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Later in the day, as I sat writing up my journal, the cabin was filled from end to end with Marquesans: three brown-skinned generations, squatted cross-legged upon the floor, and regarding me in silence with embarrassing eyes. The eyes of all Polynesians are large, luminous, and melting; they are like the eyes of animals and some Italians.
Here, but a few feet from the spot where the gay young Frenchman fell, the jungle had covered his tomb. Fifty thousand Marquesans have died to bring peace to the soul of that corvette commander who so jauntily flourished his cane in the faces of the wondering savages. Iotete would better have endured the pranks of brutal sea-adventurers, perhaps. This mausoleum was the seal of French occupancy.
Again, men who have taken a vow of vengeance sometimes keep their hair unshorn till they have fulfilled their vow. Thus of the Marquesans we are told that "occasionally they have their head entirely shaved, except one lock on the crown, which is worn loose or put up in a knot.
Before the French achieved this, however, the white had sowed a crop of deadly evils among the Marquesans that cut them down faster than war, and left them desolate, dying, passing to extinction. As I looked from the deck of the Morning Star I was struck by the fittingness of the scene. Fatu-hiva had been left behind and Hiva-oa, our destination, was before us, bleak and threatening.
The men here conspired with the men of Hanahouua to descend on Oi, a little village by the sea between here and Oomoa. They had guns of a sort, for the whalers had brought old and rusty guns to trade with the Marquesans for wood, fruit, and fish. Frère Fesal learned of the conspiracy, but the men were drinking rum, and he was helpless.
His name means The Seventh Man Who Is So Angry He Wallows In The Mire. "Neo" means all but the number, and for so short a word to be translated by so detailed a statement would indicate that there were many Marquesans whose anger tripped them. Else such a word had hardly been born.
We were to estimate the number of eva trees on the plateau and size up the value of the land for a plantation. Thus we might turn into gold that poison tree whose reddish-purple, alluring fruit has given so many Marquesans escape from life's bitterness, whose juice wounded or mutilated warriors drank to avoid pain or contempt.
Pineapples grew against the palings, and a bed of lettuce flourished in the rear beside a tiny pharmacy, a kitchen, and a shelter for servants. On the spontaneous verdure before the veranda three score Marquesans stood or squatted, the men in shirts and overalls and the women in tunics.
A pill once a day would make the Marquesans hustle. But the government stopped it. They say that the book written by the Englishman, Stevenson, did it. We must find labor elsewhere soon, Chinese, perhaps. Those two Paumotans brought by Begole are a godsend to me. I wish some one would bring me a hundred."
I'll wager the Admiraltys are not yet civilized. All preparations were made, things packed on board, and a new crew of Marquesans and Tahitians shipped. We were just ready to start to Tahiti, where a lot of repairs and refitting for the Miele were necessary, when poor Dad came down sick and died." "And you were left all alone?" Joan nodded. "Very much alone.
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