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Updated: June 20, 2025
The foot of the cliffs, about all these islands, is the place of fishing. Between Taahauku and Atuona we saw men, but chiefly women, some nearly naked, some in thin white or crimson dresses, perched in little surf-beat promontories the brown precipice overhanging them, and the convolvulus overhanging that, as if to cut them off the more completely from assistance.
It may be fancied how the feast broke up; but it is notable that the guests were honourably suffered to retire. These passed back through Taahauku in extreme disorder; a little after the valley began to be overrun with shouting and triumphing braves; and a letter of warning coming at the same time to Mr. Stewart, he and his Chinamen took refuge with the Protestant missionary in Atuona.
Too soon the time came when I must return to my own paepae in Atuona. Vanquished Often wept at my decision, and Mrs. Seventh Man rubbed my nose long with hers as she entreated me to remain in the home she had given over to me. The chief, finding remonstrance useless, volunteered to accompany me on my return, and one midnight woke me to be ready when the wind was right.
Also the women of Atuona among us said that there should be peace, and the women of Taaoa who had taken as their own many children from Atuona. Therefore we begged the most high gods to excuse us." "Women had much power then," I said. Kahuiti chuckled. "The French god and the priests of the Farani have taken it from them," he commented. "I have known the day when women ruled.
She was pitifully thin when I first saw her, lying all day on a heap of mats, with Taipi beside her, both coughing, coughing. An epidemic of colds had seized Atuona, brought, most probably, by the schooner Papeite, for no other had arrived since the Morning Star.
I've seen Mohuho shoot three natives from cocoanut-trees just to try a new gun. 'E was a bad 'un, 'e was. There was something doing every day, them days. God, wot it is to be young!" A little later Lying Bill, Ducat, and I, with my new valet's canoe in the wake of our boat, rounded the cliffs that had shut off our view of Atuona Valley.
"I bid fifty thousand francs for one of Gauguin's paintings in Paris last year," Count Polonsky said as he claimed his game of écarté against Tati, the chief of Papara district. "I failed to get it, too. I bought many here for a few thousand francs each before that." "Blow me!" cried Pincher, the skipper of the Morning Star. "'E was a bleedin' ijit. I fetched 'im absinthe many a time in Atuona.
I did not want, so early in my residence in Atuona, to lose a name that had served me well for many years, and besides, if I took another I would have to abide by whatever it might be and be known by it. It would be pleasant to be called "Blue Sky" or "Killer of Sharks," but how about "Drowned in the Sea" or "Noise Inside"? "Keep your name to yourself, mon ami," said Le Moine.
The beach of Taha-Uka was a mile from where we lay and not available for traffic, but around a shoulder of the bluffs was hidden the tiny bay of Atuona, where goods could be landed. While we discussed this, around those jutting rocks shot a small out-rigger canoe, frail and hardly large enough to hold the body of a slender Marquesan boy who paddled it.
But swift messengers had heralded throughout the valley that there would be gambling authorized par gouvernement in Lam Kai Go's plantation, and already the cards had been shuffled for seven or eight hours. Throughout all Atuona matches had been given an extraordinary and superlative value. To the farthest huts on the rim of the valley the cry was "Matches!"
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