who stood over him, stabbed him 
 twice in the back. Then the captain and 
 mate seized him by the arms and lifted him 
 up. As his head fell back I saw there was 
 blood streaming from a hole in his chest." 
 
 She ceased, and leant her cheek against 
 the face of the little girl, who looked in 
 childish wonder at the tears that streamed 
 down her mother's face. 
 
 " They cast him over into the sea with 
 life yet in him and ere he sank, Motley
 
 THE FATE OF THE A LI DA 175 
 
 (that devil with the blue eyes) stood with 
 one foot on the rail and fired another shot, 
 and laughed when he saw the bullet strike. 
 Then he and the other two talked. 
 
 " * Let us finish these Pelew men, ere 
 mischief come of it,' said Riedermann, the 
 captain. 
 
 " But the others dissuaded him. There 
 was time enough, they said, to kill them. 
 And if they killed them now, there would be 
 but three sailors to work the ship. And 
 Motley looked at me and laughed, and said 
 he, for one, would do no sailor's work yet 
 awhile. 
 
 " Then they all trooped below, and took 
 me with them me, with my husband's 
 blood not yet dried on my hands and bosom. 
 They made me get liquor for them to drink, 
 and they drank and laughed, and Motley 
 put his bloodied hand around my waist and 
 kissed me, and the others laughed still more. 
 
 " In a little while Riedermann and the
 
 176 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 mate were so drunken that no words came 
 from them, and they fell on the cabin floor. 
 Then Motley, who could stand, but staggered 
 as he walked, came and sat beside me and 
 kissed me again, and said he had always 
 loved me ; but I pointed to the blood of my 
 husband that stained my skin and clotted 
 my hair together, and besought him to first 
 let me wash it away. 
 
 :< * Wash it there,' he said, and pointed to 
 his cabin. 
 
 " * Nay,' said I, * see my hair. Let me 
 then go on deck, and I can pour water over 
 my head.' 
 
 " But he held my hand tightly as we came 
 up, and my heart died within me ; for it was 
 in my mind to spring overboard and follow 
 my husband. 
 
 " He called to one of the Tafito men to 
 bring water, but none came ; for they, too, 
 were drunken with liquor they had stolen 
 from the hold, where there was plenty in
 
 THE FATE OF THE A LI DA 177 
 
 red cases and white cases gin and 
 brandy. 
 
 " But my two countrymen were sober ; 
 one of them steered the ship, and the other 
 stood beside him with an axe in his hand, 
 for they feared the Tafito men, who are 
 devils when they drink grog. 
 
 "'Get some water,' said Motley, to Juan 
 he who held the axe ; and, as he brought it, 
 he said, How is it, tatooed dog, that thou 
 art so slow to move ? ' and he struck him 
 in the teeth, and as he struck he fell. 
 
 " Ah ! that was my time ! Ere he could 
 rise I sprang at him, and Juan raised the axe 
 and struck off his right foot ; and then Liro, 
 the man who steered, handed me his knife. It 
 was a sharp knife, and I stabbed him, even 
 as he had stabbed my husband, till my arm 
 was tired, and all my hate of him had died 
 
 away in my heart . 
 
 - 
 
 " There was quick work then. My two
 
 1 78 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 countrymen went below into the cabin and 
 took Motley's pistol from the table ; . . . 
 then I heard two shots. 
 
 " Guk ! He was a fat, heavy man, that 
 Riedermann, the captain, the three of us 
 could scarce drag him up on deck and cast 
 him over the side, with the other two. 
 
 " Then Juan and Liro talked and said, 
 e Now for these Tafito men ; they too must 
 die. 3 They brought up rifles and went to 
 the fore-part of the schooner where the 
 Tafito men lay in a drunken sleep and shot 
 them dead. 
 
 " In two more days we saw land the 
 island we have left but now, and because 
 that there were no people living there only 
 empty houses could we see Juan and Liro 
 sailed the schooner into the lagoon. 
 
 " We took such things on shore as we 
 needed, and then Juan and Liro cut away 
 the topmasts and towed the schooner to the 
 deep pool, where they made holes in her, so
 
 THE FATE OF THE A LI DA 179 
 
 that she sank, away out of the sight of 
 men. 
 
 " Juan and Liro were kind to me, and 
 when my child was born five months after 
 we landed, they cared for me tenderly, so 
 that I soon became strong and well. 
 
 " Only two ships did we ever see, but they 
 passed far-off like clouds upon the sea-rim ; 
 and we thought to live and die there by 
 ourselves. Then there came a ship, bringing 
 back the people who had once lived there. 
 They killed Juan and Liro, but let me and 
 the child live. The rest I have told you 
 . . . how is this captain named ? . . . 
 He is a handsome man and I like him." 
 
 We landed Neirda at Yap, in the Western 
 Carolines. A year afterwards, when I left 
 the Palestine, I heard that Packenham had 
 given up the sea, was trading in the Pelew
 
 i8o BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 Group, and was permanently married, and 
 that his wife was the only survivor of the 
 ill-fated Alida.
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 
 
 A TALE OF EASTER ISLAND 
 
 ALONE, in the most solitary part of the 
 Eastern Pacific, midway between the earth- 
 quake-shaken littoral of Chili and Peru, and 
 the thousand palm-clad islets of the Low 
 Archipelago, lies an island of the days 
 " when the world was young." By the 
 lithe-limbed, soft-eyed descendants of the 
 forgotten and mysterious race that once 
 quickened the land, this lonely outlier of the 
 isles of the Southern Seas is called in their 
 soft tongue Rapa-nui, or the Great Rapa. 
 
 * 
 
 A hundred and seventy years ago 
 Roggewein, on the dawn of an Easter 
 Sunday, discerned through the misty, tropic
 
 182 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 haze the grey outlines of an island under 
 his lee beam, and sailed down upon it. 
 
 He landed, and even as the grim and 
 hardy old navigator gazed upon and 
 wondered at the mysteries of the strange 
 island, so this day do the cunning men of 
 science who, perhaps once in thirty years, go 
 thither in the 'vain effort to read the secret 
 of an ail-but perished race. And they can 
 tell us but vaguely that the stupendous 
 existing evidences of past glories are of 
 immense and untold age, and show their 
 designers to have been co-eval with the 
 builders of the buried cities of Mexico 
 and Peru ; beyond that they can tell us 
 nothing. 
 
 Who can solve the problem ? What 
 manner of an island king was he who ruled 
 the builders of the great terraced platforms 
 of stones, the carvers of the huge blocks of 
 lava, the hewers-out with rudest tools of the 
 Sphinx-like images of trachyte whose square,
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 183 
 
 massive, and disdainful faces have for un- 
 numbered centuries gazed upwards and out- 
 wards over the rolling, sailless swell of the 
 mid-Pacific ? 
 
 
 
 And the people of Rapa-nui of to-day ? 
 you may ask. Search the whole Pacific 
 from Pylstaart, the southern sentinel of the 
 Friendlies, to the one-time buccaneer- 
 haunted, far-away Pelews ; thence eastward 
 through the white-beached coral atolls of the 
 Carolines and Marshalls, and southwards to 
 the cloud-capped Marquesas and the sandy 
 stretches of the Paumotu and you will find 
 no handsomer men or more graceful women 
 than the light-skinned people of Rapa-nui. 
 
 
 
 Yet are they but the survivors of a race 
 doomed doomed from the day that Rogge- 
 wein in his clumsy, high-pooped frigate first 
 saw their land and marvelled at the imperish- 
 able relics of a dead greatness. With
 
 184 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 smiling faces they welcomed him a stranger 
 from an unknown, outside world, with 
 cutlass at waist and pistol in hand as a 
 god ; he left them a legacy of civilisation 
 a hideous and cruel disease that swept 
 through the amiable and unsuspicious race 
 as an epidemic, and slew its thousands, and 
 sealed with the hand of Death and Silence 
 the eager life that had then rilled the square 
 houses of lava in many a town from the 
 wave-beaten cliffs of Terano Kau to Ounipu 
 in the west. 
 
 Ask of the people now, " Whence came 
 ye ? and whose were the hands that fashioned 
 these mighty images and carved upon these 
 stones ? " and in their simple manner they 
 will answer, " From Rapa, under the setting 
 sun, came our fathers ; and we were then a 
 great people, even as the oneone 1 of the 
 beach. . . . Our Great King was it, he 
 
 1 Sand.
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 185 
 
 whose name is forgotten by us, that caused 
 these temples and cemeteries and terraces to 
 be built ; and it was in his time that the 
 forgotten fathers of our fathers carved from 
 out of the stone of the quarries of Terano 
 Kau the great Silent faces that gaze for ever 
 upward to the sky. . . . Ai-a-ah ! . . . But 
 it was long ago. . . . Ah ! a great people 
 were we then in those days, and the wild 
 people to the West called us Te tagata te ptto 
 Henua (the people who live at the end of the 
 world) . . . and we know no more." 
 
 And here the knowledge and traditions of 
 a broken people begin and end. 
 
 I 
 
 A soft, cool morning in November, 187 . 
 Between Ducie and Pitcairn Islands two 
 American whaleships cruise lazily along to 
 the gentle breath of the south-east trades,
 
 186 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 when the look-out from both vessels see a 
 third sail bearing down upon them. In a 
 few hours she is close enough to be recognised 
 as one of the luckiest sperm whalers of the 
 fleet the brig Pocahontas, of Martha's Vine- 
 yard. 
 
 Within a quarter of a. mile of the two ships 
 the Nassau and the Dagget the new- 
 
 
 
 comer backs her fore-yard and hauls up her 
 mainsail. A cheer rises from the ships. 
 She wants to gam, i.e., to gossip. With 
 eager hands four boats are lowered from the 
 two ships, and the captains and second 
 mates of each are racing for the Pocahontas. 
 
 The skipper of the brig, after shaking 
 hands with his visitors and making the usual 
 inquiries as to their luck, number of days 
 out from New Bedford, etc., led the way 
 to his cabin, and, calling his Portuguese 
 steward, had liquor and a box of cigars
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 187 
 
 brought out. The captain of jhe Pocahontas 
 was a little, withered-up old man with sharp, 
 deep-set eyes of brightest blue, and had the 
 reputation of possessing the most fiery and 
 excitable temper of any of the captains of 
 the sixty or seventy American whaleships 
 that in those days cruised the Pacific from 
 the west coast of South America to Guam 
 
 in Ladrones. 
 
 / 
 
 After drinking some of his potent New 
 England rum with his visitors, and having 
 answered all the queries, the master of the 
 Pocahontas inquired if they had seen any- 
 thing of a Chilian man-of-war further to the 
 eastward. No, they had not. 
 
 " Then just settle down, gentlemen, for 
 awhile, and I'll tell you one of the curiousest 
 things that I ever saw or heard of. I've 
 logged partiklers of the whole business, and 
 when I get to Oahu (Honolulu) I mean to
 
 188 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 nar-rate just * all I do know to Father 
 Damon of the Honolulu Friend. Thar's 
 nothing like a newspaper fur showin' a man 
 up when he's been up to any onnatural 
 villainy and thinks no one will ever know 
 anything about it. So just listen and take 
 hold." 
 
 The two captains nodded, and he told 
 them this. 
 
 
 
 Ten days previously, when close in to 
 barren and isolated Sala-y-Gomez, the Poca- 
 bontas had spoken the Chilian corvette 
 O'Higgins, bound from Easter Island to 
 Valparaiso. The captain of the corvette 
 entertained the American master courteously, 
 and explained his ship's presence so far to 
 the eastward by stating that the Govern- 
 ment had instructed him to call at Easter 
 Island and pick up an Englishman in the 
 Chilian service, who had been sent there to 
 examine and report on the colossal statues
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 189 
 
 and mysterious carvings of that lonely 
 island. The Englishman, as Commander 
 Gallegos said, was a valued servant of the 
 Republic, and had for some years servecl in 
 its navy as a surgeon on board El Almirante 
 Cochrane, the flag-ship. We had left 
 Valparaiso in the whaleship Comboy with 
 the intention of remaining three months on 
 the island. At the end of that time a war 
 vessel was to call and convey him back to 
 Chili. But in less than two months the 
 Republic was in the throes of a deadly 
 struggle with Peru here the commander of 
 the CPHiggins bowed to the American 
 captain, and, pointing to a huge scar that 
 traversed his bronzed face from temple to 
 chin, said, " in which I had the honour to 
 receive this, and promotion " and nearly 
 two years had elapsed ere the Government 
 had time to think again of the English 
 scientist and his mission. Peace restored, 
 the (yHiggins was ordered to proceed to the
 
 190 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 island and bring him back ; and as the 
 character of the natives was not well known, 
 and it was feared he might have been killed, 
 Commander Gallegos was instructed to exe- 
 cute summary justice upon the people of the 
 island if such was the case. 
 
 But, the Chilian officer said, on reaching 
 the island he had found the natives to be 
 very peaceable and inoffensive, and, 
 although much alarmed at the appearance 
 of his armed landing party from the cor- 
 vette, they had given him a letter from the 
 Englishman, and had satisfied him that 
 
 Dr. Francis had remained with them 
 
 for some twelve months only, and had then 
 left the island in a passing whaleship, and, 
 Commander Gallegos, making them suitable 
 presents, bade them good-bye, and steamed 
 away for Valparaiso. 
 
 
 
 This was all the polite little commander 
 had to say, and, after,, a farewell glass of
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 191 
 
 wine, his visitor rose to go, when the captain 
 of the corvette casually inquired if the 
 Pocakontas was likely to call at the island. 
 
 " I ask you," he said in his perfect 
 English, " because of one of my men, a 
 bluejacket, who deserted there. You, 
 sefior, may possibly meet with him there. 
 Yet he is of no value, and he is not a sailor, 
 and but a lad. He was very ill most of the 
 time, and this was his first voyage. I took 
 him ashore with me in my boat, as he 
 besought me eagerly to do so, and the little 
 devil ran away and hid, or was hidden by 
 the natives." 
 
 " Why didn't you get him back ? " asked 
 the captain of the Pocahontas. 
 
 " For dios ! that was easy enough, but " 
 and the commander raised his eyebrows and 
 shrugged his shoulders " of what use ? He 
 was no use to the corvette. Better for him to 
 stay there, and perhaps recover, than to die 
 on board the O'Higgins and be thrown to
 
 192 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 the blue sharks. Possibly, senor, you may 
 find him well, and it may suit you to take 
 him to your good ship and teach him the 
 business of catching the whale. My trade 
 is to show my crew how to fight, and such 
 as he are of no value for that." 
 
 Then the two captains bade each other 
 farewell, and in another hour the redoubt- 
 able O'Higgins, with a black trail of smoke 
 streaming astern, was ten miles away on her 
 course to Valparaiso. 
 
 A week after the Pocahontas lay becalmed 
 close in to the lee side of Rapa-nui, and 
 within sight of the houses of the principal 
 village. The captain, always ready to get 
 a " green " hand, was thinking of the 
 chances of his securing the Chilian deserter, 
 and decided to lower a boat and try. Taking 
 four men with him, he pulled ashore and 
 landed at the village of Hagaroa.
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 193 
 
 II 
 
 Some sixty or seventy natives clustered 
 round the boat as she touched the shore. 
 With smiling faces and outstretched hands 
 they surrounded the captain and pressed 
 upon him their simple gifts of ripe bananas 
 and fish baked in leaves, begging him to 
 first eat a little and then walk with them to 
 Mataveri, their largest village, distant a 
 mile, where preparations were being made 
 to welcome him formally. The skipper, 
 nothing loth, bade his crew not to go too 
 far away in their rambles, and, accompanied 
 by his boat-steerer, was about to set off 
 with the natives, when he remembered the 
 object of his visit, and asked a big, well- 
 made woman, the only native present that 
 could speak English, " Where is the man you 
 hid from the man-of-war ? " 
 
 * 
 
 There was a dead silence, and for nearly
 
 194 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 half a minute no one spoke. The keen 
 blue eyes of the American looked from one 
 face to another inquiringly, and then settled 
 on the fat, good-natured features of Varua, 
 the big woman. 
 
 Holding her hands, palms upwards, to 
 the captain, she endeavoured to speak, and 
 then, to his astonishment, he saw that her 
 dark eyes were filled with tears. And then, 
 as if moved with some sudden and sorrowful 
 emotion, a number of other women and 
 young girls, murmuring softly in pitying 
 tones, " E mate ! E mate / " * came to his 
 side and held their hands out to him with 
 the same supplicating gesture. 
 
 The captain was puzzled. For all his 
 island wanderings and cruises he had no 
 knowledge of any Polynesian dialect, and 
 the tearful muteness of the fat Varua was 
 still unbroken. At last she placed one 
 hand on his sleeve, and, pointing landward 
 
 i " Dead 1 Dead 1 "
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 195 
 
 with the other, said, in her gentle voice, 
 " Come," and taking his hand in hers, she 
 led the way, the rest of the people following 
 in silence. 
 
 For about half a mile they walked behind 
 the captain and his boatsteerer and the 
 woman Varua without uttering a word. 
 Presently Varua stopped and called out the 
 name of " Taku " in a low voice. 
 
 A fine, handsome native, partly clothed 
 in European sailor's dress, stepped apart 
 from the others and came to her. 
 
 Turning to the captain, she said, " This 
 is Taku the Sailor. He can speak a little 
 English and much Spanish. I tell him now 
 to come with us, for he hath a paper." 
 
 Although not understanding the relevancy 
 of her remark, the captain nodded, and then 
 with gentle insistence Varua. and the other 
 women urged him on, and they again set 
 out.
 
 196 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 A few minutes more, and they were at the 
 foot of one of the massive-stoned and 
 ancient papaku, or cemeteries, on the walls 
 of which were a number of huge images 
 carved from trachyte, and representing the 
 trunk of the human body. Some of the 
 figures bore on their heads crowns of red 
 tufa, and the aspect of all was towards the 
 ocean. At the foot of the wall of the 
 papaku were a number of prone figures, with 
 hands and arms sculptured in low relief, the 
 outspread fingers clasping the hips. 
 
 About a cable length from the wall stood 
 two stone houses memorials of the olden 
 time and it was to these that Varua and 
 the two white men, attended now by women 
 only, directed their steps. 
 
 * 
 
 The strange, unearthly stillness of the 
 place, the low whispers of the women, the 
 array of colossal figures with sphinx-like faces 
 set to the sea, and the unutterable air of
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 197 
 
 sadness that enwrapped the whole scene 
 overawed even the unimaginative mind of 
 the rough whaling captain, and he experi- 
 enced a curious feeling of relief when his 
 gentle-voiced guide entered through the open 
 doorway the largest of the two houses, and, 
 in a whisper, bade him follow. 
 
 A delightful sense of coolness was his 
 first sensation on entering, and then with 
 noiseless step the other women followed and 
 seated themselves on the ground. 
 
 Still clasping his hand, Varua led him to 
 the farther end of the house and pointed to 
 a motionless figure that lay on a couch of 
 mats, covered with a large piece of navy- 
 blue calico. At each side of the couch sat 
 a young native girl, and their dark, luminous 
 eyes, shining star-like from out the wealth of 
 black, glossy hair that fell upon their 
 bronzed shoulders, turned wonderingly upon
 
 198 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 the stranger who had broken in upon their 
 watch. 
 
 Motioning the girls aside, Varua released 
 her hold of the white man's hand and drew 
 the cloth from off the figure, and the sea- 
 man's pitying glance fell upon the pale, 
 sweet features of a young white girl. 
 
 But for the unmistakable pallid hue of 
 death he thought at first that she slept. In 
 the thin, delicate hands, crossed upon her 
 bosom, there was placed, after the manner 
 of those of her faith, a small metal crucifix. 
 Her hair, silky and jet black, was short like 
 a man's, and the exquisitely-modelled 
 features, which even the coldness of death 
 had not robbed of their beauty, showed the 
 Spanish blood that, but a few hours before, 
 had coursed through her veins. 
 
 Slowly the old seaman drew the covering 
 over the still features, and, with an unusual 
 emotion stirring his rude nature, he rose,
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 199 
 
 and, followed by Varua, walked outside and 
 sat upon a broken pillar of lava that lay 
 under the wall of the papaku. 
 
 
 
 Calling his boatsteerer, he ordered him to 
 return to the beach and go oil to the ship 
 with instructions to the mate to have a 
 coffin made as quickly as possible and send 
 it ashore ; and then, at a glance from Varua, 
 who smiled a grave approval as she listened 
 to his orders, he followed her and the man 
 she called Taku into the smaller of the two 
 houses. 
 
 Round about the inside walls of this 
 ancient dwelling of a forgotten race were 
 placed a number of seamen's chests made of 
 cedar and camphor wood the lares and 
 penates of most Polynesian houses. The 
 gravelled floor was covered with prettily- 
 ornamented mats of jala (the screw-palm). 
 
 Seating herself, with Taku the Sailor, on 
 
 the mats, Varua motioned the captain to 
 G*
 
 200 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 one of the boxes, and then told him a tale 
 that moved him rough, fierce, and 
 tyrannical as was his nature to the deepest 
 pity. 
 
 Ill 
 
 " It is not yet twenty days since the 
 fighting pahi afi (steamer) came here, and we 
 of Mataveri saw the boat full of armed men 
 land on the beach at Hagaroa. Filled with 
 fear were we ; but yet as we had done no 
 wrong we stood on the beach to welcome. 
 And, ere the armed men had left the boat, 
 we knew them to be the Sipaniola from 
 Chili the same as those that came here ten 
 years ago in three ships and seized and 
 bound three hundred and six of our men and 
 carried them away for slaves to the land of 
 the Tae Manu, and of whom none but four 
 ever returned to Rapa-nui. And then we 
 trembled again."
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 201 
 
 (She spoke of the cruel outrage of 1862, 
 when three Peruvian slave-ships took away 
 over three hundred islanders to perish on 
 the guano-fields of the Chincha Islands.) 
 
 " The chief of the ship was a little man, 
 and he called out to us in the tongue of 
 Chili, ( Have no fear,' and took a little gun 
 from out its case of skin that hung by his 
 side and giving it to a man in the boat, 
 stepped over to us and took our hands in 
 his. 
 
 " ' Is there none among ye that speak my 
 tongue ? ' he said quickly. 
 
 " Now, this man here, Taku the Sailor, 
 speaketh the tongue of Chili, but he feared 
 to tell it, lest they might take him away for 
 a sailor ; so he held his lips tight. 
 
 " Then I, who for six years dwelt with 
 English people at Tahiti, was pushed for- 
 ward by those behind me and made to talk 
 in English ; and lo ! the little man spoke in 
 your tongue even as quick as he did in that
 
 202 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 of Chili. And then he told us that he came 
 for Farani. 1 
 
 " Now this Farani was a young white man 
 of Peretania (England), big and strong. He 
 came to us a year and a half ago. He was 
 rich and had with him chests filled with 
 presents for us of Rapa-nui ; and he told us 
 that he came to live awhile among us, and 
 look upon the houses of stone and the Faces 
 of the Silent that gaze out upon the sea. For 
 a year he dwelt with us and became as one 
 of ourselves and we loved him ; and then 
 because no ship came he began to weary and 
 be sad. At last a ship like thine, one that 
 hunts for the whale came, and Farani 
 called us together, and placed a letter in the 
 hands of the chief at Mataveri and said, * If 
 it so be that a ship cometh from Chili give 
 these my words to the captain, and all will 
 
 1 Frank.
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 203 
 
 be well.' Then he bade us farewell and was 
 gone. 
 
 
 
 " All this I said in quick words, and then 
 we gave to the little fighting chief the letter 
 Farani had written. When he had counted 
 the words in the letter he said, ' Bueno, it is 
 well,' and called to his men, and they 
 brought out many gifts for us from the boat 
 cloth, and garments for men and women, 
 and two great bags of canvas filled with 
 tobacco. Ai-a-ah ! many presents he gave 
 us ; this because of the good words Farani 
 had set down in the letter. Then the little 
 chief said to me, * Let these my men walk 
 where they list, and I will go with thee to 
 Mataveri and talk with the chief.' 
 
 " So the sailors came out of the boats 
 carrying their guns and swords in their 
 hands, but the little chief, whose avagutu 
 (moustache) stuck out on each side of his 
 face like the wings of a flying-fish when it
 
 204 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 leaps in terror from the mouth of the hungry 
 bonito, spoke angrily, and they laid their 
 guns and swords back in the boats. 
 
 " So the sailors went hither and thither 
 with our young men and girls ; and, although 
 at that tune I knew it not, she who now is 
 not, was one of them, and walked alone. 
 
 " Then I and Taku the Sailor, and the 
 little sea-chief came to the houses of 
 Mataveri, and he stayed awhile and spoke 
 good words to us. And we, although we 
 fear the men of Chili for the wrong they 
 once did us, were yet glad to listen, for we 
 also are of their faith. 
 
 " As we talked, there came inside the 
 house a young girl named Temeteri, whom 
 when Farani had been with us for two 
 months, he had taken for wife, and she bore 
 him a son. But from the day that he had 
 sailed away she became sick with grief ; and 
 when, after many months, she had told me
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 205 
 
 that Farani had said he would return to her, 
 my heart was heavy ; for I know the ways 
 of white men with us women of brown skins. 
 Yet I feared to tell her he lied and would 
 return no more. Now, this girl Temeteri 
 was sought after by a man named Huarani, 
 the son of Heremai, who desired to marry 
 her now that Farani had gone, and he urged 
 her to question the chief of the fighting ship 
 and ask him if Farani would return. 
 
 " So I spoke of Temeteri. He laughed 
 and shook his head, and said, t Nay, Farani 
 the Englishman will return no more ; but 
 yet one so beautiful as she,' and he pointed 
 to Temeteri, * should have many lovers and 
 know no grief. Let her marry again and 
 forget him ; and this is my marriage gift to 
 her,' and he threw a big golden coin upon 
 the mat on which the girl sat. 
 
 " She took it in her hand and threw it 
 far out through the doorway with bitter
 
 206 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 words, and rose and went away to her 
 child. 
 
 * Then the little captain went back to 
 the boat and called his men to him, and lo ! 
 one was gone. Ah ! he was angry, and a 
 great scar that ran down one side of his face 
 grew red with rage. But soon he laughed 
 and said to us, ' See there be one of my 
 people hidden away from me. Yet he is 
 but a boy and sick ; and I care not to stay 
 and search for him. Let him be thy care 
 so that he wanders not away and perishes 
 among the broken lava ; he will be in good 
 hands among the people of Rapa-nui. With 
 that he bade us farewell, and in but a little 
 time the great fighting ship had gone away 
 to the rising sun. 
 
 " All that day and the next we searched, 
 but found not him who had hidden away ; 
 but in the night of the second day, when it 
 rained heavily, and Taku (who is my
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 207 
 
 brother's son) and I and my two children 
 worked at the making of a kupega (net), he 
 whom we had sought came to the door. 
 And as we looked our hearts were filled with 
 pity, for as he put out his hands to us he 
 staggered and fell to the ground. 
 
 " So Taku who is a man of a good 
 heart and I lifted him up and carried him 
 to a bed of soft mats, and as I placed my 
 hand on his bosom to see if he was dead, lo ! 
 it was soft as a woman's, and I saw that the 
 stranger was a young girl ! 
 
 " I took from her the wet garments and 
 brought warm clothes of mamoe (blankets), 
 and Taku made a great fire, and we rubbed 
 her cold body and her hands and feet till her 
 life came back to her again, and she sat up 
 and ate a little beaten-up taro. When the 
 night and the dawn touched she slept again. 
 
 The sun was high when the white girl
 
 208 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 awoke, and fear leapt into her eyes when she 
 saw the house filled with people who came 
 to question Taku and me about the 
 stranger. With them came the girl 
 Temeteri, whose head was still filled with 
 foolish thoughts of Farani, her white lover. 
 " I went to her, put my arm around her, 
 and spoke, but though she smiled and 
 answered in a little voice, I understood her 
 not, for I knew none of the tongue of Chili. 
 But yet she leaned her head against my 
 bosom, and her eyes that were as big and 
 bright as Fetuaho, the star of the morning, 
 looked up into mine and smiled through 
 their tears. 
 
 
 
 " There was a great buzzing of talk 
 among the women. Some came to her and 
 touched hands and forehead, and said, ' Let 
 thy trembling cease ; we of Rapa-nui will 
 be kind to the white girl.' 
 
 " And as the people thronged about her
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 209 
 
 and talked, she shook her head and her eyes 
 sought mine and hot tears plashed- upon 
 my hand. Then the mother of .Temeteri 
 raised her voice and called to Taku the 
 Sailor and said, ' O Taku, thou who knowest 
 her tongue, ask her of Parani, my white son, 
 the husband of my daughter.' 
 
 " The young girls in the house laughed 
 scornfully at old Pohere, for some of them 
 had loved Farani, who yet had put them all 
 aside for Temeteri, whose beauty exceeded 
 theirs ; and so they hated her and laughed 
 at her mother. Then Taku, being pressed 
 by old Pohere spoke in the tongue of Chili 
 but not of Temeteri. 
 
 " Ah ! She sprang to her feet and talked 
 then, and the flying words chased one 
 another from her lips ; and these things told 
 she to Taku : She had hidden among the 
 broken lava and watched the little captain
 
 210 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 come back to the boat and bid us farewell. 
 Then when night came she had crept out 
 and gone far over to the great papaku, and 
 lay down to hide again, for she feared the 
 fighting ship might return to seek her. And 
 all that day she lay" hidden in the lava till 
 night fell upon her again, and hunger drove 
 her to seek the faces of men. In the rain 
 she all but perished, till God brought her 
 feet to this my house. 
 
 " Then said Taku the Sailor, ' Why didst 
 thou flee from the ship ? ' 
 
 " The white girl put her hands to her face 
 and wept, and said, * Bring me my jacket.' 
 
 " I gave to her the blue sailor's jacket, 
 and from inside of it she took a little flat 
 thing and placed it in her bosom. 
 
 * 
 
 " Again said old Pohere to Taku, ' O man 
 of slow tongue, ask her of FaramV So he 
 asked in this wise : 
 
 " See, O White Girl, that is Pohere, the
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 211 
 
 mother of Temeteri, who bore a son to the 
 white man that came here to look upon the 
 Silent Faces ; and because he came from thy 
 land, and because of the heart of Temeteri 
 which is dried up for love of him does this 
 foolish old woman ask thee if thou hast seen 
 him ; for long months ago he left Rapa-nui. 
 In our tongue we call him Farani.' 
 
 * 
 
 " The girl looked at Taku the Sailor, and 
 her lips moved, but no words came. Then 
 from her bosom she took the little flat thing 
 and held it to him, but sickness was in her 
 hand so that it trembled, and that which she 
 held fell to the ground. So Taku stooped 
 and picked it up from where it lay on the 
 mat and looked, and his eyes blazed, and he 
 shouted out c Aue ! ' for it was the face of 
 Farani that looked into his ! And as he 
 held it up in his hand to the people they, 
 too, shouted in wonder ; and then the girl 
 Temeteri cast aside those that stood
 
 212 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 about her and tore it from his hand and 
 fled. 
 
 " ' Who is she ? ' said the white girl, in a 
 weak voice to Taku, ' and why hath she 
 robbed me of that which is dear to me ? ' 
 and Taku was ashamed and turned his face 
 away from her because of two things his 
 heart was sore for Temeteri, who is a blood 
 relation, and was shamed because her white 
 lover had deserted her ; and he was full of 
 pity for the white girl's tears. So he said 
 nought. 
 
 " The girl raised herself and her hand 
 caught Taku by the arm, and these were her 
 words : * O man, for the love of Jesu 
 Christ, tell me what was this woman 
 Temeteri to my husband ? ' 
 
 " Now Taku the Sailor was sore troubled, 
 and felt it hard to hurt her heart, yet he 
 said, ' Was Farani, the Englishman, thy 
 husband ? ' 
 
 " She wept again, ' He was my_ husband.'
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 213 
 
 " ' Why left he one as fair as thee ? ' said 
 Taku, in wonder. 
 
 " She shook her head. * I know not, 
 except he loved to look upon strange lands ; 
 yet he loved me.' 
 
 " ' He is a bad man,' said Taku. i He 
 loved others as well as thee. The girl that 
 fled but now with his picture was wife to 
 him here. He loved her and she bore him 
 
 a son.' 
 
 " The girl's head fell on my shoulder and 
 her eyes closed, and she became as dead, 
 and lo ! in a little while as she strove to 
 speak blood poured from her mouth and ran 
 down over her bosom. 
 
 " ' It is the hand of Death,' said Taku 
 the Sailor. 
 
 " Where she now lies, there died she, at 
 about the hour when the people of Vaihou 
 saw the sails of thy ship. 
 
 " We have no priest here, for the good
 
 2i 4 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 father that was here three years ago is now 
 silent ; yet did Taku and I pray with her. 
 And ere she was silent she said she would set 
 down some words on paper ; so Alrema, my 
 little daughter, hastened to Mataveri, and 
 the chief sent back some paper and vai tuhi 
 (ink) that had belonged to the good priest. 
 So with weak hand she set down some 
 words, but even as she wrote she rose 
 
 up and threw out her hands, and called out, 
 
 
 
 * Francisco, Francisco ! J and fell back, and 
 was silent for ever." 
 
 17 
 
 The captain of the Pocahontas dashed the 
 now fast-falling tears from his eyes, and with 
 his rough old heart swelling with pity for 
 the poor wanderer, took from Taku the 
 sheet of paper on which the heart-broken 
 girl's last words were traced.
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 215 
 
 Ere he could read it a low murmur of 
 voices outside told him his crew had 
 returned. They carried a rude wooden 
 shell ; and then with bared heads the 
 captain and boatsteerer entered the house 
 where she lay. 
 
 Again the old man raised the piece of navy 
 blue cloth from off the sweet, sad face, and 
 a heavy tear dropped down upon her fore- 
 head. Then, aided by the gentle, sym- 
 pathetic women, his task was soon finished, 
 and two of his crew entered and carried 
 their burden to its grave. Service there was 
 none ; only the prayers and tears of the 
 brown women of Rapa-nui. 
 
 Ere he said farewell the captain of the 
 whaleship placed money in the hands of 
 Varua and Taku. They drew back, hurt 
 and mortified. Seeing his mistake, the sea- 
 man desired Varua to give the money to the 
 girl Temeteri.
 
 216 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 " Nay, sir," said Varua, " she would but 
 give me bitter words. Even when she who 
 is now silent was not yet cold Temeteri 
 came to the door of the house where she lay 
 and spat twice on the ground, and taking 
 up gravel in her hand cast it at her and 
 cursed her in the name of our old heathen 
 gods. And as for money, we here in Rapa- 
 nui need it not. May Christ protect thee 
 on the sea. Farewell ! " 
 
 The Captain of the Pocabontas rose and 
 came to the cabin table, and motioning to 
 his guests to fill their glasses, said 
 
 " 'Tis a real sad story, gentlemen, and if 
 I should ever run across Doctor Francis 
 I should talk some to him. But see here. 
 Here is my log ; my mate, who~is a fancy 
 writist, wrote it at my dictation. I can't 
 show you the letter that the pore creature 
 herself wrote ; that I ain't going to show to 
 any one."
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 217 
 
 The two captains rose and stood beside 
 him and read the entry in the log of the 
 Pocabontas. 
 
 " November 28, 187-. 
 
 " This day I landed at Easter Island, to 
 try and obtain as a ' green ' hand a young 
 Chilian seaman who, the captain of the 
 Chilian corvette O'Higgins informed me, 
 had run away there. On landing I was 
 shown the body of a young girl, whom the 
 natives stated to be the deserter. She had 
 died that morning. Buried her as decently as 
 circumstances would permit. From a letter 
 she wrote on the morning of her death I 
 
 learned her name to be Senora Teresa T . 
 
 Her husband, Dr. Francis T , was an 
 
 Englishman in the service of the Chilian 
 Republic. He was sent out on a 
 scientific mission to the island, and his 
 wife followed him in the O'Higgins dis- 
 guised as a bluejacket. I should take
 
 218 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 her to have been about nineteen years of 
 age. 
 
 " SPENCE ELDRIDGE, Master. 
 
 " MANUAL LEGASPE, 2nd officer. 
 " Brig Pocahontas of Martha's Vineyard, 
 U.S.A." 
 
 1 Well, that's curious now," said the 
 skipper of the Nassau, " why, I knew that 
 man. He left the island in the King Darius, 
 of New Bedford, and landed at Ponape in 
 the Caroline Group, whar those under- 
 ground ruins are at Metalanien Harbour. 
 Guess he wanted to potter around there a 
 bit. But he got inter some sorter trouble 
 among the natives there an' he got shot." 
 
 " Aye," said the captain of the Dagget, 
 " I remember the affair. I was mate of the 
 Josephine, and we were lying at Jakoits 
 Harbour when he was killed, and now I 
 remember the name too. Waal, he wasn't 
 much account anyhow."
 
 THE CHILIAN BLUEJACKET 219 
 
 Ten years ago a wandering white man 
 stood, with Taku the Sailor, at the base of 
 the wall of the great papaku, and the native 
 pointed out the last resting-place of the 
 wanderer. There, under the shadow of the 
 Silent Faces of Stone, the brave and loving 
 heart that dared so much is at peace for ever.
 
 ( 22O ) 
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 
 
 ONE day a trading vessel lay becalmed off 
 Tatakoto, in the Paumotu Archipelago, and 
 the captain and supercargo, taking a 
 couple of native sailors with them, went 
 ashore at dawn to catch some turtle. The 
 turtle were plentiful and easily caught, and 
 after half a dozen had been put in the boat, 
 the two white men strolled along the white 
 hard beach. The captain, old, grizzled, and 
 grim, seemed to know the place well, and 
 led the way. 
 
 The island is very narrow, and as they 
 left the beach and gained the- shade of the 
 forest of cocoanuts that grew to the margin
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 221 
 
 of high-water mark they could see, between 
 the tall, stately palms, the placid waters of 
 the lagoon, and a mile or so across, the 
 inner beach of the weather side of the 
 island. 
 
 For a quarter of a mile or so the two men 
 walked on till the widest part of the island 
 was reached. Here, under the shadow of 
 some giant puka-trees, the old skipper 
 stopped and sat down on a roughly hewn 
 slab of coral, the remains of one of those 
 marae or heathen temples that are to be 
 found anywhere in the islands of Eastern 
 Polynesia. 
 
 " I knew this place well once," he said, 
 as he pulled out his pipe. " I used to come 
 here when I was sailing one of Brander's 
 vessels out of Tahiti. As we have done 
 now we did then came here for turtle. 
 No natives have lived here for the past 
 forty years. Did you ever hear of 
 Brantley ? "
 
 222 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 ' Yes," answered the supercargo, " but 
 he died long ago, did he not ? >! 
 
 " Aye he died here, and his wife and 
 sister too. They all lie here in this old 
 
 marae" 
 
 And then he told the story of Brantley. 
 
 It was six years since Brantley, with his 
 companions in misery, had drifted ashore 
 at lonely Vahitahi in the Paumotu Group, 
 and the kindly-hearted people had gazed 
 with pitying horror upon the dreadful beings 
 that, muttering and gibbering to each other, 
 lay in the bottom of the boat, and pointed 
 with long talon-like ringers to their burnt and 
 and bloody thirst-tortured lips. 
 
 
 
 And now as he sits in the doorway of his 
 thatched house and gazes dreamily out
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 223 
 
 upon the long curve of creamy beach and 
 wind-swayed line of palms that fringe the 
 leeward side of his island home, Brantley 
 passes a brown hand slowly up and down 
 his sun-bronzed cheek and thinks of the 
 past. 
 
 
 
 He was so full of life of the very joy of 
 living that time six years ago when he 
 sailed from Auckland on that fateful voyage 
 in the Doris. It was his first voyage as 
 captain, and the ship was his own, and even 
 now he remembers with a curious time- 
 dulled pang the last words of his only sister 
 the Doris after whom he had called his 
 new ship as she had kissed him farewell 
 " I am so glad, Fred, to hear them call you 
 ' Captain Brantley/ " 
 
 
 
 And the voyage, the wild feverish desire 
 to make a record passage to 'Frisco and 
 back ; the earnest words of poor old white 
 v.
 
 224 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 headed Lutton, the mate, " not to carry on 
 so at night going through the Paumotu 
 Group ; " that awful midnight crash when 
 the Doris ran hopelessly into the wild boil 
 of roaring surf on Tuanake Reef ; the white, 
 despairing faces of five of his men, who, 
 with curses in their eyes upon his folly, were 
 swept out of sight into the awful blackness 
 of the night. And then the days in the 
 boat with the six survivors ! Ah, the 
 memory of that will chill his blood to his 
 dying day. Men have had to do that which 
 he and the two who came through alive with 
 him had done. 
 
 How long they endured that black agony 
 of suffering he knew not. By common 
 consent none of them ever spoke of it again. 
 
 Three months after they had drifted 
 ashore, a passing sperm whaler, cruising 
 through the group, took away the two sea- 
 men, and then Brantley, after bidding them 
 .a silent farewell, had, with bitter despair
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 225 
 
 gnawing at his heart, turned his face away 
 from the ship and walked back into the palm- 
 shaded village. 
 
 
 
 " I will never go back again," he had 
 said to himself. And perhaps he was right ; 
 for when the Doris went to pieces on 
 Tuanake his hope and fortunes went with 
 her, and save for that other Doris there was 
 no one in the world who cared for him. He 
 was not the man to face the world again 
 with " Why, he lost his first ship," whispered 
 among his acquaintances. 
 
 And this is how Brantley, young, hand- 
 some, and as smart a seaman (save for that 
 one fatal mistake) as ever trod a deck, 
 became Paranili the Papalagi, and was 
 living out his life among the people of 
 solitary Vahitahi. 
 
 
 
 Ere a year had passed a trading captain 
 bound to the Gambier Islands had given
 
 226 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 him a small stock of trade goods, and the 
 thought of Doris had been his salvation. 
 Only for her he would have sunk to the life 
 of a mere idle, gin-drinking, and dissolute 
 beach-comber. As it was his steady, 
 straightforward life among the people of the 
 island was a big factor to his business success. 
 And so every year he sent money to Doris 
 by some passing whaler or Tahitan trading 
 schooner, but twice only had he got letters 
 from her ; and each time she had said, " Let 
 me come to you, Fred. We are alone in the 
 world, and may never meet again else. 
 Sometimes I awake in the night with a 
 sudden fear. Let me come ; my heart is 
 breaking with the loneliness of my life here, 
 so far away from you." 
 
 * 
 
 *> 
 But two years ago he had done that which 
 
 would keep Doris from ever coming to him, 
 he thought. He had married a young 
 native girl that is, taken her to wife in the
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 227 
 
 Paumotuan fashion and surely Doris, with 
 her old-fashioned notions of right and wrong, 
 would grieve bitterly if she knew it. 
 
 Presently he rose, talking to himself as is 
 the wont of those who have lived long apart 
 from all white associations, and sauntered 
 up and down the shady path at the side of 
 his dwelling, thinking of Doris and if he 
 would ever see her again. Then he entered 
 
 the house. 
 
 
 
 Seated on the matted floor with her face 
 turned from him was a young native girl 
 Luita, his wife. She was making a hat from 
 the bleached strands of the pandanus leaf, 
 and as she worked she sang softly to herself 
 in the semi-Tahitan tongue of her people. 
 
 Brantley, lazily stretching himself out on 
 a rough mat-covered couch, turned towards 
 her and watched the slender, supple fingers 
 covered, in Polynesian fashion, with heavy 
 gold rings as they deftly drew out the
 
 228 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 snow-white strands of the pandanus. The 
 long, glossy, black waves of hair that fell 
 over her bare back and bosom like a mantle 
 of night hid her face from his view, and the 
 man let his glance rest in contented admira- 
 tion upon the graceful curves of the youthful 
 figure ; then, he sighed softly, and again his 
 eyes turned to the wide, sailless expanse of 
 the Pacific, that lay shimmering and spark- 
 ling before him under a cloudless sky of blue, 
 and he thought again of Doris. 
 
 
 
 Steadily the little hands worked in and out 
 among the snowy strands, and now and 
 then, as she came to the tari, or refrain, of 
 the old Paumotuan love-song, her soft 
 liquid tones would blend with the quavering 
 treble of children that played outside. 
 
 " Teriinavahori, teeth of pearl, 
 
 Knit the sandals for Talaloo's feet, 
 Sandals of a/a thick and strong, 
 Bind them well with thy long black hair."
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 229 
 
 Suddenly the song ceased, and with a 
 quick movement of her shoulders she threw 
 back the cloud of hair that fell around her 
 arms and bosoms, looked up at Brantley 
 and laughed, and, striking the mat on which 
 she sat with her open palm, said 
 
 " Ari mai, Paranili" 
 
 He rose from the couch and stooped 
 beside her, with his hands resting on his 
 knees, and bending his brow in mock 
 criticism, regarded her handiwork intently. 
 
 Springing to her feet, hat in hand, and 
 placing her two hands on his now erect 
 shoulders, she looked into his face darker 
 far than her own and said with a smile 
 
 " Behold, Paranili, thy putou is finished, 
 save for a band of black pu'ava which thou 
 shalt give me from the store." 
 
 " Mine ? ' : said Brantley, in pretended 
 ignorance. " Why labour so for me ? Are 
 there not hats in plenty on Vahitahi ? 3: 
 
 " True, O thankless one ! but the women
 
 230 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 of the village say that thou lookest upon me 
 as a fool because I can neither make mats 
 nor do many other things such as becometh 
 a wife. And for this did Merani, my cousin, 
 teach me how to make a wide hat of fala to 
 shield thy face from the sun when thou art 
 out upon the pearling grounds. Ai-e-eh ! 
 my husband, but thy face and neck and 
 hands are as dark as those of the people of 
 Makatea they who are for ever in their 
 canoes. . . . See, Paranili, bend thy head. 
 Ai-e-eh ! thou art a tall man, my husband," 
 and she trilled a happy, rippling laugh as 
 she placed the hat on his head. 
 
 He placed one hand around the pliant 
 waist and under the mantle of hair and 
 drew her towards him, and then, moved 
 by a sudden emotion, kissed her soft, red 
 lips. 
 
 "Luita," he asked, v " would it hurt thee 
 if I were to go away ? " 
 
 The girl drew away from him, and for the
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 231 
 
 first time in two years Brantley saw an 
 angry flush tinge her cheek a dusky red. 
 
 " Ah ! " the contemptuous ring in her 
 voice made the man's eyes drop " thou art 
 like all White Men was there ever one who 
 was faithful ? What other woman is it that 
 thou desirest ? Is it Nia of Ahunui she 
 who, when thy boat lay anchored in the 
 lagoon, swam off at night and asked thee 
 for thy love the shameless Nia ! " 
 
 The angry light in the black eyes glared 
 fiercely, and the dull red on her cheeks had 
 changed to the livid paleness of passion. 
 
 Brantley, holding the rim of the hat over 
 his mouth, laughed secretly, pleased at her 
 first outburst of jealousy. Then his natural 
 manliness asserted itself. 
 
 " Come here," he said. 
 
 * 
 
 Somewhat sullenly the girl obeyed and 
 
 edged up beside him with face bent down. 
 H*
 
 232 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 He put his hand upon hers, and for a few 
 seconds looked at the delicate tracery of 
 tatooing that^ on the back, ran in thin blue 
 lines from the finger tips to the wrists. 
 
 " What a d d pity," he muttered to 
 
 himself ; " this infernal tatooing would give 
 the poor devil away anywhere in civilization. 
 Her skin is not as dark as that pretty Creole 
 I was so sweet on in Galveston ten years 
 ago . . . well, she's good enough for a 
 broken man like me ; but I can't take her 
 away that's certain." 
 
 A heavy tear splashed on his hand, and 
 then he pulled her to him, almost savagely. 
 
 " See, Luita. I did but ask to try thee. 
 .Have no fear. Thy land is mine for ever." 
 
 The girl looked up, and in an instant her 
 face wet with tears, was laid against his 
 breast. 
 
 Still caressing the dark head that lay 
 upon his chest, Brantley stooped and 
 -whispered something. The little tatooed
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 233 
 
 hand released its clasp of his arm and struck 
 him a playful blow. 
 
 " And would that bind thee more to me, 
 and to the ways of these our people of 
 Vahitahi," she asked, with still buried face. 
 
 " Aye," answered the ex-captain, slowly, 
 " for I have none but thee in the world to 
 care for." 
 
 She turned her face up. " Is there none 
 not even one woman in far-off Beretania, 
 whose face comes to thee in the darkness ? J: 
 . Brantley shook his head sadly. Of course 
 there was Doris, he thought, but he had 
 never spoken of her. Sometimes when the 
 longing to see her again would come upon 
 him he would have talked of her to his 
 native wife, but he was by nature an 
 uncommunicative man, and the thought of 
 how Doris must feel her loneliness touched 
 him with remorse and made him silent. 
 
 . 
 
 Another year passed, and matters had
 
 234 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 gone well with Brantley. Ten months before 
 he had dropped on one of the best patches 
 of shell in the Paumotus, and to-day, as he 
 sits writing and smoking in the big room 
 of his house, he looks contentedly out 
 through the open door to a little white- 
 painted schooner that lay at anchor on the 
 calm waters of the lagoon. He had just 
 come back from Tahiti with her, and the 
 two thousand dollars he had paid for her 
 was an easy matter for a man who was now 
 making a thousand a month. 
 
 " What a stroke of luck," he writes to 
 Doris. " Had I gone back to Sydney, where 
 would I be now ? a mate, I suppose, on 
 some deep-sea ship, earning 12 or ^14 a 
 month. Another year or two like this, 
 and I could go back a made man. Some 
 day, my dear, I may ; but I will come back 
 here again. The ways of thy people have 
 become my ways."
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 235 
 
 He laid down his pen and came to the 
 door and stood thinking awhile and listening 
 to the gentle rustle of the palms as they 
 swayed their lofty plumes to the breezy 
 trade wind. 
 
 " Yes," he thought, " I would like to go 
 and see Doris, but I can't take Luita, and 
 so it cannot be. How that girl suspects me 
 even now. When I went to Tahiti to buy 
 the schooner I believe she thought she would 
 never see me again. . . . What a fool I 
 am ! Doris is all right, I suppose, although 
 it is a year since I had a letter . . . and I 
 could any man want more. I don't believe 
 there's a soul on the island but thinks as 
 much of me as Luita herself does ; and by 
 G d she's a pearl even though she is only 
 a native girl. No, I'll stay here : ' Kapeni 
 Paranili ' will always be a big man in the 
 Paumotus, but Fred Brantley would be 
 nobody in Sydney only a common mer- 
 chant skipper who had made money in
 
 236 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 the islands ; . . . and perhaps Doris is 
 married." 
 
 So he thought and talked to himself, 
 listening the while to the soft symphony of 
 the swaying palm-tops and the subdued 
 murmur of the surf as the rollers crashed on 
 the distant line of reef away to leeward. Of 
 late these fleeting visions of the outside 
 world that quick, busy world, whose 
 memories, save for those of Doris, were all 
 but dead to him had become more frequent ; 
 but the calm, placid happiness of his exist- 
 ence, and that strange, fatal glamour that 
 for ever enwraps the minds of those who 
 wander in the islands of the sunlit sea as 
 the old Spanish navigators called Polynesia 
 had woven its spell too strongly over his 
 nature to be broken. And now, as the 
 murmur of women's voices caused him to 
 turn his head to the shady end of the 
 verandah, the dark, dreamy eyes of Luita,
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 237 
 
 who with her women attendants sat there, 
 playing with her child, looked out at him 
 from beneath their long lashes, and told him 
 his captivity was complete. 
 
 A week afterwards the people of Vahitahi 
 were clustered on the beach putting supplies 
 of native food in the schooner's boat. That 
 night he was to sail again for the pearling 
 grounds at Matahiva lagoon and would be 
 away three months. 
 
 One by one the people bade him adieu, 
 and then stood apart while he said farewell 
 to Luita. 
 
 " E mahina tolu, little one," he was 
 saying, " why such a gloomy face ? >: 
 
 The girl shook her head, and her mouth 
 twitched. " But the miti y Paranili the miti 
 of my mother. She is wise in the things 
 that are hidden ; for she is one of those who 
 believe* in the old gods of Vahitahi. . . . 
 And there are many here of the new lotu
 
 238 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 who yet believe in the old gods. And, see, 
 she has dreamed of this unknown evil to 
 thee twice ; and twice have the voices of 
 those who are silent in the marae called to 
 me in the night and said, * He must not go ; 
 he must not go.' ' 
 
 Knowing well how the old superstitious 
 taint ran riot in the imaginative native 
 mind, Brantley did not attempt to reason, 
 but sought to gently disengage her hands 
 from his arm. 
 
 She dropped on the sand at his feet and 
 clasped his knees, and a long, wailing note 
 of grief rang out. 
 
 " Aue I aue / my husband ; if it so be that 
 thou dost not heed the voices that call in 
 the night, then, out of thy love for me and 
 our child, let me come also. Then, if evil 
 befall thee, let us perish together." 
 
 Brantley raised his hand and pointed to 
 the bowed and weeping figure. Some 
 women came and lifted her up. Then
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 239 
 
 taking the tender face between his rough 
 hands he bent his head to hers, sprang into 
 the boat and was gone. 
 
 II 
 
 With ten tons of shell snugly stowed in 
 her hold, the little Tamariki was heading 
 back for Vahitahi after barely two months' 
 absence. Brantley, as he leant over the rail 
 and watched the swirl and eddy of the 
 creamy phosphorescence that hissed and 
 bubbled under the vessel's stern, felt well 
 satisfied. 
 
 It was the hour of dawn ; and the native 
 at the tiller sang, as the stars began to pale 
 before the red flush that tinged the sky to 
 windward, a low chant of farewell to 
 Fetuaho, the star of the morning, and then 
 he called to Brantley, who to all his crew 
 was always " Paranili " and never
 
 240 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 " Kapeni," and pointed with his naked 
 tatooed arm away to leeward, where the low 
 outlines of an island began to show. 
 
 " Look, Paranili ; that is Tatakoto the 
 place I have told thee of, where the turtle 
 make the white beach to look black. Would 
 it not be well for us to take home some to 
 Vahitahi ? " 
 
 " Thou glutton," said Brantley, good- 
 humouredly, " dost thou think I am like to 
 lose a day so that thou and thy friends may 
 fill thy stomachs with turtle meat ? " 
 
 Rua Manu laughed and showed his white, 
 even teeth. " Nay, Paranili, not for that 
 alone ; but it is a great place, that Tatakoto ; 
 and thou hast never landed there to look, 
 and Luita hath said that some day she would 
 
 ask thee to take her there ; for though she 
 
 fc 
 was born at Vahitahi her blood is that of the 
 
 people of Tatakoto, who have long since 
 lain silent in the maraes."
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 241 
 
 Brantley had often heard her speak of it, 
 this solitary spot in the wide Pacific, and 
 now, as he looked at the pretty verdure-clad 
 island against the weather shore of which the 
 thundering rollers burst with a muffled roar, 
 he was surprised at its length and extent, 
 and decided to pay it a visit some day. 
 
 " Not now, Rua," he said to the steers- 
 man, " but it shall be soon. Are there 
 
 many cocoanuts there ? >: 
 
 " Many ? May I perish but the trees are 
 as the sand of the sea, and the nuts lay 
 thick upon the ground. Ai-e-eh ! and the 
 robber crabs are in thousands, and fat ; and 
 the sea-birds' eggs." 
 
 " Glutton again ! Be content. In a little 
 while we and as many of the people of 
 Vahitahi as the schooner will carry will go 
 there and stay for the turtle season." 
 
 t 
 
 Three days afterwards the schooner was 
 
 within fifty miles of his island home, when
 
 242 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 Brantley was aroused at daylight from his 
 watch below by the cry of " TV pathi ! r 
 (a ship !) and hastening on deck he saw a 
 large vessel bearing down upon them. In 
 half an hour she was close to, and Brantley 
 recognised her as a brig from Tahiti, that 
 occasionally made a trading voyage to the 
 Paumotus, and whose skipper was a personal 
 friend. Suddenly she hove-to and lowered 
 a boat, which came alongside the schooner, 
 and the white man that steered jumped on 
 deck and held out his hand. 
 
 " How are you, Brantley ? " and then 
 his eye went quickly over the crew of the 
 schooner, then glanced through the open 
 skylight into the little cabin, and a hopeful 
 expectant look in his face died away. 
 
 " Very well, thank you, Latham. But 
 what is wrong ? you look worried." 
 
 " Come on board," said the captain of 
 the brig, quietly, " and I'll tell you." 
 
 As Brantley took his seat beside him
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 243 
 
 Latham said, " I have bad news for you, 
 Brantley. Your sister is on board the brig, 
 and I fear she will not live long. She came 
 down to Tahiti in the Marama from Auck- 
 land, and offered me a good round sum to 
 bring her to you." 
 
 " Has she beea ill long, Latham ? " 
 
 
 
 Latham looked at him curiously. " Didn't 
 you know, Brantley ? She's in a rapid 
 consumption." 
 
 For a moment neither man spoke ; then 
 Latham gave a short cough. 
 
 " I feel it almost as badly as you, Brantley, 
 but I've got a bit more bad news " 
 
 " Go on, Latham it can't matter much ; 
 my poor sister is everything to me." 
 
 " Just so. That's what I told Miss 
 Brantley. Well, it's this your wife and 
 
 child are missing " Latham glanced 
 
 at him and saw that his hand trembled and 
 then clutched the gunwale of the boat.
 
 244 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 " We got into Vahitahi lagoon about ten 
 days ago, and I took Miss Brantley ashore. 
 What happened I don't exactly know, but 
 the next night one of your whaleboats was 
 gone, and Luita and the child were missing. 
 Your sister was in a terrible state of mind, 
 and offered me a thousand dollars to put to 
 sea. Brantley, old man, I wouldn't take a 
 dollar from her God bless her but I did 
 put to sea, and I've searched nigh on twenty 
 islands and scores of reefs and sand- 
 banks " 
 
 " Thank you, Latham," said Brantley, 
 quietly ; " when we get on board you can 
 give me further particulars of the islands 
 you've searched." 
 
 " You can have my marked chart ; I've 
 got a spare one. Brace up, old man ; you'll 
 see your sister in a minute. She is terribly cut 
 up over poor Luita more so than I knew you 
 would. But she was a grand little woman, 
 Brantley, although she was only a native.' 5
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 245 
 
 " Yes," he answered, in the same slow, 
 dazed manner, " she was a good little girl 
 
 to me, although she " The words stuck 
 
 in his throat. 
 
 l 
 
 Latham showed him into the brig's cabin, 
 and then a door opened and Doris threw 
 herself weeping into his arms. 
 
 " Oh, Doris," he whispered, " why did you 
 not tell me you were ill ? ... I would have 
 come to you long ago. I feel a brute " 
 
 She placed her hands on his lips. " Never 
 mind about me, Fred. Has Latham 
 told you about " 
 
 " Yes," he replied ; and then suddenly, 
 " Doris, I am going to look for her ; I think 
 I know where she tried to reach. It is not 
 far from here. Doris, will you go on back 
 to Vahitahi with Latham and wait for me ? ?: 
 
 " Fred," she whispered, " let me come 
 with you. It will not be long, dear, before 
 I am gone, and it wats hard to die away
 
 246 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 from you. . . . that is why I came ; and 
 perhaps we may find her." 
 
 He kissed her silently, and then in five 
 minutes more they had said farewell to 
 Latham and were on their way to the' 
 schooner. 
 
 The crew soon knew from him what had 
 happened, and Rua Manu, with his big eyes 
 filled with a wondering pity as he looked at 
 the frail body and white face of Doris lying 
 on the skylight, wore the schooner's head 
 round to the south-west, at a sign from 
 Brantley. 
 
 " Aye, Paranili," he said, in his deep, 
 guttural tones, " it is to Tatakoto she hath 
 gone 'tis her mother's land." 
 
 * 
 
 That night, as she lay on the skylight with 
 her hand in his, Doris told him all she 
 knew : 
 
 " They were all kind to me when I went 
 ashore to your house, Fred, but Luita looked
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 247 
 
 so fiercely at me. . . . Her eyes frightened 
 me they had a look of death in them. 
 
 " In the morning your little child was 
 taken ill with what they call tataru, and I 
 wanted to give it medicine. Luita pushed 
 my hand away and hugged the child to her 
 bosom ; and then the other woman came 
 and made signs for me to go away. And 
 that night she and the child were missing, 
 and one of your boats was gone." 
 
 " Poor Luita," said Brantley, stroking 
 Doris's pale cheek, " she did not know you 
 were my sister. I never told her, Doris." 
 
 " She is a very beautiful woman, Fred. 
 They told me at Tahiti that she was called 
 the pearl of Vahitahi ; and oh ! my dear, if 
 we can but find her, I will make her love me 
 for your sake." 
 
 * * * 
 
 Late in the afternoon of the second day, 
 just as the trade wind began to lose its 
 strength, the schooner was running along
 
 248 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 the weather-side of Tatakoto, and Rua 
 Manu, from the masthead, called out that 
 he saw the boat lying on the beach inside 
 the lagoon, with her sail set ; and, as landing 
 was not practical on the weather-side, the 
 schooner ran around to the lee. 
 
 ' We will soon know, Doris. It always 
 rains in these islands at this time of the 
 year ... so she would not suffer as I once 
 did ; but the sail of the boat is still set, and 
 that makes me think she has never left it. 
 Wait till I come back again, Doris ; you 
 cannot help me." 
 
 And Doris, throwing her weak arms round 
 his neck, kissed him with a sob and lay 
 back again to wait. 
 
 With Rua Manu and two others of his 
 faithful native crew Brantley walked quickly 
 across the island to the lagoon to where the 
 boat lay. She was not there, and the dark 
 eyes of his sailors met his in a responsive
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 249 
 
 glow of hope she had not died in the 
 boat ! 
 
 They turned back into the silent aisles of 
 cocoanut palms, and then Rua Manu called 
 out her name. 
 
 " Listen," he said. 
 
 A voice a weak, trembling voice was 
 singing the song of Talaloo. 
 
 " Teriinavohori, bending low, 
 
 Bindeth the sandals on Talaloo's feet ; 
 ' Hasten, O hasten, lover true, 
 
 O'er the coral, cruel and sharp, 
 Over the coral, and sand, and rock, 
 
 Snare thee a turtle for our marriage feast ; 
 la akoe ! brave lover mine.' " 
 
 " In the old marae, Paranili," said Rua 
 Manu, pointing to the ruined temple. 
 
 Motioning to the seamen to remain out- 
 side Brantley entered the ruined walls of 
 the old heathen temple. At the far end was 
 a little screen of cocoanut boughs. He 
 stooped down and went in. 
 
 A few minutes passed, and then his hand
 
 250 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 was thrust out between the branches as a 
 sign for them to follow. 
 
 '>' 
 
 One by one they came and sat beside 
 Brantley, who held the wasted figure of the 
 wanderer in his arms. The sound of his 
 voice had brought back her wavering reason, 
 and she knew them all now. She knew, too, 
 that her brief young life was ebbing fast ; 
 for, as each of the brown men pressed their 
 lips to her hand, tears coursed down their 
 cheeks. 
 
 " See, men of Vahitahi, my Englishman 
 hath come to me, a fool that fled from his 
 house . . . because I thought that he lied to 
 me. Teloma was it who first mocked and 
 said, ' 'Tis his wife from Beretania who hath 
 come to seek him ; ' and then other girls 
 laughed and mocked also, and said, * Ah-he ! 
 Luita, this fair-faced girl who sayeth she is 
 thy husband's sister, Ah-be I ' . . . an^ 
 their words and looks stung me. ... So at
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 251 
 
 night I took my child and swam to the 
 boat. . . . My child, see, it is here," and she 
 touched a little mound in the soil beside her. 
 There was a low murmur of sympathy, 
 and then the brown men went outside and 
 covered their faces with their hands, after 
 the manner of their race when death is near, 
 and waited in silence. 
 
 
 
 Night had fallen on the lonely island, and 
 the far-off muffled boom of the breakers as 
 they dashed on the black ledges of the 
 weather reef would now and then be borne 
 into the darkness of the little hut. 
 
 " Put thy face to mine, Paranili," she 
 whispered ; " I grow cold now." 
 
 As the bearded face of the man bent over 
 her, one thin, weak arm rose waveringly in 
 the air and then fell softly round his neck, 
 and Brantley, with his hand upon her bosom, 
 felt that her heart had ceased to beat.
 
 252 BY REEF AND PALM 
 
 The next day he sailed the schooner into 
 the lagoon, and Doris pressed her lips on the 
 dead forehead of the native girl, ere she was 
 laid to rest. 
 
 Something that Doris had said to him as 
 they walked away from her grave filled 
 Brantley's heart with a deadly fear, and as he 
 took her in his arms his voice shook. 
 
 " Don't say that, Doris. It cannot be so 
 soon as that. I was never a good man ; but 
 surely God will spare you to me a little 
 longer." 
 
 But it came very soon on the morning 
 of the day that he intended sailing out of the 
 lagoon again. Doris died in his arms on 
 board the schooner, and Brantley laid her 
 to rest under the shade of a giant puka-tree 
 that overshadowed the stones of the old marae. 
 
 That night he called Rua Manu into the 
 cabin and asked him if he could beat his way 
 back to Vahitahi in the schooner.
 
 BRANTLEY OF VAHITAHI 253 
 
 " 'Tis an easy matter, Paranili. So that 
 the sky be clear and I can see the stars, then 
 shall I find Vahitahi in three days." 
 
 " Good. Then to-morrow take the 
 schooner there, and tell such of the people 
 as desire to be with me to come here, and 
 bring with them all things that are in my 
 house. It is my mind to live here at 
 Tatakoto." 
 
 As the schooner slipped through the 
 narrow passage, he stood on the low, sandy 
 point and waved his hand in farewell. 
 
 
 
 A week later the little vessel dropped her 
 anchor in the lagoon again, and Rua Manu 
 and his crew came ashore to seek him. 
 
 They found him lying under the shade of 
 the puka-tree with his revolver in his hand 
 and a bullet-hole in his temple.
 
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