United States or Fiji ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Grelet would eventually have transported me, but so great was his aversion to leaving Fatu-hiva that I felt it would be asking too much of him. He reminded me that Kant, the great metaphysician, had lived eighty years in his birthplace and never stirred more than seven miles from it. The canoe had come to Hanavave to bring back two young women.
I was introduced to Monsieur François Grelet, a Swiss, who had lived here for more than twenty years, and who during that time had never been farther away than a few miles. Not even Tahiti had drawn him to it. Since he arrived, at the age of twenty-four years, he had dwelt contentedly in Oomoa. After we had chatted for a few moments he invited me to be his guest.
Towering structures hewn by water and wind from the basalt mass of the island rose like colossi along the entrance to the bay; beyond, a glimpse of great black battlements framed a huge crater. A dangerous bay in the lee wind with a bad holding-ground. We manoeuvered for ten minutes to land, but the shelving beach of black stone with no rim of sand proved a puzzle even to Grelet.
Eight men carried the large boat from its shelter to the water, slung on two short thick poles by loops of rope through holes in prow and stern. It was as graceful as a swan, floating in the edge of the breakers. Driving it through the surf was cautious, skilful work, at which Grelet was a master.
Her mother was Hinatiaiani, a laughing, beautiful girl of sixteen years, and the two were cared for by Pae, a woman of forty, ugly and childless. Hinatiaiani was her adopted daughter, and Pae had been sorely angered when Grelet, whose companion she had been for eighteen years, took the girl.
Squatting on the mat, they bent and swayed in pantomime, telling the tales, lifting their voices in praises of their own deeds and of the virtues of Grelet. That thrifty Swiss, in red breech-clout and spectacles, the lamplight shining on his bald head, sat in the midst of them, familiar by a score of years with their chants.
Excited barking of the dogs announced the arrival of Grelet with several men. They had rowed all the way to Oia and had sailed back, arriving by chance in time to share the abundance of our feast. After the twelve-mile pull in the blazing sun and the toilsome journey back by night this feast was their reward, and all their pay.
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.
They spoke no Marquesan, and Grelet had difficulty in making them understand that they must labor for him, and in enforcing his orders, which they could not comprehend. There was little copra being made in the rainy weather, and they lay about the veranda or squatted on the paepae of the laborers' cookhouse, making a fire of cocoanut-husks twice a day to roast their breadfruit.
The air circulated above it, bellying it out like a sail and making the atmosphere cool. Under this was his dining-table, near a very handsome buffet, both made by Grelet of the false ebony, for he was a good carpenter as he was a crack boatsman, farmer, cowboy, and hunter. Here we sat over pipe and cigarette after dinner, wine at our elbows, the garden before us, and discussed many things.
Word Of The Day