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The dead boars were slung on poles, but a half dozen had to be left on branches of trees for the morrow, and it was late in the day when we reached Grelet's house for the feast. Pae, the elder woman of the household, received us joyously. In the master's absence she had become a different being from the sulky, contrary one I had seen while he was at home.
The men of the hills have a terrible custom of capturing any woman of another valley who goes alone in their district. Grelet's first companion was caught one night by forty, who for punishment built the ten kilometres of road between Haniapa and Atuona. Many Daughters, the beautiful little leper, when thirteen years old was a victim of seventeen men, some of whom were imprisoned.
We climbed this rocky face and dived into the water again and again, rejoicing in its coolness and in that sheer pagan delight of the dive, when in the air man becomes all animal, freed from every restraint and denied every safeguard save the strength of his own muscle and nerve. We saw at last, on the edge of the bank, one of Grelet's dogs, whining for attention.
Grelet said that the conch I had heard at night sounding off Oomoa must have been in a canoe or whale-boat bound for Hanavave, a valley a dozen miles away over the mountains, but only an hour or so by sea. It might have brought a message of interest, or perhaps would be a conveyance to my own valley, so in mid-forenoon we launched Grelet's whale-boat for a journey to Hanavave.
The river that emptied into the bay below Grelet's plantation flowed down the valley from the heights, and beside it ran the trail, a road for half a mile, then a track growing fainter with every mile, hardly distinguishable from the tangle of trees and bushes on either side.
We heard the sound of the surf, and letting the horse go, Orivie led me, by that sense we surrender for the comforts of civilization, down the bed of a cascade to the River of Oomoa, which we waded, and then arrived at Grelet's house. We had come thirteen miles. I was tired, but Orivie made nothing of the journey.
I thought of the Roberta and those two kinds of cockroaches, the Blatta orientalis and the Blatta germanica, who raid by night and by day respectively; I looked at Grelet's surroundings, and I accepted. While the Roberta gathered what copra she could and flitted, I became a resident of Oomoa until such time as chance should give me passage to my own island.
The blue of the candlenut-ink, in bizzare designs upon body and legs, had turned a scaly greenish hue from age and kava excesses. Revealed in the yellow light, he was like a ghastly bronze monstrosity that had known the weathering of a century. He was the leader of the chant and, like all the others, had drunk plenty of Grelet's rum.
The house, the garden, and the unexplored recesses of Oomoa Valley were mine, with whatever they might afford of entertainment or adventure. Every new day, wherever spent, is an adventure, but when to the enigmatic morning is added the zest of a strange place, it must be a dull man who does not thrill to it. I began the day by bathing in the river with the year-old Tamaiti, Grelet's child.
Their savage hearts were ever in their own atoll, the home to which the native clings so passionately, and their eyes were dark with hopeless longing. No doubt they would die soon, as so many do when exiled, but Grelet's copra crop would profit first.
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