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An excellent authority, Moerenhout, who lived among the people of the Society Islands many years and knew them well, says that, in Tahiti, the role of the prophet had very generally passed out of the hands of the priests into that of private persons who professed to represent the god, often assumed his name, and in this capacity prophesied.
Captain Davenport groaned. "That makes the life of a schooner only five years!" He shook his head sadly, murmuring, "Bad waters! Bad waters!" Again they went into the cabin to consult the big general chart; but the poisonous vapors drove them coughing and gasping on deck. "Here is Moerenhout Island," Captain Davenport pointed it out on the chart, which he had spread on the house.
The southeast trade had swung around to the eastward, and was driving the PYRENEES through the water at an eight-knot clip. Captain Davenport worked up his dead reckoning, allowing generously for drift, and announced Moerenhout Island to be not more than ten miles off.
"You are lodged exactly as was Charlie Stoddard, who wrote 'South Sea Idylls," I interposed. "They have lied always, those writers about Tahiti," said Ivan Stroganoff. "Melville, Loti, Moerenhout, Pallander, your Stevenson, I don't know that Stoddard, all are meretricious, with their pomp of words and no truth. I have comparisons to make with other nations.
Just so Saul strips off his clothes, "prophesies" before Samuel, and lies down "naked all that day and night." Both Mariner and Moerenhout refuse to have recourse to the hypothesis of imposture in order to account for the inspired state of the Polynesian prophets. On the contrary, they fully believe in their sincerity.
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