United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The ground was tapu. In the angle, by the mouth of the path, stood a deserted maniap'. Near by there had been a house before our coming, which was now transported and figured for the moment in Equator Town. It had been, and it would be again when we departed, the residence of the guardian and wizard of the spot Tamaiti.
"One afternoon I was starting for the river to bathe, when that girl was making herself a bed of cocoanut-leaves under the house. She said she expected the baby, as, when she climbed a cocoanut-tree a moment earlier, she had felt a movement. She would not lie in a bed, but, like her mother before her, must make her a nest of cocoanut-leaves. When I returned from my bath, Tamaiti was born.
Tamaiti, interrogated next day as to the shell, explained it was not exactly Chench, but a cell, or body, which he would at times inhabit. Asked why there was a sleeping-mat, he retorted indignantly, 'Why have you mats? And this was the sceptical Tamaiti! But island scepticism is never deeper than the lips.
But with the birth of Tamaiti, Pae became reconciled, and looked after the welfare of the infant more than the volatile young mother. Tamaiti had never had a garment upon her sturdy small body, and looked a plump cherub as she played about the veranda, crawling in the puddles when the rain drove across the floor. "The infant has never been sick," Grelet had said.
Here, in this lone place, within sound of the sea, he had his dwelling and uncanny duties. I cannot call to mind another case of a man living on the ocean side of any open atoll; and Tamaiti must have had strong nerves, the greater confidence in his own spells, or, what I believe to be the truth, an enviable scepticism. Whether Tamaiti had any guardianship of the Pray Place I never heard.
This was by a mighty plausible fellow, wearing European clothes and speaking excellent English Tamaiti his name, or, as the whites have now corrupted it, 'Tom White': one of the king's supercargoes at three pounds a month and a percentage, a medical man besides, and in his private hours a wizard.
Out of the maniap's one person after another came to join the group, some with mere excitement, others with consternation in their faces. The pretty girl crept to my side; it was then that surely with the most artless flattery she informed me of my likeness to her father. Tamaiti the infidel sat with hanging head and every mark of dejection.
He praised their fortitude in the struggle, and after the editor had interpreted stiffs by te tamaiti aroha e, which means poor children, and scabs by iore, which means rats, and had ended with a peroration that brought many cries of "Maitai! Good!" Kelly took up his accordion, and began to play the sacred air of "Revive us Again!" He led the singing of his version: "Hallelujah! I'm a bum!
She came, she took, she vanished, we had not a guess whither; and we remained, with foolish looks and laughter on the empty field. Such was the fit prologue of our memorable bargaining. Presently Terutak' came, bringing Tamaiti along with him, both smiling; and we four squatted without the rail.
Tamaiti I knew already: Terutak' I saw for the first time a tall, lank, raw-boned, serious North-Sea fisherman turned brown; and there was a third in their company whose name I never heard, and who played to Tamaiti the part of famulus. Tamaiti took me in hand first, and led me, conversing agreeably, to the shores of Fu Bay. The famulus climbed a tree for some green cocoa-nuts.
Word Of The Day