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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.
Her son could not marry without her permission. No Marquesan had ever done so. She would send the word by the next schooner, or I might take it with me to my own island and hand it to her son. He could then marry. I had done her a great kindness, but one thing more. Neither she nor Titihuti nor Water could make out what Pahorai Calizte meant by "Coot Pae, Mama."
Children came up in droves to press their sniffling noses on the good priest's hand, which at every step, almost, had to let the train fall into the muck. Women greeted smilingly from the sidewalks. The dear old pae capellá! What a good-natured soul never too harsh on penances, but able to see through you, just the same, if you tried to fool him.
They sat upon the sand, men and women and children, and intoned my farewell ode my pae me io te: The sky was ominous and the boats of the Saint François were running a heavy surf. I waded waist-deep through the breakers to climb into one. Malicious Gossip, Ghost Girl and the little leper lass, Many Daughters, were sobbing, their dresses lifted to their eyes. "Hee poihoo!" cried the steersman.
"A.P.A. Dieu." was his commendation of her to God, but Coot Pae was not Marquesan, neither was it French. She pronounced the words in the Marquesan way, and I knew at once. Coot pae is pronounced Coot Pye, and Coot Pye was Pahorai Calizte's way of imitating the American for Apae Kaoha. "Good-by, mama," was his quite Philadelphia closing of his letter to his mother.
Pae filled the pipe and the bowls and joined in the chorus, while the Paumotan boys, in a shadowy recess, sipped their rum and rolled their eyes in astonished appreciation of the first joviality of their lives. When the leader began the ancient cannibal chant, the song of war and of feasting at the High Place, the tattooed men forgot even the rum.
It is certain that they were acquainted with iron long before the arrival of Cook, as is proved by the already cited passage from an old romance: O luna, o lalo, kai, o uka, a o ka hao pae, ko ke'lii. Umi, some time before his death, said to his old friend Koi: "There is no place, nor is there any possible way to conceal my bones. You must disappear from my presence.
Pae, reduced once more to sullen servitude, poured the rum, generous portions of it in cocoanut-shells, which the newcomers emptied as they ate, hastening soon to join the other guests on the broad veranda, where late at night a chant began.
They bury them in a deep hole lined with cracked candlenuts and grass and cover all with earth. In several days and they know the right time to an hour the bananas are dug up, yellow and sweet. Pae furnished a limited quantity of rum for the fete, and a cocoanut-shell filled with namu was passed about.
Pae had locked up the song-maker, and all the tattooed men slumbered where they sat, the Paumotan boys with sunbonnets tied about their heads lay in their corner, dreaming, perhaps, of their loved home on Pukaruha. I woke again to find the garden green and still in the gray morning, and the veranda vacant.
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