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Updated: May 16, 2025
They must not sit on the paepae; they must not go up to it by the stair; they must not eat pork; they must not approach a boat; they must not cook at a fire which any male had kindled.
The printed page vanished, and before my eyes rose a vision of my paepae among the breadfruit- and cocoanut-trees, the ring of squatting dusky figures in flickering sunlit leaf-shade, Kake in her red tunic with the babe at her breast, Exploding Eggs standing by with a half-eaten cocoanut, and the many dark eyes in their circles of ink fixed upon the shriveled face of the reformed cannibal whose head ached with the mysteries of the white man's religion.
There was about it the vague semblance of an altar, and in the brush near it we saw the black remains of a mighty paepae like that giant Marai of Papara in Tahiti, which itself seemed kin to the great pyramid temple of Borobodo in Java. Melancholy memorials these of man, who is so like the gods, but who passes like a leaf in the wind.
They discussed the strange madness that had possessed Iuda Iskalota, that he had first bought land with his forty pieces of silver and then hanged himself to a purau tree. Was it cocoanut land? they asked. Was it not good land? Often across the worn stones of the paepae stole a vei, a centipede, upon which a bare foot quickly stamped.
The decoction, Kivi explained, comes from the root, and we set to work to dig it. It was huge, like a gigantic yam, and after we had torn it from the stubborn soil it taxed the strength and agility of two of us to carry it to the paepae of Broken Plate, where the feast was to be.
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.
Coming up my trail a few days later, I found on my paepae a shabbily dressed little bag-of-bones of a white man, with a dirty gray beard and a harsh voice like that of Baufré. He had a note to me from Le Brunnec, introducing M. Lemoal, born in Brest, a naturalized American. The note was sealed, and I put it carefully away before turning to my visitor.
Seven were killed before they could fly to the hills, and one was captured alive, a slender, beautiful girl of ten years, whom they tied hands and feet and threw into the canoe with the slain ones. Back they came from their triumph, and landed on the shore here, within spear's-throw from the paepae of Broken Plate.
I planted a fern in a box. Every one came to my store and, feigning other reasons, asked for boxes. Soon every paepae had its box of ferns. I asked a man to snare four or five goats for me in the hills. They were the first goats tethered or enclosed in the valley. Within a week the mountains were harried for goats, and the village was noisy with their bleating. I ate my goats; they ate theirs.
Fafo, the leader, besought me earnestly to accompany them to a neighboring paepae and dance for them. He had the finest eyes I have ever seen in a man's head, dark brown, almond-shaped, large and lustrous, wells of melancholy. There was something exquisite about the young man, his lemon-colored skin, his delicate hands and feet, his slender, though strong, body, and his regular, brilliant teeth.
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