Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
It was twenty miles from Papeete to Atimaono, and over half the distance was covered by the time the Chinago again ventured into speech. "I saw you in the court room, when the honourable judge sought after our guilt," he began. "Very good. And do you remember that Ah Chow, whose head is to be cut off do you remember that he Ah Chow was a tall man? Look at me."
The road ran through extensive coffee, sugar-cane, Indian corn, orange, cocoa-nut, and cotton plantations, and vanilla, carefully trained on bamboos, growing in the thick shade. Near Atimaono we passed the house of a great cotton planter, and, shortly afterwards, the curious huts, raised on platforms, built by some islanders he has imported from the Kingsmill group to work his plantations.
Cruchot took that person beside him on the seat of a wagon, behind two mules, and drove away. Ah Cho was glad to be out in the sunshine. He sat beside the gendarme and beamed. He beamed more ardently than ever when he noted the mules headed south toward Atimaono. Undoubtedly Schemmer had sent for him to be brought back. Schemmer wanted him to work. Very well, he would work well.
"Is it not enough?" was the retort. "Then you are not glad to have your head cut off?" Ah Cho looked at him in abrupt perplexity, and said "Why, I am going back to Atimaono to work on the plantation for Schemmer. Are you not taking me to Atimaono?" Cruchot stroked his long moustaches reflectively. "Well, well," he said finally, with a flick of the whip at the off mule, "so you don't know?"
The Tahitians who mourned his iconoclasm had a chant which said that the Taharuu River ran blood when their gods were dishonored." From the stream the vast domain of the plantation of Atimaono stretched to Mataiea.
In that scene I myself was the buffoon of fate. A journey to Mataiea I abandon city life Interesting sights on the route The Grotto of Maraa Papara and the Chief Tati The plantation of Atimaono My host, the Chevalier Tetuanui. Life in the country made me laugh at myself for having so long stayed in the capital. The fever of Papeete had long since cooled in my veins.
He was unaware of the error of the Chief Justice, and he had no way of working it out; but he did know that he had been given this Chinago to take to Atimaono and that it was his duty to take him to Atimaono. What if he was the wrong man and they cut his head off? It was only a Chinago when all was said, and what was a Chinago, anyway? Besides, it might not be a mistake.
It was on his suggestion that they had ordered the execution to take place at Atimaono instead of at Papeete. The scene of the crime, Schemmer had argued, was the best possible place for the punishment, and, in addition, it would have a salutary influence upon the half-thousand Chinagos on the plantation.
And lo! sitting thus, in the dream, he was able to remember and repeat the passages from "The Tract of the Quiet Way." So the time passed nicely until Atimaono was reached and the mules trotted up to the foot of the scaffold, in the shade of which stood the impatient sergeant. Ah Cho was hurried up the ladder of the scaffold.
He smarted under the recollection. Also, if he turned back to Papeete, he would delay the execution at Atimaono, and if he were wrong in turning back, he would get a reprimand from the sergeant who was waiting for the prisoner. And, furthermore, he would get a reprimand at Papeete as well. He touched the mules with the whip and drove on. He looked at his watch.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking