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In the expression and motion of the dramatic mute the aged uncle had the sublimity of Lear. For Vava, in a mask and an attitude, by some cryptic understanding encompassed the resignation and appeal to Deity. Lovaina had left me on the deck of the Fetia Taiao, as Captain Pincher said that it would be an hour or two before he sailed. His crew was having a few extra upaupas in the Cocoanut House.
The Fetia Taiao had made an anchorage a thousand feet toward the reef. The waves were hammering against the quays, and the lagoon was white with fury. In the club, after all had been made secure, the skippers and managers of trading houses gathered to discuss the weather.
Mars is fetia ura, the red star; the Pleiades are Matarii, the little eyes; and the Southern Cross, Tauha, Fetia ave are the comets, the "stars with a tail," and the meteors pao, opurei, patau, and pitau. The moon was gone, but the stars needed no help, for they shone as if the trump of doom were due at dawn, and they should be no more.
I had long wanted to visit the Marquesas Islands, and the first communication I had from Papeete in nearly three months was from the owners of the schooner Fetia Taiao, notifying me that that vessel, commanded by Captain William Pincher, would sail for the archipelago in a few days, "crew and weather willing."
But before we had come to more than platitudes, the eye doctor had repaired the type-writer, and called his wife to other duties. We had a going-away dinner at the Tiare hotel, Landers, Polonsky, McHenry, Hallman, Schlyter, the tailor, and Lieutenant L'Hermier des Plantes, a French army surgeon who was sailing on the Fetia Taiao to the Marquesas to be acting governor there.
Captain Pincher lit his pipe, and the glasses were refilled. McHenry attempted to pick up the thread of the tragedy, and began: "Me, too, I'm with Bill drivin' the Fetia for Nuka-Hiva when David croaks himself. I drank as much as he did ashore, and I 'm no slouch with the vahines; but I can hold my booze, I can."
In New Zealand, where a chiefs name was Maripi, or "knife," it became necessary to call knives nekra; and in Tahiti, fetu, "star," had to be changed into fetia, and tui, "to strike," became tiai, etc., because the king's name was Tu. Curious freaks are played with the languages of these islands by this ever-recurring necessity.
"Vanilla, hell!" said Hallman, whose harp had one string, "he's been having his pick of country produce." Lying Bill said: "Well, you'd better pack your chest for the northern islands to-morrow if you're goin' with the Fetia Taiao. We'11 be off for Atuona and Hallman's tribe of cannibals nex' mornin'." I sat down and quaffed a Doctor Funk, and then inquired idly: "Where's David?"
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